The Test of Time series looks back at legendary director George A. Romero’s 2005 zombie movie, Land of the Dead
Whether it’s the original director or not, following up all time classics in a series is a tall task. We have seen it with many of the greatest movies of all time like Rick Rosenthal having to follow up John Carpenter and Halloween or John Boorman following up William Friedkin and The Exorcist. Sometimes the original director has a go at it for contractual obligations like Tobe Hooper and Cannon films giving us Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 or for passion like John Carpenter himself electing to attempt to give us a better version of Escape from New York but in Los Angeles. Sorry, John, we still think you are wrong about that one. One director that made a career of it was George Romero. While he certainly had a varied career with things like Knightriders, Creepshow, and Monkey Shines, he is also the godfather of modern zombie horror. After Night of the Living Dead in 1968 he followed it up with another masterpiece in 1978 with Dawn of the Dead and then again in 1985 with Day of the Dead. 20 years later and 20 years ago now, he would give us a fourth entry in Land of the Dead. While it is certainly the last movie he will be remembered for, Dead series or not, does it stand the Test of Time?
The Plot
George Romero was never what I would consider prolific in his output, but he was consistent for a while and the number of revered classics on his resume is staggering. Season of the Witch, The Crazies, Martin, Two Evil Eyes, and The Dark Half all have their fans and that’s without mentioning the shuffling ghoul in the room. The “Dead” series and zombies the last nearly 60 years will always be linked to Romero the way that actors are linked to their portrayals of Dracula, or the Blair Witch will be linked to the found footage genre. Starting with 1968’s powerful allegory of a film Night of the Living Dead, the shadow loomed large over him even when he put out other, different films. 1978’s Dawn of the Dead was perhaps bigger and even captured the international audience with the help of Dario Argento who helped produce it and created a slightly different version for European audiences. Day of the Dead would seemingly be the last both in terms of the natural time cycle suggested by the titles but also thematically with humanity being defeated. 20 years after Day of the Dead naturally ended the franchise, we would get another look at the world where humanity is the disease, and the dead have taken over.
Day of the Dead’s original script was a massive one and parts of that picture that didn’t get used were reworked and expanded on to make a 4th movie that originally had a very different title and even different studio behind its production. George had seen the direction that zombie movies were going as the same year that his opus came to a close, the other mind behind Night of the Living Dead would unleash The Return of the Living Dead and he wanted to move on. As the 90s turned to the 2000s though, zombie movies were making a huge comeback. 28 Days Later (I know, not really zombies but looking the part), loving homage Shaun of the Dead, and even a remake of his own movie Dawn of the Dead showed Romero and studios that the living dead were, well, not dead anymore. The first studio he spoke with was 20th Century Fox who oddly wanted him to call the movie Night of the Living Dead. He quite rightly hated that and suggested Dead Reckoning which they came back with Night of the Living Dead: Dead Reckoning and when he realized they just wanted rights to the name, he moved on to the oldest horror house in Universal Studios.
Universal gave him one of his biggest budgets with nearly 20 million dollars to play with and it shows. It was his first movie with digital effects and just feels bigger. It was filmed in Canada even though he wanted to shoot it in Pittsburgh, but the tax shelter capital of the world fit in just fine for PA. While the larger budget allowed for a larger sandbox and toys, Romero still decided to go with a lesser-known cast apart from John Leguizamo and Dennis Hopper who were both very well known. This is Leguizamo’s only real horror with some adjacent things like Spawn, The Menu, and Vanishing on 7th Street also being on his resume. Hopper is a legend with a pretty crazy career but not much horror apart from some really bad straight to video stuff and the polarizing Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. The rest of the cast is filled out by Simon Baker, who was a couple years away from his breakout role in The Mentalist, Robert Joy, and daughter of friend and collaborator Dario Argento, Asia Argento as Slack. We would also get zombie appearances from Tom Savini playing his Dawn of the Dead character as well as Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright who had impressed George with their loving homage in Shaun of the Dead.
The movie follows the now-normal end of the world where zombies outnumber living humans, and those humans are doing their best to kill each other off. Dennis Hopper’s Kaufman runs a surviving city that is full of the “us” who live in a clean and nice but expensive tower and “them” who just try to survive on the streets. John Leguizamo plays Cholo who runs errands for Kaufman and thinks he will earn his way into the tower of Fiddlers Green but is told money isn’t the only thing needed, and he is missing something he will never have. Cholo steals a massive truck named Dead Reckoning and threatens to blow up the tower unless his demands are met, and Simon Baker’s Riley is pulled out of an early retirement to track down the stolen vehicle. An advanced version of Day of the Dead’s Bub named Big Daddy leads a large army of zombies towards the tower to seek vengeance and to ultimately be left alone and all three stories end up back at the tower where Kauffman and Cholo are dead while Riley has a vehicle and crew to find his own paradise away from everyone else. The movie had a quite frankly awful video game tie in and was released on June 24th, 2005 in the US to fairly good reviews and the highest gross in the Dead series aside from the original Dawn with nearly 47 million dollars at the box office.
