Movie: Land of the Dead
Cast: Simon Baker, Asia Argento, Dennis Hopper, John Leguizamo, Robert Joy
Rating:
Reviewer: Lauren Robbins

Since 2002, there has been a surge of zombie activity in Hollywood and the U.K. This has been both wonderful and lackluster, depending on which films you ended up seeing. England came out with two remarkable zombie flicks that gave new light and something to talk about to an otherwise played-out genre, while our own studios failed to give us anything worth writing home about. Which is why the return of acclaimed filmmaker and zombie genius George A. Romero is such a tremendous victory.

You may remember Romero's older movies like Night of the Living Dead and it's sequels. His newest, Land of the Dead, is the final movie in the series that not only kick-started the zombie movement into what it is today, but has been a source of unrelenting horror as well as subtle jabs at society since the late 1960s. And there is a whole bag of surprises with Land, including the first time we see a zombie pick up a gun.

Early on in the film, we see that most everything is overrun with flesh-eating pests, but that they are easily distracted by fireworks. This works greatly to the advantage of mankind, who shoots off the bright lights while running around town grabbing much needed supplies from abandoned grocery stores. But unlike virtually all other zombie films, in this one we see a fully functioning society where the rich have a life of luxury in the safe compound of a giant skyscraper, sealed with a wall barricading the zombies outside. But only the rich. Dennis Hopper is the best possible villain for this movie, playing Kaufman, the immoral owner of the tower, who keeps the zombies out and the poor on the streets, for reasons that become questionable later in the movie.

Romero did a great job on this one, taking the time and effort to make not just zombies, but real people who have been turned into zombies. There's a cheerleader, a gas station attendant, a butcher, priest, and others. They are treated as actual characters instead of anonymous dead corpses stumbling from one place to another. They learn and grow, figuring things out as they move closer to the city, and towards the end, though you know they are mindless and only want to eat your flesh, you really root for them to win.

This is just as gory as any movie based around cannibalistic corpses can be, including a silhouette scene that will make you squirm in your seat, and some grade-A rotting bodies. The three altruistic heroes are charismatic, as are their nemeses who are fun to watch squirm in their seats as the zombies get closer and closer. Land has what every zombie-lover wants and what a reasonable person could enjoy as well. This is a great horror movie for people who don't like to be scared too much, and for those who are willing to look past the blood and guts to see the true astonishing metaphor behind the zombie. Rating: 3 ½ out of 5 rotting corpses.