Land of the Dead

What a flick from the greatest horror director of them all. Beautiful shots, devoid of cliche and a hollywood coat of paint. A must see

Necronomicon

Yeah I'm looking forward to this one.

Riamfada

when is it out here?

bombidol

seen it last night. wasnt too mad about it myself. and im a huge fan of the originals. the modified Zombies arent great. Its decent yeah, but not great

lodgepole

I saw it a few months back (currently living in Toronto) and was disapointed. As a fan of the first three films, it pains me to admit it but it's true. It had some good moments, some good concepts... But too much of it was either really obvious political messages or not quite as epic as they hoped for shots of a zombie army. The climax was really weak... It had lots of good things (John Leguizamo especially), some good gore... But it really wasn't what I was expecting. Romero needs to take some lessons in how to utilise modern special effects and filming techniques, or go back to what he knows... Dawn of the Dead felt like a far bigger film than this and was infinitely better made.

One of the reasons I liked it was the lack of CGI - it gives it an extra sense of realism. If you look back at the old flicks its about make up and costumes not special effects. I mean anything remotely horror related today is laiden with special effects- perhaps why nothing scares like the old horrors like the Omen etc.
As far a size of the flick and plot etc and especially the end its once again all about realism. Give a film like that to hollywood and yes you'll get a big happy ending and a big climax and it will be your run of the mill flick.
You dont have your standard amazingly beautiful chick running around - can you remember a recent film that doesnt? the actors are familiar but subtley believable ...Hopper etc. The camera work is absolutely superb, something else CGI takes away from. The scene in the river is off the scale.
Romero could have gone to Hollywood with this and any studio would have given him a huge budget considering his name, but he would have to change his ending, throw in massive special effects, better looking chicks and a cliche riddled script no doubt.
Now dont get me wrong this flick hasnt changed the world and it aint 5 star, but I think it achieves perfectly what Romero set out to do and tried to to in his other flicks. It zones in on a small bunch of people, tells a small tale of 1 night or so and its not trying to prove anything. It follows on nicely from his other flick and doesnt have unncessesaries like the Dawn remake.
The biggest thing for me is that it delivers something different from what a cinema audience now expects to see when they go see a horror flick. Something that set Romero apart in the first place

Venom

Saw this film a few months ago and man what a peice of crap. It Romero hadnt been the director it would of gone straight to DVD. Rubbish story, bad acting and a generial overall feel of it just going through the paces.

Just because a film has no CGI should not mean its gets extra respect when you consider CGI wasnt needed in the film.

Venom

Venom wrote:

Saw this film a few months ago and man what a peice of crap. It Romero hadnt been the director it would of gone straight to DVD. Rubbish story, bad acting and a generial overall feel of it just going through the paces.

I cant understand how you could say it had bad acting, hopper was excellent and the lead was certainly not bad. what about all the social commentarys throughout the story? I feel a bit like a PR agent defending this movie but maybe www.imdb.com 's reviews may back up my comments

Just because a film has no CGI should not mean its gets extra respect when you consider CGI wasnt needed in the film.
Thats true but not what i was saying - there was a comment about how he should be using CGI and modern techniques which i disagreed with because it wasnt needed as you say

Xcom2

Alan from SGM http://www.sexgoremutants.co.uk/ says it all really.

http://www.sexgoremutants.co.uk/landdead.html

Following the successful revival of the big budget zombie film with recent hit and misses such as the (unwelcome but watchable) 'Dawn of the Dead' remake and the (immensely entertaining) 'Shaun of the Dead', it was with the news that Universal had signed up with undead filmmaking legend George A Romero to deliver the hotly anticipated latest instalment of his zombie series that genre fans rightly went into overexcited mode.

Myself, since the launch of home video I've been a massive fan of Romero's output. 'Night of the Living Dead' was a revelation - I never dreamed that what I perceived would simply be a creaking old black and white drive-in ghoul movie would in fact on first viewing be an exercise in gory atmospheric terror. With 'Dawn of the Dead' I found a film that both excited me with it's fast bloody action and ability to send viewers into a believably all consuming apocalyptic world that would have you leaving it's viewing experience with a sense of having just viewed a true 'classic' movie (and that's even without going into the detail of how this was the first time for me as a young viewer I discovered that even horror movies could have a 'meaning' with its social commentary). 'Dawn' was quickly to become my all-time favourite genre movie (and deservedly so). By the time 'Day of the Dead' appeared I was front of the queue on it's theatrical release watching it enthralled in a dark hushed cinema, again consumed by the visceral escapism of Romero's undead world.

