Land of the Dead (2005)

Matt says…

With expectations almost unreasonably high for George Romero’s return to the genre he helped forge, it was perhaps inevitable that Land of the Dead would divide opinion. But although the film doesn’t really look or feel much like the previous installments of the Dead saga, it’s largely an elegant and worthwhile return to the director’s trademark themes, advancing the ongoing story in a consistent yet intriguing way.

The most obvious different between Land and the holy trinity of Night / Dawn / Day is the scale of the story and the impact it has on Romero’s direction. The tense claustrophia and small casts that define his previous films are gone, replaced with a much more expansive vision that takes in entire cities and cultures. In its ‘hugeness’, it’s probably the closest thing (visually) that Romero has made to a traditional blockbuster, but rather than sell out, he’s upscaled his story to make use of the far greater resources that he now has at his disposal. The characters in Night of Living Dead are a microcosm of a society in conflict that is doomed by its inability to settle differences in the face of a wider threat. In Land, we see that society for real, the divisions made plain by the plush comfort enjoyed by the rich and the grinding poverty suffered by the poor. Having tackled personal ideology, commercial culture and militarism in his previous films, looking at the class divide is a logical next step; Romero probably didn’t anticipate that his bleak outlook would look so apt in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. As with the previous two films, however, the allegory is painted in very broad, impressionistic strokes, to the extent that attempts to insert specific topical references to terrorism and jihad feel a little forced and out of place. Land follows its predecessors by offering very few hard and fast opinions about the state of the world and how it needs to be changed; again, it’s more of a ‘state of the nation’ piece, throwing up problems but leaving us to debate the solutions. It’s not a political film, but it’s pertinent.

One aspect of the story that’s received much criticism is the characters’ obsession with money, with the consensus seemingly being that in a crisis such as, say, the dead returning to life and attacking the living, money would cease to have any value. I actually felt it was quite effective; I like the notion that in the years (?) since the events of Day of the Dead, what remains of human society has managed to rebuild itself into some semblance of what it used to be, at least for the rich. One look at the inside of Fidders Green (all blandly corporate architecture filled with suits and briefcases) and it’s clear that money – and the power and social standing that accompany it – is still important; this walled enclave was built by the rich so that they could forget about the problems of the wider world. Cholo wants to get into Fiddlers Green, but he can’t because he doesn’t have the cash; to him, money represents the difference between sleeping in comfort and surviving out their with the zombies, and thus his attempt to extort five million dollars from Kaufmann doesn’t seem so far-fetched.

The film’s other contentious aspect is the gradual evolution of the zombies into more capable beings. As Carl points out below, this is hardly new in a Romero film, but it’s an effective enough ‘crisis’ to destabilise mankind’s rather makeshift society. Far more interesting is Romero’s slightly comical but also rather touching humanisation of the zombies; rather than being the generic rotting corpses of lesser zombie movies, Romero’s zombies have always had enough about them (mainly through clothes) to hint at a rather tragic backstory of who these people were in life. Everyone remembers the nurse and footballer zombies from Dawn, as well as the less celebrated but perhaps even more notable zombie in Day wearing an apron and rubber gloves. Land takes this even further; as well as the brass band in the film’s opening sequence, the zombie uprising is triggered by “Big Daddy’s” vague memory of being a garage attendant. Whilst seeing zombies firing guns is perhaps less impressive than seeing them bite people open (don’t worry, there’s plenty of that on display), Land does far more than any other zombie movie I’ve seen to characterise them as former humans rather than simply ravenous monsters.

Land of the Dead is inevitably not as good as Night or Dawn, but for my money it’s on a par with Day. It’s probably not the movie anyone expected Romero to make for his ‘homecoming’, but it’s still a thoughtful and thoroughly effective piece of work, even if it lacks the rivetting character interaction of the previous movies. Sadly, Land didn’t really do very impressive business at the US box office; nevertheless, on this form I look forward to more work from Romero, and hopefully sooner rather than later.

Carl says…

After the high expectations surrounding the news the George Romero was updating his Dead series the first question must naturally be, ‘is it any good?’ The short answer is yes, it’s very good. Unlike George Lucas on his return to the series that established him, it’s clear from the first few minutes of Land of the Dead that Romero has actually put a lot of thought into the next stage of his saga rather than just fleshing out the hangovers or answering the questions that arose in the original.

I say this is obvious because of all of the movies that followed Night of the Living Dead this one feels closest to the original. In spite of the obvious budget differences between Land and its predecessors Romero has not lost his ability to give his movies a very distinctive feel, and of the series Day of the Dead jars a lot more than this. Indeed, though the perspective has now ostensibly focused on an entire city it is undoubtedly superficial, with the siege mentality in Land just as disturbing and soul-destroying as that in Night. Land of the Dead sees Romero’s scenario come full circle, with humanity now forced to huddle for shelter in a city-cum-fortress dominated by the rich-only paradise of Fiddler’s Green rather than an isolated farm house. The dynamics are all familiar though, with human nature itself set up as the truly corrosive force and not the legions of zombies (‘stenches’ struck me as a very apt title for some reason, I can’t think why Romero didn’t use it sooner) hammering at the gates. Though we’re never given a time scale by Romero as to when ‘everything changed’ it is clear from his message that humanity will never be secure in the new world order because of its inherent flaws.

The class/race/creed divide is a smokescreen for this, with heavy-handed lines like ‘I’m gonna Jihad his ass’ and the ‘we don’t negotiate with terrorists’ intentionally diverting in their heavy-handedness from the central theme. The excellent performances from the lead actors assist in this, with Dennis Hopper especially brilliant as Mr. Kauffman. Though the role is something of a pantomime villain one the dialogue – combined with Hopper’s criminally underused talents – are enough to show us that nothing is simple here. Though he’s obviously exploiting the situation there is also a clearly discernable sense that he does have some regard for the people he’s helping to protect, even if this translates into giving them enough vice to alleviate their woes.

Likewise, the widely trailed notion that this would be the one where Romero’s zombies learn how to think is also something of a mirage. I don’t think he ever suggested that the creatures were brainless automatons (think of Fly-boy leading the zombies to the safe-house shortly after he becomes one, or of Bub); rather, the threat that they posed would always be manageable so long as people pulled together and recognised the dire plight that the common good was facing. When we ignore this advice and return to our flawed ways the logical conclusion of Romero’s premise is that we’d be overwhelmed, and this happens in fine style here.

I could rant about Land of the Dead for much longer, but it’s enough for me to say Romero has succeeded in bringing everything that distinguishes the Dead series from other zombie movies to the latest instalment. Everything about this film feels right, from the finely balanced action and gore scenes through to the problematic ending. That it feels as though he has avoided answering the questions he posited earlier is precisely the point, for as we’re told in the opening scenes, ‘they won’t stop until there’s nothing else to eat. When that happens we’ll all be dead’.