Originally published 6/28/2005
Land of the Dead
Director: George A. Romero
Writer: George A. Romero
Producers: Mark Canton, Bernie Goldmann, Peter Grunwald
Stars: Simon Baker, John Leguizamo, Dennis Hopper, Asia Argento, Robert Joy, Eugene Clark
When last we left George Romero’s zombies in 1985’s Day of the Dead, they had lurched and eaten their way through most of civilization. But more interestingly, they were beginning to show signs of a dim but awakening consciousness. Certainly nowhere near “I think, therefore I am”, their primary motive was still to find and devour whatever living flesh they could, but some vestigal memory and curiosity was asserting itself more strongly than in previous chapters. And in the case of the surprisingly sympathetic trained zombie Bub, it could even summon up from its rotting cerebrum how to find the business end of a gun. As if the human race wasn’t in enough trouble.
Now Romero, who first unleashed his moaning, skin-rending ghouls on an unsuspecting public with 1968’s Night of the Living Dead and redefined the horror genre, is finally back to follow up on that tease with Land of the Dead, in which the zombies’ slow mental evolution continues even as their bodies grow ever more green and cadaverous. Day of the Dead was a compromised vision, and only told part of the story he wanted to tell. Now, armed with new technology, a heftier budget, and a ratings board which is much more generous with its “R”’s than it used to be, he is able to fully realize the late stages of the zombie plague, and it makes for a cinematic nightmare both excruciating and thought-provoking that not only stands on its own but can stand proudly next to its predecessors.
We are now at least a decade or more into the plague, and humanity has fortressed itself into a few last cities. We’re focused on Romero’s hometown of Pittsburgh, which is surrounded by rivers and hence, well-protected, as long as the zombies don’t figure out they need not worry about drowning.
A gang of mercenaries led by the thoughtful but standoffish Riley (Simon Baker) raids nearby small towns for food and medicine, using a convoy of armed vehicles anchored by the fearsome bus/tank Dead Reckoning, which is stocked with multiple machine guns, guided missiles, and fireworks. They launch these “sky flowers” whenever zombies gather, having learned that the ghouls cannot help but stare upwards in reverie at them. One looks with such wide-eyed awe it doesn’t seem to notice its body has just been detached.
On one particular trip, though, Riley witnesses something unsettling – a ghoul steps on a service station bell, ringing it, and another zombie in an attendant’s jumpsuit lurches unsteadily out of the office, picks up a gas pump, and looks around as if expecting something. This zombie, whose namepatch reads “Big Daddy” (Eugene Clark), is starting to show dangerous growth in the problem-solving, tool-using, and communications department.
All over this town zombies, without food around to devour, have relaxed into a parody of human life that is pathetic but with an eerie whimsy to it – three of them stand in a tattered band shell with instruments and two of them actually get sounds out. “It’s like they’re pretending to be us”, Riley observes.
Back in Pittsburgh, humanity is still pretending in its own way. The elite, led by the smiling and venal Mr. Kaufman (Dennis Hopper), barricade themselves in a luxurious high-rise called Fiddler’s Green, while the rest of the population lives in the streets, fighting and screwing and scheming and supplying them with all their needs. Televisions broadcast commercials for the shops and fine restaurants in Fiddler’s Green, where people wear silk ties and drink wine and you can almost pretend everything is as it used to be. You might wonder why they would bother advertising a place everyone knows about, but each Romero movie has found a way to speak to the issues of its time, and knows that it is about class warfare, and conning the rabble with a dream – that their life is awful now, but maybe if they make enough money and work hard enough to please their masters, they too will be admitted to Fiddler’s Green someday.
This is all Cholo (John Leguizamo) wants out of life. As Riley’s hotheaded right-hand man he has risked his life daily and done terrible things in order to bring Mr. Kaufman champagne and fine cigars. But when he announces his dream and Kaufman tries to palm him off with doubletalk about waiting lists and board approval, he does something very drastic in response. And meanwhile, Big Daddy is wounded to the core about this army that raided his town and killed so many of his brethren, and very gradually he is leading them in a march towards the city lights to exact penance.
That’s the movie’s insidious genius – in those momentary double-takes where you see and comprehend a zombie’s point-of-view, sympathize with it, even. The simple interpretation would claim that Romero is rooting for the zombies. There’s certainly as much morbid glee as ever in this movie’s edition of the traditional “Last Supper” sequence – a thorough and brutal montage of the zombie horde feasting. Still a traditionalist when it comes to his effects, Romero uses computers when he needs to but relies mostly on make-up and prosthetics for his gore; and as always provides a whole new startling catalog of ways to rip, puncture or explode a human body. And the zombies still chew pulpy intestines with all the fevered relish that makes his zombie movies the most uncompromisingly grisly.
But this simple interpretation is the wrong one. I don’t think he prefers the zombies, I think he appreciates their implacability and knows how to exploit it for added resonance. Zombies don’t care who is the most macho, the prettiest, who’s got the most cash or the nicest clothes. They don’t care if you read a Bible or practice veganism, they don’t care if you hate Mondays. All they care about is if you are within chewing range.
In the face of such a foe it only looks sillier that we might continue to invest in pointless rituals of status. When he sees his world being devoured the strongest emotion Kaufman can summon is indignation – “You have no right!” he shouts, uselessly. In the sense that their perspective is so uncluttered, you might say that the zombies better understand the new order of things than most of the humans. But there are still serious men like Riley in the world, and although the slaughter portrayed in Land of the Dead is on a scale far larger than all Romero’s other movies combined, it is also the most hopeful. As always the herd is mercilessly culled, but this time those that are left seem prepared and equipped to keep the true quality of humanity alive, and leave the repetition of past foolishness to the ghouls.