Post by remaxwell on Jul 18, 2008 2:26:11 GMT -5
Spoilers in the review. Watch out, kids! Also, this is a far longer and more specific (read: nitpicky) review than Blinkfan's, and exists mostly to vent my anger at this movie onto the unsuspecting public. Enjoy, guinea pigs!
(Seeing how long it is, I'm going to make a summary at the bottom for quick reading. Press ctrl+f and type in ===, it'll bring you down to the beginning of the points.)
Basic verdict: This movie is the banjo-playing inbred cousin of the Romero movies, mixed with pseudo-philosophy and obnoxious social commentary. If the world knew justice, those that made it and nursed it would be turned into the ravenous zombie horde this movie portrays so poorly.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have a love for the Zombie genre that has been outlawed in mainstream Christianity since they put that zombie pope on trial that one time. My illicit love has placed a wedge between myself and religion, but I look back upon the rotting corpse of my choice, and am happy. My SO, however, has long been worried about my off-hand rejection of certain kinds of housing as being impractical to defend in the (inevitable) zombie holocaust. But, truly, that's love, and it would be criminal to let my experience fighting the undead go to waste.
So, when Romero decided to remake Dawn of the Dead, me and people like me were conflicted. On one hand, some might suggest, it missed the tongue-and-cheek style of earlier Romero movies, (I have a particularly fond memory of the Hari Krishna zombie in the original, myself,) and perhaps, they might argue, played itself down to a newer audience more familiar with 28 Days Later than Night of the Living Dead, turning the zombies into frothing marathon runners.
On the other hand, (at least I) enjoyed the opening scenes of utter chaos when the undead plague finally erupted, as well as certain other scenes which, at least to me, intermingled levity and suspense quite well.
Then came Land of the Dead, which, in disgust, personally evoked in me a desire to turn away from the pro-zombie stance of my longstanding heresy. The cherry topping was, of course, the ending, which I'm going to cloak in the dark, black night (which this movie deserves, incidentally, to likewise be hidden away in) so I'm not torn to pieces by angry viewers:
After the utter collapse of Fiddler's Green and the ineffectual response of the "military," the zombies now wandering through the refuge are allowed to just go away since, according to the main character, they're: "just looking for a place to go." After tearing people to pieces and feasting on their flesh and being coated in their blood, they're just looking for some place to go.
But this isn't about Dawn of the Dead or Land of the Dead; these are a sort of demented prologue to the comedic tragedy that is Diary of the Dead.
Now, by my reckoning, Diary of the Dead has a sort of complex family tree. Judging by the outcome of Diary of the Dead, I have to assert that, within that family tree, there was a great deal of inbreeding.
On one hand, the daddy of it all, the general idea of the zombie outbreak, with grand-pappies, uncles and galore in all of the "...Of the Dead" movies. If you want to, you can include the ones by John Russo and Fulci, too.
On the other hand, we have the mommy, which I personally am going to suggest is Cloverfield, which gives us the entire idea of using a personal video camera of some sort to record a horrible, terrible disaster for some reason or another. But while Cloverfield had a bit of sense to it (Hudd seemed to be just going along with the entire thing on his gut feeling and adrenaline, riding the tide as it were,) Diary of the Dead becomes incredibly nonsensical and ineffective in using this medium. For instance, the main character - no matter how horrible the situation may be - never lowers the camera from his eye unless he's at gunpoint. The camera itself is crystal clear, and yet jumps in and out of blank-screen and white noise at the appropriate times ("suspenseful" times) at the slightest nudge, and yet manages to have enough film and power for something like two or three days worth of straight shooting. Also used is one of the character's camera phones, which can shoot video that is also amazingly clear and high-resolution, despite looking a few years old.
They generally switch over to this camera for the single reason of showing a zombie crawling up on a lone member of the group, and of course, the camera phone is placed strategically perfect to show just enough of everything. The only difference between the regular camera and the phone, by the way, is that the phone's picture takes up about half the space and has a slight rose-tint to the lens.
In general, the camera work is cornball and suggests to me someone that really liked a technique he saw somewhere, but didn't actually understand what the major point was. In a shorter version: cheap knockoff.
The plot, meanwhile, involves a bunch of film students filming the standard film-school-budget mummy movie (in the woods?) when they hear various reports of the standard "confused news broadcasts about zombies," accidents in X county, gruesome murder in city Y, etc. Not so bad in and of itself, really. You have the standard looks of unbelief and the person scoffing that it's a joke - and I can't say I blame them, not sure how I would've taken the fact broadcast over the radio that the dead were walking.
