Land of the DeadEven zombies are marginalized these days. Land of the Dead is a zombie horror movie written and directed by the godfather of zombie horror movies, George A. Romero, and is a part of his "The Dead" series, starting with the classic Night of the Living Dead. As with his previous entries, Land of the Dead depicts grisly attacks on the living by flesh-craving undead, while simultaneously inserting social commentary into the subtext. In this film, an elitist haven for survivors--dubbed "Fiddler's Green"--becomes a tantalizing oasis from the zombie plague, perpetually out of reach for the unfortunate survivors who don't meet the admittance criteria of its overlord, Paul Kaufman (Dennis Hopper). But it isn't the living who ultimately rise up to overthrow these post-apocalyptic one-percenters...
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Almost forty years passed between Romero's first entry into this series and Land of the Dead, and since that time, zombie movies had spread from abject horror and into the realm of camp and black comedy. Land of the Dead similarly represents a transition for the series from pure horror and into a self-aware interpretation of the horror sub-genre, periodically bordering on self-parody. (Keep an eye open for cameos by Tom Savini as a machete-wielding zombie, and Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg--of Shaun of the Dead fame--as the "Photo Booth Zombies".) After a brief recap of the unexplained onset of a zombie apocalypse, the film shows the walking corpses going about a perverse imitation of everyday life--a young (yet decaying) couple walks hand in festering hand through the park while a rotting band plays on in a moldering gazebo; there's even a zombie playing a tuba. As Riley Denbo (Simon Baker)--a salvager for Fiddler's Green--observes, the dead appear to be going through the motions of their former lives before turning into shambling ghouls. This is most evident in a large gas station attendant--whose name badge identifies him as "Big Daddy" (Eugene Clark)--who continues to pump gas even though no customers come by anymore. Riley grows increasingly concerned at this behavior, since it suggests the potential for higher cognitive thought--presumed impossible for beings who seemingly suffered brain death already. And yet, one of the pervading tropes of zombie movies is that the brain must be destroyed to put a zombie down for good, intimating that even though the dead generally behave like mindless monsters, their brains somehow continue to function. Following this line of thinking, these zombies are relearning how to function in their new, carrion-ridden world; all that's changed is the makeup of the new food chain.
Riley and the other scavengers like him--including the ambitious Cholo (John Leguizamo)--raid the ruined suburbs of Pittsburgh for supplies, but end up forking over the good stuff to Kaufman and his army that run the city. This leaves those who don't make the "cut" to enter the glimmering tower in the city's former Golden Triangle out of luck, starving, and sick; they are distracted from their woes with games of vice developed by Kaufman to keep them complacent. In an increasingly violent world, one of these games involves pitting two zombies in a cage match, usually fighting over food. When the attractive (and capable) Slack (Asia Argento) is cast into the middle of this sadistic blood sport, Riley bails her out and earns himself a new ally in the process, despite his protestations that he is getting out of Pittsburgh for good. Cholo, on the other hand, has been taking increased risks--even at the expense of others--in the hopes of amassing a small fortune with which to buy his way into Fiddler's Green. Yet Kaufman has no intentions of allowing someone he considers unfit to enter his gated community; his dismissal--and attempt to murder him--sparks Cholo's ire, leading to him absconding with the city's most formidable line of defense against the zombies: an armored transport outfitted with missile launchers and machine guns called "Dead Reckoning". Cholo puts an ultimatum to Kaufman: give him five million dollars, or he'll open fire on Fiddler's Green. The corrupt Kaufman engineers it so that Riley is stuck in Pittsburgh, and then hires him to reclaim Dead Reckoning from his erstwhile comrade, one way or another. Along with his close pal and crackshot, Charlie (Robert Joy), Riley takes Slack and a few of Kaufman's elite soldiers on a mission to save an unfeeling community that probably deserves its reckoning more than Sodom or Gomorrah ever did.
Land of the Dead toys with the idea of making the zombies semi-sympathetic in contrast to the self-serving elitists that occupy the Green, including their loathsome leader and scion, Kaufman. The denizens of Fiddler's Green bask in luxury while the people who slave for their comforts live in squalor outside of the tower. The zombies occupy an equivalent position in this disparate class paradigm; they are treated as less than human and attacked without provocation by Kaufman's soldiers simply because of who they are. (Of course, this ignores the fact that they kill people and eat them, but it's an imperfect comparison.) The zombies "rise up" against their oppressors, arming themselves for a resistance befitting a Soviet propaganda film like Battleship Potemkin, with Big Daddy at the helm. Land of the Dead both embraces tropes of the genre, and then deliberately upends them. Consider when Big Daddy just so happens to grab a machine gun from one of his assailants and before long discovers how to fire the weapon at the people who pointed their guns at him. When he sees his fellow zombies being mistreated--hanged upside-down or slaughtered while distracted by fireworks--he howls with sorrow at his people's suffering. Big Daddy is often the first of his clan to discover what is needed to storm Fiddler's Green and realize their rotting revolution. (Zombies in Land of the Dead apparently had not attempted to cross bodies of water before, but Big Daddy is the first to leap into the river surrounding the Golden Triangle, and emerge from the waters on the opposite shore.) He shows his fellow zombies how to wield weapons, giving them a literal edge when they finally bust down the doors of the unprepared yuppie community. Big Daddy's evident capacity for complex thought (for a zombie, anyway) is so intriguing to Riley that even when the zombie lord is within Dead Reckoning's sights, Riley (curiously) holds his fire, claiming that Big Daddy and his followers are just "looking for somewhere to go". Such a conclusion is a far cry from prior perceptions of zombies as not only mindless killing machines and cannibals, but also as creatures wholly incapable of complex thought. Land of the Dead offers a radical reinterpretation of the "plague" of zombies overrunning our cities and suburbs, standing as a metaphor for how people are apt to judge a different group or people based on a narrow or biased perspective. (They still eat people, though.)
