I have always heard that Land of the Dead was the weakest of the George Romero zombie movies. It’s true that it’s not as much of a game changer as Night of the Living Dead or Dawn of the Dead. Land hit theaters smack dab in the middle of the mid-2000’s zombie revival. Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake had hit the year before and transformed the genre into a fast-paced action movie. Shaun of the Dead had also done a more modern spin on satire aspect by addressing the ineffectiveness or pampered man children. In comparison Land of the Dead seems like a clunky throwback to an obsolete era, one where the social commentary was even more on the nose than ever.
But is that such a bad thing? The basic concept — that zombies represent society’s underclass — is a decent take that is more relevant today than it was in 2005. Romero pulls a neat trick here that I don’t think anyone else has attempted: this time, we see a zombie invasion from a zombie’s point of view. The human come down to their neighborhood and loot their stores. Then they have to deal with these humans shooting them through the head, which is particularly unsporting because they have very poor reflexes. All they ever want to do is shamble around in peace; we’re told they barely even bother the humans in the walled-off city anymore. On the flip side, humans are cruel monsters, using their zombie brethren as props for a photo shoot or forcing them to fight in cage matches. So what do these zombies do when the humans have pushed them too far? Eugene Clark becomes a sort of zombie Che Guevara, leading our zombie horde across obstacles to finally bring the fight to the humans.
Even the humans, though, are faced with social inequities. Dennis Hopper is holed up in the high luxury Fiddler’s Green, his condo safe and aloft from the struggles beneath. John Leguizamo aspires to live the same lifestyle, but the game has been set up to always keep him down. Simon Baker and Asia Argento, meanwhile, have a heart to help their fellow human beings but are handcuffed from accomplishing anything because of the corruption from on high. Like Dawn of the Dead, the problem isn’t the zombies. It’s other people.
So when the zombies get to chomping down on the humans, it’s almost with a sense of glee. Romero seems to want you to root for them to die. One particularly foolish skateboarder enters a zombie infested area while wearing his headphones, a signal to the audience that he’s too stupid to live. After being spooked by the first zombie, he rolls backwards on his skateboard until he is chomped on by … a zombie clown.
Yes, there is a zombie clown. There’s also a zombie bride. A zombie butcher. A zombie gas attendant. They’re brimming with personality, even though all they do is moan and shamble. You can sense their delight when they learn how to fire guns or walk under water. Sure, they like eating human flesh, but that’s out of their control. Generally the seem like responsible zombie civilians. Midway through the movie, one of the characters declines to be mercy killed because he wants to see how the other half lives. After all, it doesn’t look so bad.
If I may offer a criticism, though, the human stories are a little inessential. Dennis Hopper only gets a few scenes, and in those he’s a one-dimensional villainous CEO type. From the moment he’s on screen you’re just counting the seconds until he orders the death of underling who has out-lasted his usefulness. (You do not have to wait long.) It occurs to me that The Maze Runner movies built a very similar scenario, but there you have a sense of why the villains do what they do and you can see yourself sympathizing with them. (The Death Cure and Land of the Dead are so similar — tall central tower villain base, human underclass, armored vehicle that threatens to ruin everything, zombies that are never called that by name —- that I’m almost certain that Land of the Dead is one of Wes Ball’s favorite movies.) The irony is that WICKD is a better developed villain than one in a Romero movie.
Rating: 4/5 stars.