Sign of the times
As we stated earlier, zombies as a horror villain were making a comeback. While they never went away fully, this was a time that they took center stage in a few ways with running not-quite zombies in the two 28 Days Later movies or the traditional way with Shaun of the Dead that even as a parody is one of the best zombie movies ever made. We would get a mix of the two styles with James Gunn and Zack Snyder’s Dawn remake in 2004 and more to follow including two final zombie movies from George himself. Hell, the style here is somewhat stolen from 2004’s Dawn of the Dead but I think we can give it a pass as it is a remake of the movie that the guy stealing made. The rest of the movie’s call signs are really more about the man himself rather than the time it was made in. Romero uses his movies to tell a story that is more than zombies, and this is no different with the “us vs them” mentality of rich and poor people living their lives. The biggest one is Dennis Hopper’s character who even has a line of “We do not negotiate with terrorists” which was aimed at the current administration and Hopper said in later interviews that he based his character portrayal of Kauffman on Donald Rumsfeld.
What Holds Up?
Per usual in a Romero movie the effects here are lights out, at least the practical ones. The zombies look great, especially the ones that aren’t played by an actor, and the gore effects are incredible. This was the first movie in the series to actually receive a rating and Romero shot multiple versions of the death scenes; one to get the R rating and one to be on any unrated releases. This movie’s version of Bub, Big Daddy, is also neat and so is his progression from Bub. He has learned even more and it’s cool to see scenes of him trying to lead his fellow zombies, teach them what to do to proceed, or wake them up from their stupor when fireworks distractions are going off. There is a natural progression of zombie evolution found in his growth. Related to that, the use of fireworks to distract the zombies is a good effect on two fronts. It’s a clever tool that is realistic and could be found by the scavenging humans throughout the broken world but its also a fun Chekhov’s fireworks that you know is eventually going to fail and does near the end of the movie.
Elsewhere, a ton of the horror found in Land of the Dead holds up well. The scenery outside Fiddlers Green, particularly the dumping ground, is a horrifying hellscape where the world we once knew is an eerie wasteland that no longer belongs to us. The natural progression of humans becoming increasingly uncivilized is terrifying to see while not exactly unpredictable with the blatant classism presented on screen and we finally have a character willing to just become a zombie, at least in Romero movies. Its an interesting choice for Cholo who really has nothing to lose and does eventually get his payback in the next life before being put to a final rest.
What doesn’t hold up?
The script and some of the acting are nothing special here. While the movies in the series up to now were seen mostly as gore spectacles or allegories, they had some solid performances and ideas that held on to the viewer tighter and longer than ones found in Land of the Dead. This leads to many of the characters being one note and predictable and a side issue of the choice to dub Argento was probably necessary with English being her second language, but it is distracting in a movie where nobody else is dubbed. Another distracting piece to the film is the CGI used. While it’s not as egregious as other movies we have talked about on the channel, it’s also unfortunately paired with some of the best gore and artists you can find. The music is something that doesn’t really work here either. Gone are the moody pieces of score done by Goblin or the Caribbean-inspired motifs in Day of the Dead and instead we get an aggressive rock kind of score that doesn’t belong in the series at all. It should be slow and plodding like the zombies found within. Finally, the timeline is somewhat confusing as this movie is supposed to come after Day of the Dead, but that movie was pretty clear that the bunker may be the last vestiges of humanity. I suppose if you watched it before day or just pretended it took place at the same time then it works but we shouldn’t have to do that.
Verdict
I went into this viewing thinking the movie wasn’t good or certainly hadn’t aged well but beyond the misses that we discussed in the last segment, this is a worthy movie. While it is still lesser than its preceding films, that’s like saying that the movies that came after Alien and Aliens or Halloween don’t hold up. Land of the Dead isn’t the masterpiece that Night, Dawn, or Day are, but it holds firm as one of our great directors’ last good movie. It shouldn’t be brushed aside when watching others in the series or even zombie movies as a whole and even 20 years later doesn’t look or feel too dated. Land of the Dead is a Reckoning that still stands the Test of Time.
A couple of the previous episodes of The Test of Time can be seen below. To see more, click over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!
