Skip to main contentTwenty years ago, my two best friends and I sneaked into the Avon Theatre in Stamford, Conn., to see Day of the Dead, the final installment in filmmaker George Romero's zombie trilogy. All of us were 16 years old, and even though the film was unrated-which in those days meant no one under 17 admitted, period-there was no stopping us. It wasn't just the challenge of getting into a movie we weren't supposed to be seeing, it was the challenge of the film itself.
Looking back, I realize that Romero's films came along at a time when we were caught in the limbo of adolescence-no longer boys, but not quite men-when many of the things that captured our imagination when we were younger had lost their allure. Star Wars had let us down two years earlier with Return of the Jedi and its Ewoks, and Indiana Jones' second adventure, The Temple of Doom (1984), was an even bigger disappointment.
But Day of the Dead, a sequel to 1968's Night of the Living Dead and 1978's Dawn of the Dead, was going to be different-it had to be different. Here was a movie from a filmmaker who had shown us that life was more complicated than the traditional Manichaean opposition of good vs. evil we had grown up with-and he showed it to us with severed limbs and spilled guts. The series was initially conceived as a trilogy, with the original script for Day of the Dead bringing the zombie plague to an end, leaving a sense of cynical hope that mankind was being given some sort of second chance. But because of massive budget cuts, that version was never shot. What we saw was still a great film-a cerebral thriller that replaced the hack-'em-and-stack-'em aesthetics of other horror films, like A Nightmare on Elm Street, with social commentary. Sure, Day of the Dead was a story about zombies, but it was really about living in a world plagued with AIDS and threatened with nuclear destruction. It was a film about finding the strength to endure when all hope is lost. And the fact that we teenagers understood this made the film that much cooler.
For two decades, like so many other die-hard Romero fans, I hoped he would be given the opportunity to revisit the genre that he defined, leading to such films by other directors as Return of the Living Dead, Dead Alive, 28 Days Later, the remake of Dawn of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead and Resident Evil (which Romero was originally to direct). But when it was announced that Romero was in fact getting back behind the camera for another zombie film, I was apprehensive.
Coming on the 20th anniversary of Day of the Dead and on the heels of George Lucas' monumentally disappointing return to the Star Wars saga, my fear was that Romero would have lost his edge. Instead, the 65-year-old director has done something remarkable. With an estimated budget of a mere $15 million, he accomplishes what Lucas was unable to do with nearly 10 times that amount-Romero has made a movie that needs no excuses. Special effects don't come at the expense of storytelling. Characters don't utter cringe-inducing dialogue. And most important, Romero keeps his underlying political agenda from degenerating into ham-fisted polemics delivered with the subtlety of a jackhammer enema.
Land of the Dead is set a number of years after the dead have risen, and borrows much from the original Day of the Dead script. Society has fallen, but in the aftermath of the unthinkable horror, the human race has somehow managed to rebuild itself. In the heavily fortified city of Fiddle Green, it's almost like nothing ever happened-if it weren't for the electric fences and armed guards that keep the "walkers" from getting into the city, that is, life would almost seem normal. Too normal, in fact, as it quickly becomes apparent that this new society has been rebuilt according to the same social class system that existed before the dead rose from the grave. There are still the very rich, who live in highrise apartments and enjoy the finer things in life. And then there are the poor, living in the shadow of the rich, hoping to climb the social ladder that will transform them from the have-nots to the haves.
Outside the barricades of the city is a deadly threat that goes largely ignored-out of sight, out of mind-as day-to-day life continues as usual. But the zombies that were once nothing more than unthinking, shambling masses are now evolving into something different. They can now think and communicate. And with the ability to act and react, they are no longer content with being used for target practice. This new breed of living dead are in part a metaphor for the societal plagues like homelessness and poverty that threaten to consume us. Yet at the same time, they are a strange type of protagonist in Romero's vision, like the oppressed masses who finally decide to rise up.
Romero's work has always used horror and fantasy as a metaphoric vehicle for deeper social commentary and emotional rumination. There's never much overt sermonizing in any of his films, but mixed with the guts and gore there's a subtext and societal observations. For example, Romero's The Crazies, a story about a biological-weapons mishap in a small Pennsylvania town, seems more relevant today than it was in 1973, serving as an eerie glimpse at the current state of affairs in Iraq. On the surface, Martin, which was released in 1977, may be a vampire movie, but it's really about disaffected youth, alienation and loneliness. And of course, there are the Dead films, each a statement about the era in which it was made.
Land of the Dead continues the director's subversive take on horror filmmaking. He has created a brilliant, nightmarish world where live humans are thrown into cages with chained zombies who fight it out for "dinner." It's an almost post-apocalyptic society where a team of mercenaries forage the countryside in a tricked-out truck christened Dead Reckoning. Nestled above the city in his luxury apartment, rich businessman Kaufman (Dennis Hopper) controls Fiddle Green. He pays the military force that guards the city and the mercenaries who bring back the supplies needed for survival. Kaufman also controls the gambling, prostitution and drugs that flood the streets of the city, keeping the working class forever in a state of anesthetized poverty. This world is not unlike the one we live in now, where consumerism is used to mask the real threats, and affluent powerbrokers promise to protect us from the things we fear the most. In fact, if you remove the zombies from the equation, Romero's world of oppressive poverty and rampant greed begins to look a lot like post-9/11 America.
Two decades is a long time to wait for any film or filmmaker. But for Land of the Dead and George Romero, the wait was worth it. Romero delivers a film that mixes guts and gore with character and social commentary. He proves once again that horror films don't have to forsake intelligence for frights. And most important, he delivers one of the best horror films ever. He delivers on the promise he offered the last time he took us to the land of the dead.
WWeek 2015