Format: IFC on rockin’ flatscreen.
When George Romero created Night of the Living Dead he essentially invented a new subgenre of horror films, mainly by not having the original film copyrighted. Sad for him, happy for horror fans everywhere. Romero revisited his undead zombie world five times. Sadly, each of these movies has ended up with declining reviews; the highest point is Dawn of the Dead and the lowest is the most recent, Survival of the Dead. Of the five after the original film, Land of the Dead falls in the middle—the fourth in the series and the midpoint of the five sequels in terms of critical reception.
Each of Romero’s zombie films explores a different aspect of the world using the zombies as metaphor. In the case of Land of the Dead, Romero is going to a different aspect of what he looked at with Dawn of the Dead. Where that film explored mindless consumerism, there is a strong undercurrent of wealth inequality in Land of the Dead. It’s a theme worth exploring, and frankly, it’s worth exploring more than Romero does it here. This is undoubtedly one of the ideas that is at play in the film, but it’s really only seen in the margins except for in a few places.