So after years of waiting, and in honesty believing that another Romero 'Living Dead' movie ever being made to be the stuff of dreams, I entered the Edinburgh International Festival press screening of 'Land of the Dead' full of nervous excitement and self assuredness that at long last Romero was about to take me back once again to his fantastic all consuming undead world. How crushingly wrong I was.

With 'Land of the Dead', George Romero has joined the growing list of once great genre directors who look now to have fallen by the wayside. In fact, with 'Land of the Dead' we get a film that is so uninspired and derivative of so much that has gone before and delivered in such a slap dash manner that fans like myself must question just how much more loyalty can we be expected to place in a once great filmmaker.

The basic scenario is that a two tiered society of human 'survivors' have barricaded themselves in an small city (cannily cut off by a surrounding river); the wealthy half of the survivors are holed up in the 'Fiddler's Green' tower block mall/apartments under the corporate (baddy) leadership of Dennis Hopper, the poorer downtrodden half of society live a poor mans Mad Max type existence in the ghetto area outwith the opulent corporate tower block. The supplies needed to continue feeding all comes from sporadic raids on the outlying zombie infested cities by a team of crack troops in their 'Dead Reckoning' super tank. Cue unrest from the less fortunate citizens, much clichéd corporate cackling from Hopper and sporadic zombie action from the intermittent raid set pieces.

Whilst this basic premise may seem on paper to have the capabilities to deliver the goods it's with the sad fact that on every level its delivery fails that will ultimately have genre fans questioning just how Romero could get it so wrong?

The writing is on the wall from the very opening sequences; following a slap dash opening titles that is filled with vox pops informing us that "by the way, the dead have come back to life" the first shot shows the camera panning through a park to show us that zombies come in every form. Compare this to the opening shots of each previous Romero 'Living Dead' movies; 'Night' had the eerie graveyard sequence, 'Dawn' had the apocalyptic TV studio chaos and 'Day' had the chilling setting of the dead having won the monopoly of population overload - 'Land' has a zombie playing a tambourine!?

The film then goes on to plagiarise a variety of previous middling genre fare; the ghetto scenario of the human survivors, particularly so in the scene where we are first introduced to Asia Argento's character, resembles something from a poor man's Mad Max: Beyond the Thunderdome; the larger scenario of both the 'Dead Reckoning's super tank and it's theft and then sought return plays like a inverse take on fare like 'Damnation Alley' and more so 'Escape From New York'. But 'Land of the Dead' doesn't even stand up to those inevitably superior (and more original) genre movies.

The acting throughout is extremely wooden and poorly delivered by all involved (at times you think the actors are reading dialogue from cue cards that they hadn't seen before); in fact as the film progresses you start to wonder whether Romero specifically wanted his cast to act their parts in a truly hammy comic book stylee - but this is obviously not the case. I suppose it doesn't help when the scripted dialogue is so truly woeful; at times Hopper and others are asked to deliver lines that should never have got past the script editing stages ("We do not negotiate with terrorists!" Well what about with zombies?) and if plot wise we are supposed to find some sort of social commentary then it's as well delivered as someone throwing a half brick through a shop window. At times, the so called subtle commentaries play like some sort of gung ho God Bless America jingoistic nonsense (in light of recent real life terrorist activity "I'll get all Jihad on his ass!") and in the closing section of the film you'll find yourself appalled by dreadful imagery that looks to be making links between the human slaughter by zombies to the real horrifying slaughter of Jews in nazi concentration camps during World War 2 (take note of the scene of the humans waiting to be slaughtered against the barbed fences to see exactly what I mean - a scene that I was expecting to be followed by a chorus of 'We Are The World' or some other vomit inducing schmaltz). Worst of all (for sheer cringe inducing terror) witness the scene where the films hero stops a colleague from blowing up a slew of zombies decrying "they're just looking for somewhere to go like us" - terrible, just terrible.

Splatter fans are perhaps the only few who will be able to find any wish to view this car crash of a movie, but even they may inevitably disappointed too. The 'lead' zombie Big Daddy whilst giving us some moments of undead interest just plays like a slightly savvier black version of the legendary Bub from 'Day' - but plays (again like the rest of the ensemble cast) like a simplified cartoon version of his much more superior (and classier) predecessor. There are a few nice touches of splattery fun throughout but surprisingly nothing that we haven't seem before in every other undead movie in recent years. Hopefully something that may be enhanced with the impending 'unrated' DVD release.

