Starring: Simon Baker, John Leguizamo, Dennis Hopper, Asia Argento. Rated R.
Twenty
years after the lackluster Day of the Dead,
director George A. Romero has returned to steer his
zombie franchise into a dreary future in which the dead have taken over the
world, leaving the living and breathing to fortify themselves behind concrete
walls and barbed-wire fences. It’s not pretty – the sight of flesh-eating ghouls
ripping their victims to shreds rarely makes for an appetizing spectacle – but
it’s riveting entertainment, smart social satire cloaked in the guise of a
blood-splattered gorefest.
Land
of the Dead finds
the survivors of the zombie holocaust barricaded inside an unnamed city in
which the rich and powerful, led the insidious Kaufman (Dennis Hopper), have
taken over a plush apartment complex called Fiddler’s Green. The less
fortunate, of which there are plenty, live more or less at their mercy, subject
to their arbitrary laws and left to scrape by on the city streets. It’s a
fascist society ruled by wealthy interests, and a bleak indictment of post-9/11
America from a master filmmaker who’s always used the horror genre as a
platform for social critique.
Evolution has not simply affected the ranks of the
living in
Romero’s futuristic vision. This time around, his zombies have begun to learn,
mimicking the behavior of their breathing counterparts and becoming
increasingly resentful of the annual raids on their precious turf. Their
leader, Big Daddy (Eugene Clark), is tired of watching his undead comrades
suffer brutal decapitations at the hands of Kaufman’s hired heavies, who
periodically scour the land for food and drink. When Daddy picks up his first
automatic rifle, it’s clear that trouble awaits the inhabitants of Fiddler’s
Green.
Luckily, Kaufman’s soldiers are equipped with enough
firepower to protect the city – or destroy it, depending on their temperament. Riley
(Simon Baker) is calm, sane and self-assured as the leader of the community’s
first line of defense, and his only ambition is to earn enough to escape to Canada, where he and his friends can live quietly
and peacefully in a
wilderness untouched by the rotting hands of walking corpses. His second-in-command,
Cholo (John Leguizamo), is a bit more ambitious – and quite a bit more
reckless. He wants a taste of the good life; When Kaufman denies him the
pleasure, the hotheaded Cholo threatens to burn his posh high-rise to the
ground.
As has always been the case in the franchise Romero set in
motion with 1968’s terrifying Night of the Living Dead, the living in Land of the Dead
are too busy fighting amongst themselves to guard
themselves against the threat of extinction, and their selfish, petty behavior
leads to a bloodbath. Indeed, there is no shortage of detailed evisceration in
this chilling installment, so much so that it’s hard to understand how the
zombies continue to bolster their ranks, given their tendency to tear victims
limb from juicy limb.
No matter. Land of the Dead is a grisly fantasy, and while it’s hardly Romero’s scariest
achievement, it is a thrilling, disturbing commentary on a man-eat-man world
that hits just close enough to home to give viewers an uncomfortable pause. It
also presents an intriguing thesis on the plodding manner in which our society
could be rebuilt should a race of cannibalistic corpses invade. Here’s hoping we
never find if it’s the right one.
