Zombie guru George Romero rises from the dead.
Zombie films have been a kind of living dead genre in the last couple years, enjoying a renaissance that has included
28 Days Later
, a remake of
Dawn of the Dead
and even a comedy,
Shaun of the Dead
. Missing, however, has been the man who first breathed life into
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the apparently undead genre. Now, George Romero returns with the surprising
Land of the Dead
, his fourth zombie film.
The story thus far is recapped in the opening credits; the dead have mysteriously starting walking the earth, feasting on human flesh and infesting the cities of the world (see
Night
,
Dawn
and
Day of the Dead
). Humans now live in an unnamed city surrounded by water on three sides and fortified with electric fences and armed guards to keep the "stenches" out. The poor populate the streets while the rich, including the city's ruler, Kaufman (Dennis Hopper), live in a high-rise luxury palace called Fiddler's Green.
Riley (Simon Baker), a member of the city's militia, leads armed recon teams into surrounding small towns until his second-in-command, Cholo (John Leguizamo), revolts against the city's leadership, leaving town with an armored vehicle called Dead Reckoning and threatening to knock the Green to the ground. The zombies, meanwhile, are learning to think, orchestrating an attack of their own on the city with predictable feeding frenzy results.
Unlike the zombie films of late, Romero's living dead still stumble around and are easily killed with a
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gunshot to the head. Until now, however, a zombie's only defense was its relentlessness. But when a gas station attendant turned flesh-eater named Big Daddy (Eugene Clark) picks up a gun, it's the equivalent of the monkey tossing the bone into the air in
2001: A Space Odyssey
, blasting the possibilities wide open.
Baker's Riley is appropriately melodramatic for the material, a good guy at all costs who, of course, is a big softie underneath. The relationship between Riley and his mentally deficient sidekick Charlie (Robert Joy) gives the film an oddly playful tone that is a welcome refrain from all the gore. There's even a faint hint of sexual tension between Riley and Slack (Asia Argento), a gun-toting ex-prostitute, but Romero ensures the action stays out of the bedroom entirely. Instead there are explosions (both organic and inanimate) and decapitated limbs being devoured by ghoulish clowns and monstrous cheerleaders aplenty.
Land
succeeds with touches of intense creepiness (zombies rising one by one from the water), a somewhat forced subtext involving class and race and, of course, buckets of blood and gore. Romero proves he's still the master with a zombie flick that's big, gross and fun but never dumb.
