Review: Land of the Dead

George Romero has been giving us movies that are gory and fun and thought-worthy for a long period of time, and though there are years (and decades, even) between the installments, the proposed last one in Land of the Dead is no different.

Land of the Dead stars a strange bit of actor in that they're reminiscent of "Hey, I recognize that person" type of movie, and you're never worried about it, because it's expected that most of these people are going to die anyway, right?

The storyline this time around is that finally, after all these years, the zombies are starting to remember, starting to act more human, and in such case, starting to terrorize the living in more interesting ways. It's set in present day in a nameless American city that's guarded itself by having a town on it's own island, away from the zombies. But when they start figuring out how to do things, it gets out of hand. The gore factor isn't set to high, it's set to abnormally fun levels of high (Save one scene that made me grit my teeth, nothing big, just a woman scraping fingernails where they all fall off. AGH!), and you're either frightfully disgusted, or giggling like a teenager the whole time.

The dialogue is not strong, it holds many one liners, but that's consistent to all of Romero's Dead movies, and what makes them so fun to watch. It's like watching fifteen people try to be a Bruce Campbell type of hero, only they're not getting across so well, so you're doing a combination of laughing at them, and with them, as they go about their day.

This is what makes a zombie movie. This is fun, gory, but smart. It makes you think, instead of rolling your eyes and having the same sight gags hit you in the face one hundred times in two hundred movies. Though not very close to the (original) Dawn of the Dead in the "good" factor, it is still a fitting way to cap off all of the years of fun terror, right where it began.
***.5 of *****