Review of Land of the Dead
Possible spoiler warning: I try not to get into details below, but some people may want to avoid reading this until after they've seen the movie.
So, we saw Land of the Dead last Friday. I enjoyed the movie, though I still like Dawn of the Dead (the original and the remake) more. Some of the characters where fairly clichéd, but others were pretty cool, like "Charlie" and "Pillsbury".
The thing for me, though, is that with this film the series seems to have shifted from horror to more action/sci-fi. The biggest reason for this is the fact that at the point when the movie takes place, zombies are considered to be commonplace. They aren't a horrific deviation from day-to-day life - they're a part of day-to-day life. Now, this isn't a problem with the movie itself - it's a natural progression of events; you actually saw this to a certain degree with Day of the Dead. It's still an interesting and creepy setting, but it's not really horror any longer, at least in the conventional sense.
The other thing that causes this movie to deviate from the horror genre is the "evolution" of the zombies. This may or may not be a "natural progression" of events - who knows if this would happen, or if it's feasible that it would have happened in the relatively short timeframe from when it all started in Night of the Living Dead to this movie. But given that the zombies are manifesting intelligence and, seemingly showing emotion (at least for "Big Daddy"), they are no longer the mindless, relentless walking dead but something else. Something even to be pitied, if one buys in to the hippy, zombie-hugging ending (which was the only part of the movie I truly didn't care for).
Overall, I guess it's still a "horror" movie, just not the type of "horror" that a zombie movie tends to be. I have no desire to quibble over what a genre label means, particularly since such definitions are so subjective.
I'd rate Land of the Dead...um...hmm...I suppose I need a rating system. I guess I'll go with 1-3 stars, like so:
1: Didn't like it; don't waste your time or money
2: Liked it; it's worth seeing, but not a big loss if you miss it
3: Loved it; definitely worth seeing
So, Land of the Dead gets 2 stars.
So, we saw Land of the Dead last Friday. I enjoyed the movie, though I still like Dawn of the Dead (the original and the remake) more. Some of the characters where fairly clichéd, but others were pretty cool, like "Charlie" and "Pillsbury".
The thing for me, though, is that with this film the series seems to have shifted from horror to more action/sci-fi. The biggest reason for this is the fact that at the point when the movie takes place, zombies are considered to be commonplace. They aren't a horrific deviation from day-to-day life - they're a part of day-to-day life. Now, this isn't a problem with the movie itself - it's a natural progression of events; you actually saw this to a certain degree with Day of the Dead. It's still an interesting and creepy setting, but it's not really horror any longer, at least in the conventional sense.
The other thing that causes this movie to deviate from the horror genre is the "evolution" of the zombies. This may or may not be a "natural progression" of events - who knows if this would happen, or if it's feasible that it would have happened in the relatively short timeframe from when it all started in Night of the Living Dead to this movie. But given that the zombies are manifesting intelligence and, seemingly showing emotion (at least for "Big Daddy"), they are no longer the mindless, relentless walking dead but something else. Something even to be pitied, if one buys in to the hippy, zombie-hugging ending (which was the only part of the movie I truly didn't care for).
Overall, I guess it's still a "horror" movie, just not the type of "horror" that a zombie movie tends to be. I have no desire to quibble over what a genre label means, particularly since such definitions are so subjective.
I'd rate Land of the Dead...um...hmm...I suppose I need a rating system. I guess I'll go with 1-3 stars, like so:
1: Didn't like it; don't waste your time or money
2: Liked it; it's worth seeing, but not a big loss if you miss it
3: Loved it; definitely worth seeing
So, Land of the Dead gets 2 stars.
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