The 2000’s showed a major zomie renaissance. We’d had a revival of the zombie genre with “28 Days Later” and Zach Snyder’s “Dawn of the Dead” remake and “The Walking Dead” on comic shelves. So when I heard George Romero, the creator of Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, etc was making a followup film, I got super excited.
The film was considered a “success,” making $40 million and receiving positive reviews from most critics (a 71% score on Rotten Tomatoes), but somehow seems to be be forgotten amongst its modern brethren. With a great cast and oozing with social commentary, this may be my favorite of the Romero zombie films.
Here’s the cast and the plot: after the zombie apocalypse, people in the city of Pittsburgh are divided into two areas: the lavish paradish “Fiddler’s Green” and the rest are slums. Dennis Hopper rules the city from Fiddler’s Green, and part of his power is weilded through sponsorship of a team who goes out scavenging through the countryside in an armored vehicle called The Dead Reckoning. Go one enough missions for the power elite (and survive) and you can earn your way into Fiddler’s Green, too, which second-in-command John Lequizamo is very close to accomplishing.
Meanwhile first-in-command Simon Baker (who just a few years later would become tv’s The Mentalist) is worried– he notices some of the zombies are starting to reason, to figure things out. Up until then, the zombies are easily defeated by launching fireworks, which they are fascinated by, and then easily killed. But some of them are learning to ignore them, led by a “revolutionary” zombie. (Seriously, I don’t know how to better describe him, though the script calls him “Big Daddy”) And they learn how to tear through fences, other defensive perimeters, and even cross bodies of water– the main defense of the city being rivers on two sides.
Anyway, you see where this is going. The haves vs the have nots, zombies attack, and so on.
There are some trite and predictable things that happen in the final act, which makes me a little disappointed, but overall the positives outweigh the negatives here. The best part is Dennis Hopper in full-on villain mode. And second, there is a decent amount of action in this. And finally, the social commentary is incisive.
For those who didn’t get enough of said social commentary in this film, we’re in luck. Marvel Comics had previously announced a new zombie comic book written by Romero and illustrated by Alex Maleev (yes!) called “Empire of the Dead.” Over the weekend at NYCC in the “Cup o Joe” panel with editor Joe Quesada, Romero discussed how the book would continue to play with the themes of the haves and the have nots.
Considering what has happened in the last 10 years with income inequality and wealth distribution, I can’t think of a better topic to tackle.
If you’re tired of the “fast zombies” and want something more classic zombie, but don’t want to quite go so far as the black and white “Night of the Living Dead” or the 70’s “Dawn of the Dead”, then I would suggest “Land of the Dead.” It is currently available streaming on Netflix Instant Watch and is well worth your time if you’re looking for a good zombie movie this Halloween season.