Return To The Land Of The Dead

After a nearly ten year draught in Zombie Movies, and following the incredibly disappointing remake of Dawn of the Dead, I was pretty stoked when I heard that George Romero, who essentially invented the Zombie Movie, was making another entry in his Dead series, Land of the Dead.

The plot concerns the Living trying not be eaten by the Dead. The Living live in a city completely surrounded by water, in order to keep the zombies out. (Imagine Pittsburgh with a canal on its east side, and you get the idea.) The rich Living live in a giant skyscraper called Fiddler's Green, which has all the amenities of a world not infested by zombies. Everyone else lives in the slums surrounding Fiddler's Green. All the zombies? They're on the other side of the river. Which is also where scavengers go to get all of the essentials needed to make living in Fiddler's Green seem like a normal existence.

Doesn't really sound like a Zombie Movie, does it? Well, it's not. Romero has made this movie (humans holed up, besieged by zombies) roughly three times before, so he doesn't need to focus on the zombies. And that's the genius of Romero: He can make a Zombie Movie that isn't even really about zombies. They just exist in the background, while the plot, which involves John Leguizamo getting pissed at Dennis Hopper not letting him live in Fiddler's Green, unfolds.

But is it any good? Sure, it is. There's a lot of clever (like the incredibly practical solution the zombies come up with for crossing the river) and funny (Tom Savini's callback to Dawn of the Dead cameo) bits to make it worthwhile. And the grossout zombie effects (handled by KNB this time out) will please any gore fan.

The one thing that didn't sit well with me was the "Big Daddy" zombie. He is, of course, a callback to Bud the Zombie from Day of the Dead, who could use a razor, phone, and, eventually, a gun. Here, Big Daddy actually leads the zombie revolt. For someone with no brain function, he really seems to be a regular zombie George Patton. But, other than that one hangup, a good movie; a suitable closing chapter to Romero's Zombie Legacy.