So, the students return the dorms in order to find one of the girlfriend of one of the characters. Now, I have to swear that there's some sort of Post-Chaotic Abandoned Scene kit that certain directors get, because the dormitories (which are now long abandoned, oddly enough, given how long ago the news was first announced) have this pre-fab non-specific horror movie feel about them.
I want to stop here, because this is the first thing that gave me an eerie chill as to the fate of this movie. So, the news is announced probably an hour or so ago, perhaps even two or three hours, that there were a few scattered, strange incidents around the country, and in that time the panic has apparently grown to the proportions that the dorms had to be evacuated in the most haphazard and chaotic way possible. Items strewn on the ground, an American flag half-hanging above a sofa, doors thrown wide open, the whole shebang. Seems likely to me!
The character in question, Jason, is in the women's dorm to try and look for his girlfriend, Debra. He finds her, she can't get in touch with her family, the obvious answer to this is, of course, to get into their Winnebago and drive to the house and see if everything's well.
This is also where we're introduced to the other characters by the camera-toting Jason (who's lowered his camera from his eye only once, when in Debra's room - even when confronted by a looting, leather clad biker screaming at him in the dorm commons). Now, this struck me as a desperate movie - Jason goes around to everyone else, without an emote in his voice, and asks for their names, where they live, etc., saying that everything must be recorded. We have (and I'm taking this off of IMDb -) Mary Dexter, archetype religious freak, Debra, who acts on and off as the narrator of this story after it's posted online (the actual title of the movie is "The Death of Death," which is a title that just made me crumble with corniness.)
We also have Tony, archetype silent character and honorable strongman, Elliot, the Atari shirt-wearing geek whom you know is not going to survive the movie, and Gordo, the pretty boy (I guess attempted irony?), who is also the boyfriend of southern belle, Tracy, and finally someone whom I'm shocked Romero didn't equip with a chainsaw from the outset of the movie, their film professor, Andrew Maxwell.
A desperate move to build some sort of characterization into characters that would have very little personality by end of the movie anyway, although Maxwell makes some strides. (Favoritism? Go to hell!)
They jump from scene to scene; first, after barrelling through a barricade of about three zombies, Jesus-freak Mary becomes suicidally racked with guilt despite the fact that the two or three zombies she just ran over were clawing through the windshield, almost, to get to her and her tasty brains. One bullet from a hidden .45 pistol later (why the hell would she have a gun like that?) and they're on their way to the hospital. I'd also like to note how understated the suicide was: the gun goes off, slightly off-center to the screen, and Mary slumps forward - this is, by the way, a shot to the head.
They go to the hospital, ambushed by zombie nurse, zombie doctor, etc. What I assume to be an attempt at humor plays when a zombie clown comes to a kid's birthday party and the father tries to honk the clown's nose, only to have it come off and have the clown tear out his throat. I say attempted humor because the acting here is so ill-conceived and carried out that I honestly can't imagine it to be anything but.
Then, they're taken hostage by this Black-Pantherish group of militiamen, where they suggest that they [blacks] are now in charge. They're given fuel, but have to search around this warehouse after a member of the militia dies of a heart attack, and they don't know where he is. Which begs the question: how did you know he died? Searching, searching, he's found running after one, right near the barrels of gasoline, so they can't shoot. One of the characters grabs a bottle of acid and smashes it over the head of a zombie. Evidently, the character himself is invulnerable to acid, as the acid that splashes on him doesn't hurt him. The zombie must also have acid-proof clothing, since the acid does nothing to his shirt - it just MELTS HIS HEAD OFF. I'm not sure I remember HCl being that strong?
So, afterwards, the group is getting ready to leave, and they ask the militia leader for some food and supplies. The leader denies it, but gives them extra gasoline. Debra actually begins to stare down this man armed in military hardware and his likewise armed cohort, and begins to DEMAND that he give them over food and supplies, "Because if you don't, we're not going to leave." In a spectacular flourish of poor scripting and judgment, the militia leader agrees to this and furnishes them fully, which is just later on taken by roving bands of national guardsmen. Good on ya, I say to the Guardsmen. They didn't deserve it anyway.
I forgot to mention something. Remember the film professor? The Black Panther militiamen decided to allow the group access to all of their armory. Others picked out rifles and shotguns. The professor picked a bow and arrow.
Make of this what you will.
