20 years after Day of the Dead, Land of the Dead is released. It's George A. Romero's latest (and maybe final) film in the series of the Dead. You know the premise: The dead come back to life and take over the world.
Land of the Dead takes place three years after this holocaust began and now the dead rule a silent planet. But there are still pockets of human civilization, and one of these places is "Fiddler's Green". A walled in part of a city, protected from the undead on the outside.
Riley Denbo works for Fiddler's Green and provides it with food, water and essential supplies by raiding nearby rural areas. But his second-in-command, Cholo, is little more than a gung-ho cowboy with a taste for life, money and action. When Cholo gets a young cadet killed due to his own greed, the two of them start bickering. But no matter, Riley has decided that enough is enough. He's had it with the corrupt politics of Fiddler's Green and the idiots who live in it and has decided to leave town.
But when Cholo goes renegade, and threathens the security of the city, Riley has no choice but to go after him and stop him. Meanwhile, of course, the zombies lurk in the background with no intention of making this an easy fight.
This film has a plot that differs from most zombie flicks. Indeed, most of these films take place during the outbreak of a zombie plague, and not years after it. That's maybe where Romero's films are unique. In the end, it's a fresh spin on the zombie saga with lots of character development, flesh, blood but maybe just a bit to few zombies...
The zombies in the film serve their function. They exist, and they are the reason the humans are forced to live in their sheltered conditions. But other than that, the zombies feel somewhat absent. Sure, there's a sideplot concerning some of the zombies making their way towards Fiddler's Green to end these humans once and for all but really, the film needed to be a bit longer and focus on more zombie related situations here and there. As it is, it feels as if the zombies are pushed aside to show off some of the Hollywood actors Romero managed to get cast.
But still, zombies are quite abundant and they do get their fair share of human flesh (actually, out of Romero's films, this is probably the one with the most zombie munching). And the plot does it's work well. To bad the film is so short, I would have loved an additional ten or twenty minutes to dwelve deeper into the film, or add more zombie scenes that don't necessarily include munching. One of my favorite scenes in the film deals with a loose zombie in an apartment in Fiddler's Green. That's what I'd liked to have seen more of! Good film, nice plot, nice effects (but to much CG headshots) and nice zombies. But it's not flawless.
8 / 10
Land of the Dead takes place three years after this holocaust began and now the dead rule a silent planet. But there are still pockets of human civilization, and one of these places is "Fiddler's Green". A walled in part of a city, protected from the undead on the outside.
Riley Denbo works for Fiddler's Green and provides it with food, water and essential supplies by raiding nearby rural areas. But his second-in-command, Cholo, is little more than a gung-ho cowboy with a taste for life, money and action. When Cholo gets a young cadet killed due to his own greed, the two of them start bickering. But no matter, Riley has decided that enough is enough. He's had it with the corrupt politics of Fiddler's Green and the idiots who live in it and has decided to leave town.
But when Cholo goes renegade, and threathens the security of the city, Riley has no choice but to go after him and stop him. Meanwhile, of course, the zombies lurk in the background with no intention of making this an easy fight.
This film has a plot that differs from most zombie flicks. Indeed, most of these films take place during the outbreak of a zombie plague, and not years after it. That's maybe where Romero's films are unique. In the end, it's a fresh spin on the zombie saga with lots of character development, flesh, blood but maybe just a bit to few zombies...
The zombies in the film serve their function. They exist, and they are the reason the humans are forced to live in their sheltered conditions. But other than that, the zombies feel somewhat absent. Sure, there's a sideplot concerning some of the zombies making their way towards Fiddler's Green to end these humans once and for all but really, the film needed to be a bit longer and focus on more zombie related situations here and there. As it is, it feels as if the zombies are pushed aside to show off some of the Hollywood actors Romero managed to get cast.
But still, zombies are quite abundant and they do get their fair share of human flesh (actually, out of Romero's films, this is probably the one with the most zombie munching). And the plot does it's work well. To bad the film is so short, I would have loved an additional ten or twenty minutes to dwelve deeper into the film, or add more zombie scenes that don't necessarily include munching. One of my favorite scenes in the film deals with a loose zombie in an apartment in Fiddler's Green. That's what I'd liked to have seen more of! Good film, nice plot, nice effects (but to much CG headshots) and nice zombies. But it's not flawless.
8 / 10