LAND OF THE DEAD Review

Okay, I read this review for CREATIVE SCREENWRITER WEEKLY -- an email I get every Friday that sort of covers the territory that the bi-monthly magazine misses -- and it pissed me off so much I had to email a response to the author.

It was a review for George A. Romero's LAND OF THE DEAD.

Okay, the movie didn't make a ton of money, so I'm obviously one of a surprisingly small number who have seen the movie yet. But I suspect that, like DAWN OF THE DEAD and DAY OF THE DEAD, this movie will eventually become a horror standard in secondary release. Hell, it took NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD forever to become the legend that it is.

And it took EVEN LONGER for people to realize it was more than just a pop culture phenomenon! It wasn't until the 70s or 80s that academics started to give the film its artistic props!

So I'm not that surprised that not many people have seen it yet.

But I AM surprised that someone in the employ of CREATIVE SCREENWRITING magazine is so shallow and unsophisticated as to judge a book by it's genre!

My email response was stressing the point that if you have a personal aversion to a genre, DON'T REVIEW IT! There are other ways to make a buck.

This guy's review was so short, and so dismissive. He hit many the reviewer cliches, like Romero can't seem to find anything new to do with zombies even though it's been 20 years since his last zombie movie, and Romero sets up the possibility to comment on society and class and gated communities but never develops these themes in favor of unnecessary graphic violence.

The guy ACTUALLY accused Romero of "unnecessary" graphic violence!!!

First of all, does he know what genre he's reviewing?!!

Most people GO TO -- or, more often than not apparently, RENT -- a George Romero "DEAD" movie FOR the graphic violence!

And since the late-80s/early-90s sociologists and psychologists have slowly been catching onto the psychological usefulness of the horror genre: A safe way to deal with human fear in an increasingly fear-inducing society. (America, anyway. I don't know the stats on other nations and cultures.)

I mean, every commercial warns us that we're coming down with some disease or other, and that we HAVE to buy this or that perscription or OTC medicine to fight impending doom. Every local and nation news promos threatens "startling new evidence" of some horrible catastrophe that threatens the wellfare of us "and those you love; tune in at six to find out more," or assaults us unsolicited images of burning buildings or road fatalities "tune in at six for more footage". And that's all going on even when our own government isn't constantly warning us that "credible evidence" points to another fatal terrorist attack somewhere on our own soil!

This is a fear-based society we live in. Is it REALLY a mystery to ANYONE why so many people are paying $8-$12 bucks to get their wits scared out of them for 90 minutes before returning to the omnipresent media and it's threats of unavoidable disaster?

Seriously?

So anyway, my point is that the graphic violence is an element of the genre, one of the reasons people go to see these movies. Particularly George Romero movies and PARTICULARLY if they have "of", "the", and "dead" in the title.

But here's what really got me reved-up.

Oh, and SPOILER ALERT!!! IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN LAND OF THE DEAD DO NOT READ FURTHER! If for no other reason, you won't have any basis to judge the validity (or invalidity, for that matter) of my take on the movie without having seen it yourself.

What really got me reved-up -- the reason I'm spending what is left of my Friday night writing this, rather than watching LAND OF THE DEAD or BATMAN BEGINS again, or even the new episode of SUPERNATURAL -- is that this movie is, in my opinion, a brilliant combination of all the things Romero does so sublimely as a storyteller!

Whereas this reviewer saw the unfulfilled setup of potential commentary on society and social class structure, I saw a movie that commented very acurately on our tendancy to hold on to out-dated, out-moded class structure that we're simpled used to, even to our own peril.

Romero has set up a city that is boxed in by 2 rivers and an electrified fence (a triagle-shaped area), and the majority of the city is abandoned wasteland. Only one high-rise operates: It has its own power supply. The other buildings are empty.

The very, very rich live in the sole operational high-rise, which was set up by a Mr. Kaufman, played by Dennis Hopper. All other classes live near the perimiters, making do with whatever they can find. Only the social elite are allowed to live in "The Green" -- the name of the building is Forest Green and the property is informally refered to as "The Green" -- Kaufman and his underlings see to it that only the richest (a) can afford to rent housing there and (b) find a spot on the "waiting list".

