film Home > Movie Reviews

Framed by a soldier’s soul-sickness at having slaughtered an encampment of zombies and a later tableau of working-class undead snacking on what looks like the entire RNC steering committee, Land of the Dead might be said to have an agenda. Never subtle when it can be hilariously literal with its stripped metaphors, George A. Romero’s latest zombie chronicle is a ferocious return to satirical form. The recipe? Take a corrupt bureaucrat (Dennis Hopper) running a closed city for the wealthy surrounded by a buffer zone of the destitute keeping out the zombie hordes. Add Latino enforcer John Leguizamo’s impossible assimilation dreams, a soldier (Simon Baker) and his whore buddy (Asia Argento) looking to escape to Canada, some newly sentient zombies led by a messianic undead African-American, and watch everyone tear each other apart. Classic if only for Hopper’s hissed, “Zombies, man, they freak me out!”, Land is an ultimately upbeat populist horror flick as rage-fueled protest song.

E-mail Ian Grey