The dead have been coming back to life and feeding on the living for quite some time now. Not just in real life but in George A Romero's Land of the Dead. The film dives right in to a quite tantalising opener. The world has moved on from the initial shock of the zombie take over and is doing it's best to cope.The zombies have been this way for so long now that they have begun to adapt. They've started to re-learn how society works. In their own drunk way they stalk around shops and garages, stacking shelves and holding petrol pumps. I'll never forget seeing an undead tambourine player, obviously still playing out his old life. With this new world brings inevitably a criminal underworld and this results in some rather odd Zombie snuff. They're chained up and tortured, made to fight like dogs while girls dance and have sex around them.
It's not that they are able to live side by side harmoniously but the zombies seem more adept at getting on with life. But what with them being far more, shall we say, bitey, they're never going to be the good guys in this. But they do somehow become more likable and more loyal than the human characters. That's the class divide for you.
Watching this film for the first time since it's release 5 years ago, you can see how much of an impact it had in that time on Hollywood zombies and its influence over the more low key zombie films of our generation. And watching it with fresh eyes you see the deeper social comment buried beneath all the boring guns and explosions. We humans are zombified. And predictable. Even after being completely wiped out in the human sense we still eventually revert back to what we know. Which for most people seems to be going through the motions.
Coming up I have a more modern zombie DVD giveaway. Come back soon for details.
I definitely agree that this film has aged incredibly well. I was pretty underwhelmed when it came out, but I'd also waited 20 years for another Romero zombie movie. Watching it today, I think you can see both his signature undead magic and his on-point, understated satire, something he lost in his newly messiah-status writing ridiculously overt narration (ugh Survival and Diary).
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