Of the working class that inhabits this world, we are introduced to 2 characters in particular: Riley and Cholo. They both work for Kaufman (though, in truth, everyone works for Kaufman) collecting necessary suplies from abandoned towns and townships surrounding the city. (It's been a while since the events of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, too; they're forced to go further and further out to find a town that hasn't yet been scavanged.)

Of these2 characters, Riley is the hero, and all he wants is to get out of the city; he wants to go to Canada, where there are no people and no "stenches" (the common nickname for zombies). He's invested the money he's made from Kaufman in a car, and he just wants to GO.

Cholo (played by Jon Leguizamo), on the otherhand, has been saving his money to move into The Green. He wants to become part of the elite.

Riley realizes, though Cholo refuses to, that Kaufman and his ilke will never allow people like Riley or Cholo in. It's like Royalty: If you're not born in, you're NOT IN.

But that's not even the biggest problem with this world...

The zombies...

Some of them ARE LEARNING!

From the first scene of the movie, we see the very disturbing sight of zombies trying to utilize tools from their past lives: Muscicians (when they were alive) trying to play instruments, a former gas station owner trying to find something to fill up with gas.

More than that, THEY'RE COMMUNICATING!

Maybe Romero's being too subtle for that CS reviewer who is trained in English literature and edutcation, but imagine this: You're in a field with a lot of birds scattered around, and one bird chirps to the other birds and they all start to move TOWARD YOU.

How creepy would THAT be?

What if the birds are vultures who prefer FRESH meat?

So a particular batch of zombies seems to be developing greater mental functions than the ones we've seen in the previous movies (with the acception of Bub in DAY OF THE DEAD), making them MUCH MORE DANGEROUS to humans!

And this is ALL Act One stuff here!

We don't know how much time has passed between NIGHT OF THE LIVING and LAND OF THE, but it's enough that, by now, zombies FAR out-number living humans. And unlike Romero wannabes, you don't have to get bitten to become an animated corpse; you just have to DIE. EVERYONE who dies turns into a zombie! (The transformation is just FASTER if you're bitten.)

Add to their sheer numbers their relative durability compared to our relative fragility, and even the most rudamentary organization and tool usage greatly reduces our chances for survival. Their tendancy to eat us is really the only thing keeping their numbers down. But like I said, in this movie we really don't know how much of a comfort that actually is.

So here's the crux of the story...

After the action of the second and third acts -- in which Cholo tries to bribe Kaufman and Riley tries to get to Cholo to talk sense into him so they can all head north for probable safety, and during which the zombies (unbeknownst to anyone but the audience) have made their way to the city -- the Lower Class guy who greedily wants to join the Upper Class dies, the non-evolving zombies feast on the Upper AND Lower Classes of the city, and Riley and the evolving zombies keep moving, going their separate ways.

See, in the world Romero has created in this movie, living humans are like wild deer or cows. The zombies are actually at the top of the food chain. But far too many humans are clinging to a system that didn't work "before the change" and many of them end up dying because of it. INCLUDING the social elite, the most insulated people!

Our 2 heroes, Riley and -- believe it or not -- the "leader" or the clan of evolving zombies, embrace or accept the changes happening in the world. Everyone else -- EVERYONE else -- is JUST GETTING BY.

So it seems to me -- despite the fact I'm not trained in English literature or education -- that Romero is very clearly warning us against complacancy in life. He's wanring us to pay attention to what is REALLY going on around us -- be it social tyrany and cruel exploitation or natural desaster or BOTH -- and act upon what we observe. If something isn't working for us LEAVE IT BEHIND.

English-Literature-Boy might have recognized the message had it been dramatized by Dickens or Shakespeare, but as dramatized by Romero he saw it as "fallow". (That's his word, proof of his superiority to Romero. Romero used "the F word" a couple of times in the movie, but he never used the word "fallow".)

Oh yeah, and Romero included some subplots explorIing what it TRULY inhuman behaviour, and how people who appear to be useless to society may ACTUALLY BE USEFUL, and your "cliched" examinations of what is truly right and wrong, monsterous and humane, but since it's encompassed in a movie about zombies it must not be that significant...