They travel more, get to the house, Debra is attacked by a zombie that's managed to climb onto her back as she flails around (yet never gets bit or scratched), is shrieking horribly - and, of course, the professor gets a HEADSHOT on the zombie and PINS IT TO THE WALL WITH THE ARROW.
Hmm.
Travel some more, and they come to the mansion of a classmate, which serves to beat us to death with the whole "class struggle" theme which is common in zombie films, but decent directors (of which Romero was once a part) have found possible to keep to a bit of subtlety. The classmate has been living on champagne and steak, so on, so forth.
Intersperse this with continuous commentary from Debra asking if mankind really is worth saving, talking about how human kind has always fought itself, so on, so forth, the same sort of tripe you'd generally get in overly philosophical art-house movies, and you have the final nail in the coffin that will hopefully inter this latest zombie-installment of a series into the ground, before anything worse crawls up.
==================Summary======================
1. The hand-held camera is always shockingly clear, and yet at select times the tiniest shove can leave the picture reeling in and out of white-noise and BSOD for about half a minute for no logical reason. Also, at appropriate times the cameras also change (one of the characters has a cell-camera, which is inexplicably always on). The most horrible use for this is when the character in question is fixing the group's Winnebago and a zombie is sneaking up on her. Despite having not been in any of the previous scenes, the movie jumps over to her strategically positioned cell phone camera (clear as crystal, with only the fact that the picture is smaller and has a slight red-tint to it) to show the zombie sneaking up, grabbing her, etc..
2. Nonsensically fast spread of the virus and destruction of society. The group hears about isolated outbreaks of accidents and attacks and endeavors to go back to their dorm room to get the girlfriend of one of their members. Not more than an hour or two after these isolated reports, the dormitory is abandoned, torn apart and left in utter disrepair by all except the girlfriend.
3. The characters are bland and wooden, with several blatantly desperate moves on Romero's behalf to start some bit of characterization (most notably one of the opening scenes, where Jason, the character in charge of the camera, goes around and asks everyone their name and hometown, for the record). Never works, and the characters are at best hollow archetypes with little logic behind their actions or insights. (At the end of the movie, certain characters accidentally leave open the door to a fortified panic room all night after they were nearly overrun - with no repercussions. The only reference by one of the characters, as day breaks: "I guess I'd better close the door.")
4. Nonsensical situations. The group is, for instance, stopped by this militia/vigilante group that's hording all of the valuable goods (medicines, fuel, food, etc.) in this region. The group requires food and fuel. The group requests it. The leader of the militia (who has a distinctly Black Panther vibe about him and his group) tells them they can have fuel, but not food - one of the women of the group stares this man down, surrounded as he is by his soldiers armed with assault rifles and body armor. She, no kidding, tells this man that: "If you don't give us what we need, we're going to stay, and what are you going to do?" as she's staring this man in the face. And, of course, the militia leader gives in. A little earlier, one of the militiamen dies: "He had a bad heart. He's dead, but I don't know where he is."
If you don't know where he is or was, how do you know he's dead? Do you have EKG readings that I'm not seeing?
5. Social commentary messages shoved down our throats.
This is not a new thing with Romero, he always had a bit of this in him, even in his earlier movies. But it seems to become more pronounced as he ages, much like the old saying that old, famous actors generally become a self-parody, sooner or later. Romero, who honestly reminds me of the standard embittered old man artist who never feels like he was taken seriously, shoves down our throats the standard "we've been fighting ourselves so long" and "how the rich live off the sufferings of the proletariat" sort of stuff. In small doses, this is fine. Yet it becomes a bit too blatant with Debra's soliloquies on the nature of this (I swear, one of the quotes was something like: "We fought ourselves, but now we're fighting them, but it's really ourselves."
Later in the movie they come to a mansion where a well-off friend of the group has been living a king's life with champagne, a not so subtle (read: bludgeoning the idea into our skull with a tempered polo mallet) suggestion about the disconnect of the rich to the suffering of the poor.
Verdict? Horrible. Not even really goofy enough to get off a laugh, unless you really dig at stuff. Don't rent it, don't buy it.
FUN FACTS:
1. Land of the Dead supposedly flunked out so badly that Romero had to independently produce this film, because no major studio would take it.
2. IDMb's main plot keywords: Grave, Drunkenness, Eaten Alive, Clothes Torn Off, Social Commentary.
3. Quentin Tarantino, Wes Craven, Guillermo del Toro, Stephen King, Simon Pegg and Romero himself had cameos in this movie, with Tarantino, Craven, del Toro and Pegg acting as radio announcers, King as a radio preacher and Romero as a body guard in a short TV scene.
