Land of the Dead details
| Formats: | 15 DVD, 18 Blu-ray |
|---|---|
| Starring: | Simon Baker, John Leguizamo, Dennis Hopper, Asia Argento, Robert Joy |
| Director: | George A. Romero |
| Genre: | Horror - Vampires |
| Studio: | UNIVERSAL PICTURES UK VIDEO RENTAL |
| Name | Discs | |
|---|---|---|
Land of the Dead |
15 Feature |
DVD Information
| Rental release: | 26 Dec 2005 |
|---|---|
| Main languages: | English |
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LOVEFiLM Review
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By Tom Charity from LOVEFiLMGeorge Andrew Romero takes his zombies seriously. With 2005's Land of the Dead, Romero positions the bulk of his story in a giant skyscraper which houses the last humans left on the planet.
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Most helpful review
FUN!
By a customer from camden , 11 Oct 2005[Highly rated reviewer]
So Land of The Dead eh?
I liked it.
Yes it lacks some of the doomed fatalism of the other films, and yes it is very glossy (of course it is going to be pretty polished looking, they have a bigger budget than the last 3 put together, turbo-modern effects, and an A-List cast). But the claims that it scrimps on the gore and waters down the concept and content for a resident evil weaned teen audience are just a load of old rot.
Heads explode (man can those motherf**kers pop a skull), screaming victims get torn apart by armies of decaying ghouls, yard after yard of slimy wet innards get yummed up, there really are some grotesquely inventive eviscerations on show here. The screen is regularly awash with gore. He may have higher production values this time out, but Romero has not gone soft.
Land of The Dead is a tight, well-paced, well-executed entertainment; it’s a coffin-load of fun. Most surprisingly of all, the self aware and sympathetically presented zombies angle that they are going for that had filled my heart with fear (I really did think it was going to be total gash) kinda works. My friends and I often found our selves going “aw poor zombies” (tellingly Romero’s Black hero character that features in each film in the cycle is a zombie this time out, we are not supposed to root for the humans).
Despite a fairly bland and generic human hero (who has some fu*king excretable lines in the last scene), the cast and characters are all uniformly amusing (Argento, Hopper and Leguzamo et al all perform nicely), with snappy dialogue and likeable quirks (the Samoan squaddie’s every line is priceless “I came here to do something. Why are we standing around? Lets do something.”)
The heavy handed social commentary is all present and accounted for, Savini gets a cameo, it feels like a worthy addition to the series…
yeah there are naysayers but f*ck em, they are wrong. I am seeing it again next week and thoroughly looking forward to it.- Was this review helpful to you?
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All reviews
(219)An interesting, yet slightly flawed mix
By TheWatchman (490 reviews) from Suburbia , 13 Jan 2013First of all, let me say that I’m a big zombie movie fan. And, as a big zombie movie fan, I’m naturally a fan of the ‘grandfather of modern zombie movies’ George A Romero. For those of you who don’t know, he gave us Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead – all largely regarded as classics in their own right/time. Now, nearly twenty years later (and among the influx of ‘modern’ post-nineties zombie films, he brings us in fourth instalment in the saga ‘Land of the Dead.’ This is set after the living dead have taken over the world and the last human survivors have held up in a large city with high walls and rivers on all sides to protect themselves from the undead threat. The way I see Land of the Dead – it’s like a complicated jigsaw puzzle that’s all there, yet somehow doesn’t fit together properly. There are a lot of good bits in the film: the characters are good (yet under-developed), the setting is good (yet under-used), the story is good (yet doesn’t really go in any one direction). The whole film, although an enjoyable entry in the series, just seems a little off, as if George just missed an opportunity to make Land of the Dead as truly great as its three predecessors. A lot of criticism falls on the zombies. People don’t like the way they’re ‘evolved,’ i. e. they’ve started thinking more than your average ‘walker.’ However, anyone who’s seen Day of the Dead and remembers a zombie called ‘Bub’ will know that they’ve started to think about new ways to get their prey. Perhaps the biggest problem is that, despite George normally being quite thorough in his story-telling, has left large gaps which defy logic. The characters do some damn silly things which probably wouldn’t happen in real life. This somehow degrades the whole feel of the film and reduces it to just another slasher film where stupid people do stupid things which result in them getting killed simply to add gore to a film. I didn’t hate Land of the Dead. Far from it. I’m one of the people who sticks up for it on internet message boards. However, I will accept that it has its flaws and could have been fixed with a little tightening on some areas of the script and expanded on other areas which are genuinely interesting. The fact is that George A Romero needed a financially viable hit so that people would still give him money to make further films. Therefore, instead of sticking to a film that would simply be enjoyed by die-hard zombie enthusiasts (such as myself!), he made a film that was more appealing to the masses. This resulted in a film that was slightly more ‘Resident Evil’ than ‘… of the Dead.’ Don’t hate it, just do your best to accept that it’s not perfect, but still a damn sight better than 90% of the numerous zombie B-movie cash-ins that are out there right now. (The truck/tank ‘Dead Reckoning’ is cool enough to warrant watching the film on its own – I want to drive it in the event of an undead uprising!)- Was this review helpful to you?
