Dying Ain't Much of A Living! (Land of the Dead (DVD))

Name: Ailran

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Product:	Land of the Dead (DVD)
Date:	12.04.06 (137 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A good action packed film

Disadvantages: Not a horror and acting is just awful.

“In a world where the dead are returning to life the word trouble has lost lots of its meaning”

George Romero, arguably the creator of the modern Zombie movie returns with his latest (fourth) instalment of his hell on earth opus. Zombies have risen all over the world and the surviving humans have retreated to heavily fortified encampments.

Fiddlers Green is an enclave for the super rich, a massive multi story building with a shopping mall at the bottom. Here the privileged can live and act as if nothing has changed. That the world is the same outside as it ever was. This was all achieved by Kaufman (Dennis Weaver), an opportunistic big businessman who saw the chance to make a killing and took it. He employs the lower classes, or those who cannot afford an apartment in the actual building, who live in the remains of the city around Fiddlers Green, to keep things running.

Fiddlers Green is surrounded on three sides by a river and the fourth is blocked of and barricaded by an electric fence and armed guards. The zombies cannot get into the city, the odd ones who stumble across the city are quickly killed off, and life in Fiddlers Green goes on.

To keep his wealthy clients in food and goods Kaufman sends off scavenger patrols, to range far and wide. Finding deserted towns and raiding them for everything that the city could need or want is a never-ending job, especially as these towns are invariably full of Zombies.

As the film begins we find KYLE, the leader of a scavenger group, and his team in a ‘stench’ (their name for the Zombies) filled small town. Oddly though these ‘stenches’ seem to be able to communicate in a very basic form, or at least one of them in particular does anyway.
The Scavenger group gets what it wants and rampages through the town, shooting up Zombies as they leave, little realising the circumstances they have set in motion!
The zombie that seemed to have some sense of awareness screams and stumbles of in the direction the scavengers went, getting others to follow him.
The safety of Fiddlers Green could become a thing of the past as the zombie and his ‘followers’ head their way, the ‘army’ ever growing as they travel!
Can the humans defend their home; will they survive an onslaught by Zombies that are seemingly led by a modicum of intelligence?

Land of the Dead posits an intriguing idea, the humans are surviving because they are intelligent, and they use their brains to outwit the overwhelming hordes of undead. How will they adapt and react when the simple little tricks to stop the zombies no longer work?
The other clever side to the film is that the humans, in general, come across much worse than the zombies in many ways. The Zombies are more or less animals, they follow basic urge to eat flesh when around it but other than that seem to be able to cope without it. The humans meanwhile act like animals, shooting zombies for fun, using them for target practice and in games of fun, tormenting them really. Because the scripting is so good you actually realise that the leader of the zombies is a lot more sympathetic character than Kaufman. And that I think is the saving grace of the film, the way the writers make the Zombies more than just … well Zombies. I know that makes no sense but see the film and you’ll probably get what I mean.

Land of the dead isn’t a horror movie; unless you count the acting that is pretty horrific all round, it is an action movie with an underlying nod to horror conventions. So I think anyway as the main plot for the film is action based, full of fights, gunfire, and stunts etc, all the staples of that genre. Horror for me should be something that tries to scare you, make you jump in your seat or make you hide behind the girl you are there with…. Uh sorry make the girl hide behind you of course!
The only connection this film has to any horror film is that it has Zombies in it!

I have to say I did enjoy Land of The Dead, but it is very mechanical and linear. The storyline moves along pretty much as you would expect it to, you can work out what is going to happen pretty much from the start. It is very reminiscent of Mad Max 2 in basic plot, just replacing the crazed bikers with Zombies. There are very few if any surprises in this film at all.

This isn’t helped by the fact that Kaufman is the only character to have any real depth to him, the rest are all close on being enigmas, and it would have been interesting to have seen more of what he did to keep power, and how he kept things hidden from others, high up in his little community… but then that would have been a different movie and would have required Hopper to do more than just turn up, which seems to be exactly what he did. He showed no real emotion or any of that famed intensity of his.

All in all if you like action movies you will probably like this film, if you intend to see it as a horror fan then you will probably be disappointed. It’s a average film but has enough in it to make it worth a couple of hours of your time, but not much more than that!

Summary: An enjoyable film if you do not expect it to be an out and out horror