(Seeing how long it is, I'm going to make a summary at the bottom for quick reading. Press ctrl+f and type in ===, it'll bring you down to the beginning of the points.)
Basic verdict: This movie is the banjo-playing inbred cousin of the Romero movies, mixed with pseudo-philosophy and obnoxious social commentary. If the world knew justice, those that made it and nursed it would be turned into the ravenous zombie horde this movie portrays so poorly.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have a love for the Zombie genre that has been outlawed in mainstream Christianity since they put that zombie pope on trial that one time. My illicit love has placed a wedge between myself and religion, but I look back upon the rotting corpse of my choice, and am happy. My SO, however, has long been worried about my off-hand rejection of certain kinds of housing as being impractical to defend in the (inevitable) zombie holocaust. But, truly, that's love, and it would be criminal to let my experience fighting the undead go to waste.
So, when Romero decided to remake Dawn of the Dead, me and people like me were conflicted. On one hand, some might suggest, it missed the tongue-and-cheek style of earlier Romero movies, (I have a particularly fond memory of the Hari Krishna zombie in the original, myself,) and perhaps, they might argue, played itself down to a newer audience more familiar with 28 Days Later than Night of the Living Dead, turning the zombies into frothing marathon runners.
On the other hand, (at least I) enjoyed the opening scenes of utter chaos when the undead plague finally erupted, as well as certain other scenes which, at least to me, intermingled levity and suspense quite well.
Then came Land of the Dead, which, in disgust, personally evoked in me a desire to turn away from the pro-zombie stance of my longstanding heresy. The cherry topping was, of course, the ending, which I'm going to cloak in the dark, black night (which this movie deserves, incidentally, to likewise be hidden away in) so I'm not torn to pieces by angry viewers:
After the utter collapse of Fiddler's Green and the ineffectual response of the "military," the zombies now wandering through the refuge are allowed to just go away since, according to the main character, they're: "just looking for a place to go." After tearing people to pieces and feasting on their flesh and being coated in their blood, they're just looking for some place to go.
But this isn't about Dawn of the Dead or Land of the Dead; these are a sort of demented prologue to the comedic tragedy that is Diary of the Dead.
Now, by my reckoning, Diary of the Dead has a sort of complex family tree. Judging by the outcome of Diary of the Dead, I have to assert that, within that family tree, there was a great deal of inbreeding.
On one hand, the daddy of it all, the general idea of the zombie outbreak, with grand-pappies, uncles and galore in all of the "...Of the Dead" movies. If you want to, you can include the ones by John Russo and Fulci, too.
On the other hand, we have the mommy, which I personally am going to suggest is Cloverfield, which gives us the entire idea of using a personal video camera of some sort to record a horrible, terrible disaster for some reason or another. But while Cloverfield had a bit of sense to it (Hudd seemed to be just going along with the entire thing on his gut feeling and adrenaline, riding the tide as it were,) Diary of the Dead becomes incredibly nonsensical and ineffective in using this medium. For instance, the main character - no matter how horrible the situation may be - never lowers the camera from his eye unless he's at gunpoint. The camera itself is crystal clear, and yet jumps in and out of blank-screen and white noise at the appropriate times ("suspenseful" times) at the slightest nudge, and yet manages to have enough film and power for something like two or three days worth of straight shooting. Also used is one of the character's camera phones, which can shoot video that is also amazingly clear and high-resolution, despite looking a few years old.
They generally switch over to this camera for the single reason of showing a zombie crawling up on a lone member of the group, and of course, the camera phone is placed strategically perfect to show just enough of everything. The only difference between the regular camera and the phone, by the way, is that the phone's picture takes up about half the space and has a slight rose-tint to the lens.
In general, the camera work is cornball and suggests to me someone that really liked a technique he saw somewhere, but didn't actually understand what the major point was. In a shorter version: cheap knockoff.
The plot, meanwhile, involves a bunch of film students filming the standard film-school-budget mummy movie (in the woods?) when they hear various reports of the standard "confused news broadcasts about zombies," accidents in X county, gruesome murder in city Y, etc. Not so bad in and of itself, really. You have the standard looks of unbelief and the person scoffing that it's a joke - and I can't say I blame them, not sure how I would've taken the fact broadcast over the radio that the dead were walking.
So, the students return the dorms in order to find one of the girlfriend of one of the characters. Now, I have to swear that there's some sort of Post-Chaotic Abandoned Scene kit that certain directors get, because the dormitories (which are now long abandoned, oddly enough, given how long ago the news was first announced) have this pre-fab non-specific horror movie feel about them.
I want to stop here, because this is the first thing that gave me an eerie chill as to the fate of this movie. So, the news is announced probably an hour or so ago, perhaps even two or three hours, that there were a few scattered, strange incidents around the country, and in that time the panic has apparently grown to the proportions that the dorms had to be evacuated in the most haphazard and chaotic way possible. Items strewn on the ground, an American flag half-hanging above a sofa, doors thrown wide open, the whole shebang. Seems likely to me!
The character in question, Jason, is in the women's dorm to try and look for his girlfriend, Debra. He finds her, she can't get in touch with her family, the obvious answer to this is, of course, to get into their Winnebago and drive to the house and see if everything's well.
This is also where we're introduced to the other characters by the camera-toting Jason (who's lowered his camera from his eye only once, when in Debra's room - even when confronted by a looting, leather clad biker screaming at him in the dorm commons). Now, this struck me as a desperate movie - Jason goes around to everyone else, without an emote in his voice, and asks for their names, where they live, etc., saying that everything must be recorded. We have (and I'm taking this off of IMDb -) Mary Dexter, archetype religious freak, Debra, who acts on and off as the narrator of this story after it's posted online (the actual title of the movie is "The Death of Death," which is a title that just made me crumble with corniness.)
We also have Tony, archetype silent character and honorable strongman, Elliot, the Atari shirt-wearing geek whom you know is not going to survive the movie, and Gordo, the pretty boy (I guess attempted irony?), who is also the boyfriend of southern belle, Tracy, and finally someone whom I'm shocked Romero didn't equip with a chainsaw from the outset of the movie, their film professor, Andrew Maxwell.
A desperate move to build some sort of characterization into characters that would have very little personality by end of the movie anyway, although Maxwell makes some strides. (Favoritism? Go to hell!)
They jump from scene to scene; first, after barrelling through a barricade of about three zombies, Jesus-freak Mary becomes suicidally racked with guilt despite the fact that the two or three zombies she just ran over were clawing through the windshield, almost, to get to her and her tasty brains. One bullet from a hidden .45 pistol later (why the hell would she have a gun like that?) and they're on their way to the hospital. I'd also like to note how understated the suicide was: the gun goes off, slightly off-center to the screen, and Mary slumps forward - this is, by the way, a shot to the head.
They go to the hospital, ambushed by zombie nurse, zombie doctor, etc. What I assume to be an attempt at humor plays when a zombie clown comes to a kid's birthday party and the father tries to honk the clown's nose, only to have it come off and have the clown tear out his throat. I say attempted humor because the acting here is so ill-conceived and carried out that I honestly can't imagine it to be anything but.
Then, they're taken hostage by this Black-Pantherish group of militiamen, where they suggest that they [blacks] are now in charge. They're given fuel, but have to search around this warehouse after a member of the militia dies of a heart attack, and they don't know where he is. Which begs the question: how did you know he died? Searching, searching, he's found running after one, right near the barrels of gasoline, so they can't shoot. One of the characters grabs a bottle of acid and smashes it over the head of a zombie. Evidently, the character himself is invulnerable to acid, as the acid that splashes on him doesn't hurt him. The zombie must also have acid-proof clothing, since the acid does nothing to his shirt - it just MELTS HIS HEAD OFF. I'm not sure I remember HCl being that strong?
So, afterwards, the group is getting ready to leave, and they ask the militia leader for some food and supplies. The leader denies it, but gives them extra gasoline. Debra actually begins to stare down this man armed in military hardware and his likewise armed cohort, and begins to DEMAND that he give them over food and supplies, "Because if you don't, we're not going to leave." In a spectacular flourish of poor scripting and judgment, the militia leader agrees to this and furnishes them fully, which is just later on taken by roving bands of national guardsmen. Good on ya, I say to the Guardsmen. They didn't deserve it anyway.
I forgot to mention something. Remember the film professor? The Black Panther militiamen decided to allow the group access to all of their armory. Others picked out rifles and shotguns. The professor picked a bow and arrow.
Make of this what you will.
They travel more, get to the house, Debra is attacked by a zombie that's managed to climb onto her back as she flails around (yet never gets bit or scratched), is shrieking horribly - and, of course, the professor gets a HEADSHOT on the zombie and PINS IT TO THE WALL WITH THE ARROW.
Hmm.
