First up was the capstone to Romero's zombie zigguraut, Land of the Dead.
Reaction to this one among the Zomberati ranged from profoundly negative to red hot affronted rage that it dared trace its lineage to Night of the Living Dead & Dawn of the Dead.
I'm going to draw fire from my compatriots by saying I thought it was fine.
It wasn't a great movie, no Night or Dawn certainly, but I'd rank it with Day of the Dead- an interesting film with some problems that could have been solved by better casting and a few more re-writes.
The first two in the series are genuinely great because they worked on multiple levels- as straight-ahead horror movies and on a metaphorical level as indictments of contemporary society.
Land is only modestly successful as a horror movie- it was missing much of the verve and humor that fueled Romero's earlier works. But it works just fine as a scathing indictment of post-millenial American culture.
Where Dawn feasted on the soft underbelly of consumer culture, Land addresses the increasing disparity between the average citizen and the corporate elites who increasingly run the country.
Seen only as a 'zombie movie' I'd call it a modest failure- it wasn't particularly scary, and the carnage wasn't up to the high standards of earlier installments.
But I still rate it as a good watch.
Just use this decoder ring:
zombies = underclass
humans = middle class
corporate overlords = corporate overlords
Next up is the recent remake of Day of the Dead, which the Zomberati have all given their stamp of approval and which I'm predisposed to dislike based on my deeply held belief that there's no point in re-making a truly great movie.
Will report back later.
Hey, that was pretty good!
I still don't know why anyone needs to remake a great flick, but at least they did it with energy and style. It pretty much pitched the depth of the original overboard and made up the lost ballast with action and explosions, which certainly have their place in the Zombie firmament.
It also had the things Land was missing, in spades...a well polished script, quality acting top to bottom and a couple of standout scenes including a fabulous pre-credit sequence that set up the senario in compact strokes, setting the stage without taking forfuckingever to explain every goddamn thing under the sun.
On the Zombometer I'd rank it just below the elite, above the well made but flawed 28 Days but below creme de la creme like Night, Dawn and Shawn of the Dead (which has the singular honor of being the only zombie movie the wife enjoyed as much as I did).
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