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More than just Zombie Cliches
By MagicLemur (46 reviews) from Banbury , 20 Sep 2011I don't think I'd have watched this film if a friend of mine hadn't made me. It seemed that it would be a bunch of slow-walking lame actors saying things like 'brains' and catching credulous bimbos who do not have the good sense to run.
Not only is this film more than that, it is actually a very watchable film. Having not encountered a George Romero film before (except via many inaccurate parodies), I wasn't aware that there is proper direction and a decent plot at its heart.
Although occasionally you may shout at the screen as the charactors end up splitting up or abandoning safety for stupid reasons, it is still compelling viewing and there is enough suspense, gore and horror to make a highly entertaining film.
It's also worth mentioning that there is almost a Greek fable quality to the film, with stupid selfish humans ending up being horribly mauled while the more enlightened humans escape the zombies' clutches.
Lastly there is the acting, with the guy who plays The Mentalist doing a sterling job as the lead, and Dennis Hopper doing his usual best as the villain of the film. Furthermore, none of the acting comes across as hammy, and I didn't see any scenes which were stilted or not believable.
To sum up, although slow-walking Zombie films may seem ten-a-penny, really the work of an original master is beyond the sordid cliches of his imitatots.
Like watching an original Wes Craven movie (as opposed to a franchised sequel), the watered-down version often marrs the original.
But if you're feating this film is a lemon, then don't worry - it's not.- Was this review helpful to you?
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An advanced course in zombiehood
By yrussell (27 reviews) from Iver, Bucks. , 28 Jul 2011Romero deserves credit because he wants to continue the zombie story, rather than simply repeating himself. Here, the story is set in a world where zombies have been a problem for a very long time, where the human survivors have split into the haves and have-nots, and the zombies are getting inexplicably smarter. You can see the Romero wants to explore the idea of the biology and psychology of these zombies (something I've seen in some of his other movies), as well as how the still-living society adapts to them (really, it's a commentary on American culture). It's an action movie, to be sure, but an unusually intelligent one.Nice to see Dennis Hopper playing the 'big man'.- Was this review helpful to you?
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It wasn't scary
By JayLow (122 reviews) , 08 Jul 2011George A Romero is the Davros of the zombie race and if he chooses to put a spin on the genre, then that's all right with me. And it's an intriguing spin - we've seen zombie outbreaks beginning, we've seen what happens 28 days later, we've seen what happens 28 weeks later and here Romero gives us 28 YEARS later (all at least 10!). Survivors have split into have and have-nots and the zombies have become as much prey as predator and, the big and, are becoming sentient.
Ok. That's a great premise. Thank you George A. Let's buckle up and enjoy the zombie fest with a twist. But there's a catch...
It doesn't work. When you start feeling sorry for the scariest looking zombie, you know there's a problem. These zombies aren't scary. In fact the whole film isn't scary, it's not even tense. And that, for a horror film, is a major, terminal, Houston-we-have-a-problem flaw!
What you end up with is a glossy post-apocalyptic sci-fi. And a fairly run of the mill one. The film does try hard to make it work - there's a bit of social commentary, a couple of shock moments, some really gratuitous gore, some really gratuitous lesbian kissing - but it's all too obvious...it's all too desperate.
Dennis Hopper also tries by chewing some scenery as the villain and John Leguizamo is great as an under-used anti-hero (far more watchable than Simon Baker's vanilla flavoured, beige coloured, dullsville hero). But it's not enough.
This is a horror film which isn't scary. And that's not a good twist on the genre at all.- Was this review helpful to you?
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Good film. worth watching!
By TomMoore (1 review) from Ely , 09 Feb 2011I really liked the idea of the film. a bit different to a normal zombie movie. seen not from the time of an outbreak but a while into the future and how they are attempting to rebuild. worth watching.- Was this review helpful to you?
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