Recommended for: Fans of a zombie horror movie that blends grisly blood spray with overt social commentary, walking the line of genuine zombie horror and satire. I remember seeing Land of the Dead in the theaters, and how my mom made a zombie cake for my brother and I, complete with sickly gray frosting for the lifeless flesh, plenty of red food coloring, and a big knife sticking out.
Riley and the other scavengers like him--including the ambitious Cholo (John Leguizamo)--raid the ruined suburbs of Pittsburgh for supplies, but end up forking over the good stuff to Kaufman and his army that run the city. This leaves those who don't make the "cut" to enter the glimmering tower in the city's former Golden Triangle out of luck, starving, and sick; they are distracted from their woes with games of vice developed by Kaufman to keep them complacent. In an increasingly violent world, one of these games involves pitting two zombies in a cage match, usually fighting over food. When the attractive (and capable) Slack (Asia Argento) is cast into the middle of this sadistic blood sport, Riley bails her out and earns himself a new ally in the process, despite his protestations that he is getting out of Pittsburgh for good. Cholo, on the other hand, has been taking increased risks--even at the expense of others--in the hopes of amassing a small fortune with which to buy his way into Fiddler's Green. Yet Kaufman has no intentions of allowing someone he considers unfit to enter his gated community; his dismissal--and attempt to murder him--sparks Cholo's ire, leading to him absconding with the city's most formidable line of defense against the zombies: an armored transport outfitted with missile launchers and machine guns called "Dead Reckoning". Cholo puts an ultimatum to Kaufman: give him five million dollars, or he'll open fire on Fiddler's Green. The corrupt Kaufman engineers it so that Riley is stuck in Pittsburgh, and then hires him to reclaim Dead Reckoning from his erstwhile comrade, one way or another. Along with his close pal and crackshot, Charlie (Robert Joy), Riley takes Slack and a few of Kaufman's elite soldiers on a mission to save an unfeeling community that probably deserves its reckoning more than Sodom or Gomorrah ever did.
Land of the Dead toys with the idea of making the zombies semi-sympathetic in contrast to the self-serving elitists that occupy the Green, including their loathsome leader and scion, Kaufman. The denizens of Fiddler's Green bask in luxury while the people who slave for their comforts live in squalor outside of the tower. The zombies occupy an equivalent position in this disparate class paradigm; they are treated as less than human and attacked without provocation by Kaufman's soldiers simply because of who they are. (Of course, this ignores the fact that they kill people and eat them, but it's an imperfect comparison.) The zombies "rise up" against their oppressors, arming themselves for a resistance befitting a Soviet propaganda film like Battleship Potemkin, with Big Daddy at the helm. Land of the Dead both embraces tropes of the genre, and then deliberately upends them. Consider when Big Daddy just so happens to grab a machine gun from one of his assailants and before long discovers how to fire the weapon at the people who pointed their guns at him. When he sees his fellow zombies being mistreated--hanged upside-down or slaughtered while distracted by fireworks--he howls with sorrow at his people's suffering. Big Daddy is often the first of his clan to discover what is needed to storm Fiddler's Green and realize their rotting revolution. (Zombies in Land of the Dead apparently had not attempted to cross bodies of water before, but Big Daddy is the first to leap into the river surrounding the Golden Triangle, and emerge from the waters on the opposite shore.) He shows his fellow zombies how to wield weapons, giving them a literal edge when they finally bust down the doors of the unprepared yuppie community. Big Daddy's evident capacity for complex thought (for a zombie, anyway) is so intriguing to Riley that even when the zombie lord is within Dead Reckoning's sights, Riley (curiously) holds his fire, claiming that Big Daddy and his followers are just "looking for somewhere to go". Such a conclusion is a far cry from prior perceptions of zombies as not only mindless killing machines and cannibals, but also as creatures wholly incapable of complex thought. Land of the Dead offers a radical reinterpretation of the "plague" of zombies overrunning our cities and suburbs, standing as a metaphor for how people are apt to judge a different group or people based on a narrow or biased perspective. (They still eat people, though.)
Recommended for: Fans of a zombie horror movie that blends grisly blood spray with overt social commentary, walking the line of genuine zombie horror and satire. I remember seeing Land of the Dead in the theaters, and how my mom made a zombie cake for my brother and I, complete with sickly gray frosting for the lifeless flesh, plenty of red food coloring, and a big knife sticking out.