Travel some more, and they come to the mansion of a classmate, which serves to beat us to death with the whole "class struggle" theme which is common in zombie films, but decent directors (of which Romero was once a part) have found possible to keep to a bit of subtlety. The classmate has been living on champagne and steak, so on, so forth.
Intersperse this with continuous commentary from Debra asking if mankind really is worth saving, talking about how human kind has always fought itself, so on, so forth, the same sort of tripe you'd generally get in overly philosophical art-house movies, and you have the final nail in the coffin that will hopefully inter this latest zombie-installment of a series into the ground, before anything worse crawls up.
==================Summary======================
1. The hand-held camera is always shockingly clear, and yet at select times the tiniest shove can leave the picture reeling in and out of white-noise and BSOD for about half a minute for no logical reason. Also, at appropriate times the cameras also change (one of the characters has a cell-camera, which is inexplicably always on). The most horrible use for this is when the character in question is fixing the group's Winnebago and a zombie is sneaking up on her. Despite having not been in any of the previous scenes, the movie jumps over to her strategically positioned cell phone camera (clear as crystal, with only the fact that the picture is smaller and has a slight red-tint to it) to show the zombie sneaking up, grabbing her, etc..
2. Nonsensically fast spread of the virus and destruction of society. The group hears about isolated outbreaks of accidents and attacks and endeavors to go back to their dorm room to get the girlfriend of one of their members. Not more than an hour or two after these isolated reports, the dormitory is abandoned, torn apart and left in utter disrepair by all except the girlfriend.
3. The characters are bland and wooden, with several blatantly desperate moves on Romero's behalf to start some bit of characterization (most notably one of the opening scenes, where Jason, the character in charge of the camera, goes around and asks everyone their name and hometown, for the record). Never works, and the characters are at best hollow archetypes with little logic behind their actions or insights. (At the end of the movie, certain characters accidentally leave open the door to a fortified panic room all night after they were nearly overrun - with no repercussions. The only reference by one of the characters, as day breaks: "I guess I'd better close the door.")
4. Nonsensical situations. The group is, for instance, stopped by this militia/vigilante group that's hording all of the valuable goods (medicines, fuel, food, etc.) in this region. The group requires food and fuel. The group requests it. The leader of the militia (who has a distinctly Black Panther vibe about him and his group) tells them they can have fuel, but not food - one of the women of the group stares this man down, surrounded as he is by his soldiers armed with assault rifles and body armor. She, no kidding, tells this man that: "If you don't give us what we need, we're going to stay, and what are you going to do?" as she's staring this man in the face. And, of course, the militia leader gives in. A little earlier, one of the militiamen dies: "He had a bad heart. He's dead, but I don't know where he is."
If you don't know where he is or was, how do you know he's dead? Do you have EKG readings that I'm not seeing?
5. Social commentary messages shoved down our throats.
This is not a new thing with Romero, he always had a bit of this in him, even in his earlier movies. But it seems to become more pronounced as he ages, much like the old saying that old, famous actors generally become a self-parody, sooner or later. Romero, who honestly reminds me of the standard embittered old man artist who never feels like he was taken seriously, shoves down our throats the standard "we've been fighting ourselves so long" and "how the rich live off the sufferings of the proletariat" sort of stuff. In small doses, this is fine. Yet it becomes a bit too blatant with Debra's soliloquies on the nature of this (I swear, one of the quotes was something like: "We fought ourselves, but now we're fighting them, but it's really ourselves."
Later in the movie they come to a mansion where a well-off friend of the group has been living a king's life with champagne, a not so subtle (read: bludgeoning the idea into our skull with a tempered polo mallet) suggestion about the disconnect of the rich to the suffering of the poor.
Verdict? Horrible. Not even really goofy enough to get off a laugh, unless you really dig at stuff. Don't rent it, don't buy it.
FUN FACTS:
1. Land of the Dead supposedly flunked out so badly that Romero had to independently produce this film, because no major studio would take it.
2. IDMb's main plot keywords: Grave, Drunkenness, Eaten Alive, Clothes Torn Off, Social Commentary.
3. Quentin Tarantino, Wes Craven, Guillermo del Toro, Stephen King, Simon Pegg and Romero himself had cameos in this movie, with Tarantino, Craven, del Toro and Pegg acting as radio announcers, King as a radio preacher and Romero as a body guard in a short TV scene.
"If I'm going to be desensitized into a mindless stock animal, I may as well do it with a cushy ergonomic seat and magnificent THX-certified sound. -Kevin Murphy