Ultimately, 'Land of the Dead' is perhaps the film that should not have been made. Romero's Living Dead 'trilogy' should have remained just that. Whilst some corners of the genre community may be much more forgiving (well hey, I suppose it's only a damn zombie movie after all), in the big picture 'Land of the Dead' does not deserve to share the same glory that its vastly superior predecessors justly deserve. The film has no soul, no originality and just enough gore to keep your interest but inevitably as the end credits roll you'll feel like you've just watched a failed TV pilot movie or a half assed multiplex teen filler that's primed for all the quick buck franchising it can get it's hands on (the computer game is already in the works). A return to form for Romero? Sadly not, yet another example of the demise of another of the so-called 'Masters of Horror'. For long time fans like myself, 'Land of the Dead' is woefully lacklustre and crushingy disappointing. Avoid the stampede to theatrical screenings and wait (if you must) for the 'unrated' DVD release instead.

Review by Alan Simpson


X

echomadman

Deleted User wrote:

devoid of cliche

eh? devoid you say? you sure we're talking about the same movie.

I thought it was very enjoyable all the same, mad max in the land of the dead sort of thing. while not as fresh as the original trilogy it's still a damn good b-movie zombie flick, people getting up in arms about the artistic merits being sold out should take a step back and look at the genre they're discussing, its not really highdly inttelectual fodder is it?

As far as cliche goes I'm talking along the lines of script, one liners etc also actors wise ie. without your standard hot chick etc. and just general cheesiness, you disagree?

lodgepole

Deleted User wrote:

One of the reasons I liked it was the lack of CGI - it gives it an extra sense of realism.

But there was CG... Lots and lots and lots and lots of it... Lots of digital composites too. They just weren't used in an intelligent way. The looked low budget, weren't creative and stood out like a sore thumb.

I don't think that computer generated effects should have been used, I think that if they are being used they should be used well. Hence why I said he should have learnt what he was doing or go back to what he knows (see below). Dawn of the Dead was made before CG but you get a better sense of what's going on and as such it feels more epic, particularly in the scenes before the mall.

Romero needs to take some lessons in how to utilise modern special effects and filming techniques, or go back to what he knows...

Deleted User wrote:

One of the reasons I liked it was the lack of CGI - it gives it an extra sense of realism. If you look back at the old flicks its about make up and costumes not special effects. I mean anything remotely horror related today is laiden with special effects- perhaps why nothing scares like the old horrors like the Omen etc.

The Dawn of the Dead remake is a good example of CG used well in the zombie genre.

Land of the Dead was good, and I enjoyed it. But I had to do my best to forget that the man behind the camera was the man responsible for three of the finest examples of zombie movie ever made. This film lacked the creativity and the intelligence of the first three films which made them so classic, and more than just some gory fun.

Lodgepole

Lodgepole wrote:

But there was CG... Lots and lots and lots and lots of it... Lots of digital composites too. They just weren't used in an intelligent way. The looked low budget, weren't creative and stood out like a sore thumb.

I completely disagree with you here, what CGI are you talking about? The only piece I can remember is the belly button ring incident. Seriously if you think that this flick had lots and lots of cgi then his older ones must of had it too considering a lot of the gore is similar enough.
Maybe one or two shots from the sky in there as well, but thats hardly lots of cgi...and how did it stand out like a sore thumb if most of the viewers didnt notice it in the first place?

lodgepole

Deleted User wrote:

I completely disagree with you here, what CGI are you talking about? The only piece I can remember is the belly button ring incident. Seriously if you think that this flick had lots and lots of cgi then his older ones must of had it too considering a lot of the gore is similar enough.
Maybe one or two shots from the sky in there as well, but thats hardly lots of cgi...and how did it stand out like a sore thumb if most of the viewers didnt notice it in the first place?

I wasn't talking about the gore, most of which was achieved through practical effects. The film was littered with digital imagery. It obviously wasn't computer reliant and for the most part everything was done in-camera. You'll have to fogive me, it was some months ago that I saw it, so I can't give you specific examples... One of Toronto's biggest visual effects companies SPIN did all of the computer generated stuff.

rujanbike

thxxxxxxxx :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: