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PLOT: In a post-zombified world, the zombies have begun to be motivated by revenge and act with a rudimentary unified purpose. And a walled-off city of uninfected humans is suddenly not so safe.
You might envision George A. Romero on the sidelines steaming over the new generation of kids who've appropriated his zombie genre, with movies like 28 Days Later, Resident Evil and even a nihilistic remake of his own Dawn Of The Dead.
Or maybe he's flattered, considering he has two New Wave zombie guys -- Shaun Of The Dead's Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright -- in his new film Land Of The Dead as zombie extras.
Whatever motivated him, the man who gave us the original Night Of The Living Dead has created his first addition to the series in more than two decades with Land Of The Dead. And it's a hearty, bloody, wry mess of a movie that stands out from its contemporaries in a few key ways.
For starters, it turns thumbs down on those "running zombies" that are so in vogue these days. These specimens of Living Dead lurch inexorably, which is strangely creepier than being run down by a rotting Donovan Bailey.
Another difference is that Land Of The Dead is infused with class politics, a favourite theme of Romero and one that has disappeared these days from entertainment in general.
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It's what made his original Dawn Of The Dead memorable, and what was missing from the otherwise terrific remake (C'mon, zombies in a mall? Can you say crass consumerism?)
In Land Of The Dead, class consciousness raises its head on both sides. As the movie opens, we find human raiders, led by guys named Riley and Cholo (Simon Baker and John Leguizamo) hitting zombie-occupied towns for supplies and shooting at the walking corpses gleefully and indiscriminately. And we meet a zombified gas station attendant named Big Daddy (Eugene Clark) who's clearly had enough of being shot at by humans.
Clark is called upon to make an angry guttural cry to the heavens each time one of his "friends" is killed. It's his big "line," and he uses it about a dozen times. Big Daddy becomes the zombie leader, showing them how to use tools to smash things and to ignore distractions in their quest to eat humans.
It's a strange stab at moral equivalency (What, the zombies are victims now? What are your thoughts on Al Qaeda, George?). But meanwhile, inside the unnamed city (actually Toronto), humans continue to divide into haves and have-nots. Literally at the top of the "haves" -- in his penthouse -- sits Kaufman (Dennis Hopper), a gangster-in-a-suit who runs the city's vices and rules a condo development where the privileged lord it over the other refugees. Hopper has all the best lines, even more than Leguizamo, who usually can be counted on for a fair bit of riffing.
Less thrilling are the male and female leads, Baker and Asia Argento (daughter of Italian horror legend Dario Argento), who bring about 25 watts of energy to their delivery. Robert Joy has moments as Riley's mentally-challenged right-hand man.
But Romero's real forte is gore, and here he delivers. Zombies reach down a man's mouth for goodies, sausages slide out of abdomens willy-nilly. We're talking sinew, fingers, etc., all photographed with a cinematic glee.
It's not for everybody, but horror fans have been subjected to a lot worse lately.
(This film is rated 18-A)