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Eugene Clark leads a new generation of zombies as Big Daddy in Land of the Dead.
In the last few years I’ve developed a new found love and respect for horror movies. Sure, there are some bad ones. I mean, I never understood the appeal of Chucky. But, there are also some good ones. Great, even.
Night of the Living Dead has always been one of my favorite horror films, so when I sat in a crowded theater earlier this week to watch Land of the Dead, I was hoping that this wouldn’t be a big let down. That George Romero, the man who created the genre of zombie films, wouldn’t drop the ball.
And he doesn’t. Not by a long shot.
Land of the Dead is funny, exciting, full of gore, great dialogue and excellent characters. It’s not at all the modern day horror film, with the MTV cinematography and editing. It’s a smart, well-directed horror film that stays true to its concept, where zombies disgustingly eat humans and the only way to kill the walking dead is to blow a hole through their decaying heads.
Following along with the storyline he started with that low-budget, black and white classic, in Romero’s Land of the Dead the world has been transformed. Society has collapsed, with the world is now overrun with walking corpses. Humanity has secluded itself in small pockets around the world. In the case of this movie, one of those pockets is “Fiddler’s Green”, a closed off urban community. With mercenaries, electrical fences and a surrounding river, it is safely protected from the zombies.
However, this “community” is controlled by the rich and the powerful, with Kaufman (Dennis Hopper) at the top of the ladder. From the penthouse of the community’s luxury apartment building, he manipulates and controls the lives of the hundreds of people who live in the community through gambling and other means. In order to get supplies of food and medicine, there is a team of people lead by Riley (Simon Baker). Armed with weapons and modified vehicles, they make night runs into surrounding communities, killing zombies by the dozen in the process.
But something is happening among the mindless undead. One zombie in particular shows signs of conscious thought. And after watching dozens of his brethren get gunned down, he decides to strike back. The zombie leads an army of the undead against Fiddler’s Green. Meanwhile, as Riley tries to quit and escape north to get away from the undead, his second in command, Cholo (John Leguizamo) — after being double crossed by Kaufman — steals a powerful armored vehicle, “Dead Reckoning”, and threatens to destroy Fiddler’s Green unless he gets $5 million.
The idea of zombies beginning to think was introduced in Day of the Dead, and that concept is brought to a natural evolution here. But that aside, I just respect Romero so much to sticking to the spirit of his original three films. The gore and effects are mostly old fashioned, not overly computerized or digitized. Are there any political messages or societal commentary to be found in Land of the Dead? I think you can find them, but it’s a zombie movie. I’m not sure it should really be taken that seriously.
But what really got me with this film was the Of Mice and Men-like relationship between Riley and his mentally challenged partner, Charlie (Robert Joy). The two worked well together, without one necessarily being better than the other. And with the added dynamic of Asia Argento’s Slack, it gets even better. The three fit together perfectly, highlighted by snappy dialogue and great moments, like when Slack and Charlie save each other from zombies.
Leguizamo is also excellent as the morally corrupt, Cholo. Although a bad guy, its hard not to like him.
The only “criticism” I had about the film was that it was a little too set up for a sequel. It felt like some things don’t get completely resolved, such as Slack’s back story. But this isn’t really a criticism of the film, exactly. My only concern at this point is that Land of the Dead will not do enough business at the box office to justify another sequel.
I’ll leave this review by saying that fans of the Dead series will not be disappointed. Land of the Dead is all that it needed to be and more so.
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