Land of the Dead (2005) Review

Film Title: Land of the Dead

Year of Production: 2005

Director: George A. Romero

Genre/Genres: Horror/Sci-fi

Humans have lost the battle against zombies, who’ve developed advanced military tactics, and are barricaded in a city ruled by ruthless despots.

The two scenes that impressed me most were the scenes that I felt conveyed the most power, largely down to the auteur effect of George A. Romero. The first scene I was most impressed with was the scene where ‘Cholo’ one of the leading characters decided to take himself and few of team to an off-license store. In the middle of a zombie apocalypse this showed a lot of greed, especially with the only thing he had taken being alcohol that he was going to sell on. This scene resulted in the biting of one of his team by a zombie, resulting in his death. To me, this scene was very powerful because it immediately shows George A. Romero’s opinion on consumerism. This scene very much conveys the greed of consumerism is something that is major problem which he voiced throughout this scene. My other scene that I was most impressed with was the scene right at the very end of the film where there is a point of view shot of Riley looking through his binoculars and sees the black protagonist zombie and he says “They’re looking for a place to go. Just like us.” This is again voicing the opinions of George A. Romero. The black man is the only zombie that drove the zombies forward; he killed all the people perceived to be bad, making him a hero, which goes against almost all horror conventions.

This film was a great insight into understanding horror. There were many different features that contributed to this film, for example: Expressionist angles (opening zombie scene), along with the quick editing and slow moving monsters also in that scene. There was clear body horror throughout the film but we were first introduced in the first shooting scene, there was quick editing after the fireworks stopped at ten minutes in, there was very effective collision cutting in the shopping scene that I mentioned on the previous question. There was both contrapuntal music (when the advert comes on at 7 minutes) and parallel music (building tension at 42 minutes). There was a theme of ‘a threat to yourself and family’ where the black zombie starts working a gun at 18 minutes. Riley is perceived to be the male hero shown throughout the film but especially when he saves the woman when she is about to get eaten by zombies. The woman he saved, named Slack was the final girl shown by her fighting skills and toughness in that same scene. There was a creepy, enclosed location called the Kaufman building shown by a point of view shot from the black zombie looking up at the massive structure. All of these factors made it a great film to analyse because it had many conventions of horror but it also manipulated a few, making it very interesting to watch.

The aspects that stood out most for me was the hidden auteur feelings, getting across the beliefs and feelings of George A. Romero. I thought throughout the film this was very effective, making the film a lot more interesting to watch and analyse, for instance in the scene where there is an argument between Riley and Cholo about Cholo going to the shop and risking their lives. Cholo later on died, therefore showing Romero’s thoughts on consumerism. I would also like to make the characters in my film as interesting as the ones in this film, you get really attached to them, this is shown by the scene where Riley is talking about Charlie saving his life just as much as he has his, calling them ‘”equal”.

There aren’t many aspects of this film that I would like to avoid but I would avoid the excessive use of body horror. I think that this takes the edge off the horror and makes it less scary, as seen in the scene with the female victim named ‘Motown’ at 1 hour 4 minutes. Another aspect I would avoid is the use of violence along with montage as much as it was used. Again, it took the edge off the horror and made it less scary, it didn’t allow for mind tricks to kick in. For instance, in the scene where the zombies reach the main city, they almost kill everything in their path.

I think the best moment in this film were the black zombie blows up both Cholo and Mr. Kaufman, resulting in the burning money flying everywhere. This is an incredibly powerful scene on Romero’s views on consumerism and racism; it shows the amount of power the black zombie has by making him the protagonist, and him blowing up the consumerists. This protagonist really creates a strong theme showing George A. Romero’s anti-racist beliefs towards these subjects. I can recreate this in my trailer by doing to the same as Romero, putting my soul into it, to get my feelings across.

George A. Romero is a very clever director and his influence as an auteur was vital to this film. Romero often links heavily to his beliefs and the context at the time. For instance in Dawn of the Dead (1978) he often addressed issues about racism and consumerism at the time, this was when there were almost no black heroes in films, black people were still seen as secondary to the whites. Also this was with the rise of shopping malls, meaning that consumerism was becoming more of an problem.  This is where his auteur style came in, he put all of his beliefs into his films and ‘Land of the Dead’ (2005) is another replication of this. Land of the dead has the same underlying social commentary as Dawn of the Dead with addressing the issues of racism and consumerism. However, they were addressed for different context, in 2005 there were the Cronella riots which were 0over racial and ethnic tensions, plus consumerism was at all-time high, becoming more apparent and influential as ever. Along with his own beliefs this then become a feature of LOTD, shown by these example: 9 minutes into the film there is a scene where the protagonist black zombie starts to take control. They use fireworks as distractions for the zombies and it fooled all of them but hi m, which led to the first shooting scene. He was smarter than all the other zombies and he began to teach them. This shows the black zombie has the most power and is extremely influential; showing Romero’s anti-racism beliefs which links strongly to Romero himself due to his half-Cuban heritage. Another example is a scene on 12 minutes where the Latin American Cholo takes himself and a couple of his team to an abandoned off-license store, in the middle of a mission. He says “shop till you drop” just before opening a cupboard and getting attacked by a zombie, narrowly missing death. Further into the scene one of his team reach behind the counter to get some more stuff, he gets bitten by a zombie and then commits suicide. This again shows Romero’s beliefs that people are too materialistic. My last example is a scene I have already talked about but is probably the most powerful scene in the film. This is the scene where the black zombie blows up both Cholo and Mr. Kaufman along with the bags of money, the money then explodes on fire in front of the camera. This rolls both Romero’s thoughts on racism and consumerism into one. It firstly shows black power with the black zombie killing two white individuals; secondly it shows that money means nothing in the end, it just makes you greedy and doesn’t make you any better of a person.