DVD | Land Of The Dead

Rating: R16 - Contains Horror Scenes & Violence.
Duration: 93 mins.
Genre : Zombie.
Actors: Robert Joy, Dennis Hopper, John Leguizamo, Simon Baker, Asia Argento.
Release Date: Available now.

Land of the Dead is cult director George A. Romero’s 4th Zombie movie. Having made a name for himself in 1968 with the most celebrated of zombie movies; Night of The Living Dead, Romero’s name became synonymous with anything zombie.

It’s been 20 years since his third outing, Day of the Dead in 1985, but the recent spate of zombie movies, including the remake of Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, enticed him to continue his Dead Series.

In Land of the Dead we find that the balance of power has been shifted, with zombies controlling the vast stretches of America (because, America is the entire world after all) and the living are forced to live in a walled city, run by corruption and greed.

Things, however, are about to get interesting, as the living dead are showing signs of intelligence, and their eyes are focused on the last remaining outpost of humanity.

Having not seen any of Romero’s previous masterpieces, I can’t comment on his previous works. I have however seen a number of the recent zombie movies, and in my opinion Romero isn’t king anymore.

Whilst Land of the Dead does have its freak me out moments and some tense situations, as a whole it’s a pretty ho-hum affair. The zombies aren’t very scary at all, and to some degree are far too over the top to be believable (disclaimer; I do know that zombies aren’t real, but some movies make them more believable than others!). They seem to have superhuman strength with little effort, being able to dismember the living with ease.

The blood is bright red and plentiful, making it look like Romero’s believes that we will all be filled with fear just because of some liberally used red food colouring.

What Romero was apparently good at, was weaving social commentary in his movies, and this is something he’s still good at.

Land of the Dead passes judgement on our corrupt, money loving western society, where the almighty dollar is the most important thing, and people are nothing but a commodity to be used, traded and abused.

There are three groups of people in Land of the Dead. The rich and powerful live in the intercity, in a controlled community. The rest of the living, circle the inner city in what is essentially a slum. And then there are the living dead. They roam the rest of the country, looking for food.

The slum dwellers are sent out in teams to the zombie controlled wastelands to raid supermarkets and chemists for supplies, along the way dispatching of as many zombies as they can – kind of like what big corporations do in the developing world.

When they get back to the walled city, the supplies are distributed to the living, but the cream of the crop go to those in the controlled community – money and power still buy you the best in life, with little in the way of hard work.

If anyone steps out of line, they’re likely to find themselves as zombie fodder, as he that controls the money, also controls the military.

As a zombie movie, there’s plenty of more entertaining movies to choose from, my favourite being 28 Days Later. As an interesting social commentary, Land of the Dead rules supreme.

Food for thought:
Money isn’t evil, it’s your attitude towards money that decides how it affects you.

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