Land of the Dead: a review

Somewhere in between Day of the Dead and Land of the Dead, George Romero was bitten by a zombie. It’s the only way to explain it.

Here’s some issues, big and small, that I had with the movie. There are spoilers, but that doesn’t really matter since you should avoid this movie like the plague — watching it will lower your IQ.

• Skateboards. A few different people skateboard in this film. Problem: at the start of the movie, someone is skateboarding in a zombie infested town. Have you ever skateboarded? If you have, you know that you can’t skate gravel. Or dirt. Or mud. Or on a mass of leaves. In other words, all the things you’d except to find in a town that’s been abandoned for ten frigging years! (Or however long it’s been — it’s never actually stated in the movie.) But nope, I guess they’ve got functioning robot street sweepers!

  And let’s not forget when there’s a guy waiting in a shack. After he hears a noise, he gets up, jumps on his skateboard, raises his gun (does he not know about Newton’s third law?) and skates the five feet toward the door. He gets what he deserves.

• Automatic weapons. It’s common knowledge that the only way to kill a zombie is to shoot it in the head, so what does everybody do? They fire on full auto toward’s the zombies’ torsos, and act shocked when nothing happens.
• So this dude steals a APC-like vehicle that’s armed with middle launchers, and says he’ll blow up the city unless… he gets two million dollars in cash. The only thing I can say to that is: WHAT! THE! FUCK!

  What the FUCK are you going to do with money in the middle of zombie infested America, huh? Even IF there still was a functioning economy in the city itself (a pretty big if — more on that in a bit) he can’t exactly go back to the place he just threatened to destroy. Completely illogical.

• Economy. Oh man, I’m not sure where to begin… In fact, I don’t think I can write anything on this subject other then “what the fuck!?” because it is just 100% the opposite of anything remotely plausible.
• Leadership. The city was manged by a board of directors that did… absoultley nothing? Along with an upper-class group of citizens that likewise did nothing except sit around and drink fine wine? Another WTF is called for.

And then there are countless incidents where characters act like utter morons for no good reason… and by “incidents” I mean “the whole damn movie.”

I’ve heard many people say that the “…of the Dead” movies are a metaphorical, satirical take on life and society.

If they mean that life really, really SUCKS, then I guess they’re right.