George Romero's fourth installment in his blockbuster horror cult series disappoints on so many levels. What started out as campy, tongue-in-cheek, rainy Friday night flick has turned into an over-budgeted, over-stylized, oversexed mess. The survivors of the attacks by living dead have contained themselves in a half poverty-stricken, half utopian new city. They've employed defense teams to keep the zombies out of their new wonderland. They've even got a mile-long tank/train doohickey equipped with missiles, machine guns, grenades, and, yes you guessed it, fireworks. But now the zombies are ticked. Why should they be shunned from the Marx-inspired paradise just because they get some cravings for flesh every now and then? It's not fair. So they decide to invade the city and show the humans who's boss. Although a humorous performance form Dennis Hopper and marvolous make-up effects from the legendary effects god Tom Savini, this falls far short of what it could have been. (*1/2 out of ****)
Recommendations- Night of the Living Dead, 28 Days Later, Zombie (Italian film, aka Zombi 2).
3 comments:
hey i like your blog but i think you need to re-evaluate this flick. 1st of all, it was *under*budgeted at only 15million, when the contemporaneous Dawn of the Dead remake had a budget of about 30million. Romero was disappointed that he had to tone down his epic script after having to do it previously on Day. That's why the special effects left more to be desired(there was ALOT of cg in this film, almost no real blood used). Savini did not do the special effects in this film, he merely cameoed. Greg Nicotero(Evil Dead), former protege of Savini, did the special effects w/ his KNB team. But like I said they had to use alot of CG. From you're review, you kinda sound like you're not a huge fan of Romero's previous trilogy, so your dissapointment in Land is understandable. It really should be seen though, as the 4th installment of a series. So if you're not familiar w/ the previous installments(making an inference here, have not had time to check out you're complete blog), please check them out, preferably chronologically, you won't be dissapointed.
I really liked this, not nearly to the level of Dawn, though.
Totally agree with Anonymouse. This movie - at a time when 90's, 2000's horror flicks suck - this was fun. I say fun, because I'm very rarly "scared" by an American picture these days. It's predessesors including the New "Dawn OFD" I give great kudos to as well.
P.S. Hell is for pussies!
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