UNDEAD ON ARRIVAL
Flesh-eating zombies are back, but do they have any real bite?
For sci-fi fans, the term "Holy Trilogy" refers to the original three Star Wars films, but to horror aficionados, it's George A. Romero's original "Dead" movies: Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978), and Day of the Dead (1985). Romero didn't invent the on-screen zombie, but he redefined the archetype, imbuing the walking corpses with a hunger for human flesh, a vulnerability to bullets through the brain (and nothing else!), and the ability to spread the zombie disease to ordinary humans via biting.
Making each of the movies in a different decade, he also managed to reflect the changing zeitgeist, with Night taking on racial-mistrust issues, Dawn poking fun at consumerism, and Day reflecting the nuclear nightmares of the Reagan era. For years, Romero talked about making a fourth film that would reflect the '90s attitude of ignoring the problem, treating the zombies like the homeless.
Now Land of the Dead is finally here, and I'd love to tell you that the master is back to kick ass and take names, but it just isn't the case. Not that Romero has wimped out - Greg Nicotero's gore effects are as creatively bloody as you could hope for. It's just that the old master seems to have had so many ideas for a sequel over the years that he crammed too many of them in at once, and, rather than let social statements remain a subtext, they're now very much at the forefront, pushing the zombies to the background.
Here, the principal conflict is not between man and corpse, but between rich fat cat Kaufman (Dennis Hopper), who runs a walled-off city, and his disgruntled ex-employee Cholo (John Leguizamo). When Kaufman turns out to be a cartoonishly unsubtle racist, Cholo turns terrorist (leading to more belabored metaphors) and hijacks Kaufman's prize weapon, an armored tank dubbed Dead Reckoning. Kaufman hires Cholo's ex-comrade Riley (Simon Baker) to steal it back.
Meanwhile, the zombies are becoming smarter, under the "leadership" of Big Daddy (Eugene A. Clark). This is a misstep: Romero actually wants us to start feeling sympathy for the zombies, even though, y'know, they're flesh-eating monsters who kill innocent people. Also, Clark is not a good actor; he behaves like a grade-schooler trying to impersonate King Kong, and his bald head sweats, which is uncharacteristic for a dead man. At the risk of being lynched by hardcore horror freaks ... the Dawn of the Dead remake was more effective. So was 28 Days Later. And Resident Evil.
Fortunately, there are other zombie options these days. As Romero's films have gained a cult following across the globe, new filmmakers are being inspired. Australia's Peter and Michael Spierig have come up with an interesting twist in Undead, wherein a meteor shower hits a small Aussie town, creating not only zombies, but strange beams of light, mysterious walls, and an invasion of scary hooded figures. The tone veers unevenly at times between comedy and horror, but the story keeps you guessing up until the end, and any movie that utilizes zombie fish earns my kudos.
Also new to DVD is an Irish zombie movie entitled Dead Meat that's easily the most fun of the three. In it, a mutant strain of mad cow disease is the culprit, and director Conor McMahon never loses sight of the fact that the film's raison d'etre is killing zombies. Irish government funds helped to pay for this one, which makes me respect the Irish all the more.
Published: 06/30/2005
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