Scary Movies: Land of the Dead

After a more than twenty-year hiatus, George Romero returned to his zombie movie roots with Land of the Dead in 2005, the fourth movie in his Living Dead series and the follow-up to 1983’s Day of the Dead. I’ve been wanting to watch this movie for a long time, as the second movie in the series, Dawn of the Dead, is one of the highest-rated movies on my site and a personal favorite. Besides that, this one had a bigger budget than the earlier movies and real stars in John Leguizamo and Dennis Hopper. Despite all that, I’m afraid I didn’t find this one to be as good as the first three. But let’s review it and run it through our rubric to get our official rating.

Riley is a leader in the paramilitary that guards downtown Pittsburgh, which because of the two rivers surrounding it allow it to survive as one of only a few holdouts of humans against the zombie hordes that have taken over most of the Earth. On missions, he commands his troops from a military-style armored personnel carrier called the Dead Reckoning while the soldiers ride motorcycles. After one final salvage mission outside the city for supplies, Riley plans to retire from his dangerous job and move to another human enclave he knows of in Canada. Just in time, too, because the zombies in this area are increasingly showing signs of intelligence–observing Riley and his troops before acting, rather than just approaching them mindlessly in search of delicious human food. They are led by their zombie leader, who wears a gas station attendant uniform and that the soldiers call Big Daddy.

Cholo, one of Riley’s lieutenants (played by John Leguizamo), also has plans. He’s been saving his money to buy an apartment in Fiddler’s Green, the apartment building for the rich in the Pittsburgh enclave that has luxury shopping and even 24-hour electricity. He’s earned this money by carrying out special missions on the side for Paul Kaufman (played by Dennis Hopper), the despotic, unelected mayor of Pittsburgh who has lots of enemies for Cholo to dispose of discreetly. When Cholo mentions to Kaufman that he has enough money saved up to buy a place in the same building as him, Kaufman reacts with disgust, saying somebody like him doesn’t belong in Fiddler’s Green and he’ll never let it happen.

Meanwhile, Riley goes to retrieve his car after the end of the mission, only to find it’s missing. He pays a visit to a night club owned by Chihuahua, the man whose garage was supposed to be fixing his car. The night club features lots of nude dancing girls and a chain-link cage for unlucky prisoners to fight zombies for the patrons’ entertainment. Tonight, the prisoner is a prostitute who’s somehow gotten on Chihuahua’s bad side. When Chihuahua won’t give Riley’s car back, Riley and his friend Charlie rescue the prostitute, whose name is Slack, shooting up the joint and killing Chihuahua to make their escape.

Cholo, angered by Kaufman’s rejection, gets some other disgruntled soldiers and hijacks the Dead Reckoning. He drives it over the bridge to the other side of the river, aiming its missiles at Fiddler’s Green and threatening to destroy the building unless Kaufman pays him $5,000. He has until midnight to deliver the money.

Kaufman gives Riley the job of retrieving the stolen vehicle. Riley promises himself this is really, truly his last mission and when the night’s through he’ll retire for real. He hand selects a team for the job, including Charlie and Slack. Without the Dead Reckoning’s firepower, going out on motorcycles would be too dangerous, so the team has to sneak around on foot, keeping things quiet both to avoid attracting zombies and to keep from alerting Cholo’s men to their presence.

Coincidentally, Big Daddy, the zombie leader, has had an epiphany this very evening. Every night he views the glittering lights of Fiddler’s Green from across the river, knowing it’s full of delicious humans but with no way to get there. Only–what if he simply walked into the water and came up on the other side? When Riley’s team attacks Cholo and a firefight breaks out, the commotion conveniently attracts a horde of thousands of zombies from around the area. Now all Big Daddy has to do is demonstrate that they can survive in the water. He wades in and the other zombies follow.

The zombie horde is on the move, with the innocent inhabitants of Pittsburgh on the other side completely unaware of the imminent invasion. But most of their best defenders are across the river, fighting among themselves, rather than guarding the city at the time it needs it most. Will Riley and Cholo notice the city is being invaded before it’s too late and zombies start rampaging through the streets? Will the citizens of Pittsburgh survive the evening without getting chomped? Will Kaufman make an escape through a secret tunnel and get away with his snobbish, autocratic rule? Will Riley make it to morning and achieve his long dreamed of retirement? If you’ve seen a George Romero zombie movie before, you probably suspect the answers already. But I leave it up to you to watch the movie and find out for sure.

Land of the Dead (2005)
Story/Plot/Characters— Dialogue and acting are better than average for a horror movie, but the plot here feels recycled from a 1980s action movie. Not that there’s a lot of character development in any Romero movie, but there’s just nobody we can really sympathize with here the way we can with Fran, Stephen, Roger, and Peter in Dawn of the Dead. I think Riley, his stuttering friend Charlie, and the rescued prostitute Slack are meant to be those characters, but we don’t know enough about their backgrounds and they’re always too busy on military missions for us to get to know them and care what happens to them. The themes of wealth inequality, contrasting the wealthy few in Fiddler’s Green and the many poor in the rest of Pittsburgh, are really heavy-handed. (2 points)
Special Effects— Of course the zombie make-up is excellent and there’s a fair amount of really well-done gore, but somehow the bigger budget just makes all the sets feel like a TV movie. The military hardware and vehicle would be fine in an action movie, but aren’t impressive here. I think the low budgets actually worked in the earlier movies’ favor, giving them a cinema verite kind of feel. It’s like George Romero had enough money to try something more ambitious, but not enough to actually achieve it. (1 point)
Scariness— A few frights but too much emphasis on gunfights and missiles to be scary or inspire a feeling of dread. We need to have unarmed people trying to figure out how to survive in an abandoned farmhouse or in a suburban mall overrun by zombies, not armed soldiers wondering if they’ll run out of ammo. Even the “zombie feast” scene that Romero always puts in his films wasn’t that impressive here. (1 point)
Atmosphere/Freakiness— The industrial-vibe nightclub with zombie-human cage matches is awesomely freaky, but otherwise there’s not much here. We alternate between the luxurious spaces of Fiddler’s Green, the militarized locations of the city guard, and the rundown areas where the common people live, but none of them provides the eerie atmosphere of a really great horror movie. (.5 points)
Total=4.5 points (Okay)

A mildly entertaining horror movie that’s not actually bad, but nothing about it really stands out either, and it’s really disappointing compared to the earlier masterpieces in the Living Dead franchise. Recommended only for die-hard fans of the series.