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George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead (2005) is a horrible movie. it is absolutely ridiculous for a number of reasons, but the most important factor: believability. in most horror or sci-fi or fantasy movies, the “reader” is supplied with a new sense of reality or a new set of circumstances and assumptions. like, in one supposed world, there might be some futuristic crime fighting tool where psychic humans float in a pool of amniotic fluid and instruments read their minds and learn of crimes before they are committed. in that world, i can suspend my disbelief and imagine that to be true, but after i’ve suspended it, things from that point on need to make sense. the people in that world need to make decisions that make sense for people in that world. that is where the many problems lie with Land of the Dead.

Land of the Dead is a zombie movie with zombies (named: walkers, stench, the dead), but the whole “take-over and kill everyone” process that takes up the first half of most zombie movies takes place in the first 2 minutes during a montage entitled “some time ago.” after the blurry scenes of death and fuzzy audio of news reporters, we end up at “today,” and the movie begins.

the premise, it seems, is a world where zombies attacked “some time ago” and now the remaining people left alive are seasoned veterans of this new, deeply changed land of the dead. at this point, the premise seems pretty cool. the movie opens to a group of army type figures gearing-up for a siege on a town that is still flush with resources, and zombies. they ride in with plenty of guns and motorbikes and tanks and play target practice on the dumb zombies. they distract them with “sky flowers” (fireworks) and ride right past them to the grocery store to stock up on canned goods. my only problem with this basic premise: why are there any zombies alive at all? it’s been at least 15 years (they don’t say exactly), and the zombies are just as stupid as they were before, they only take one shot to the head to kill, and the humans have what seems to be enough ammo to last them ’til the end of their days. on top of that, most of the people that get caught by the zombies are torn to pieces and eaten, so the zombies obviously aren’t creating more zombies as quickly as they need to be. after 15 years of an opponent-less war against zombies, you’d think they’d all be gone.

the ridiculousness continues when the main character, Riley, discovers that one of his close friends on this raid is bitten by a zombie, but not dead yet. Riley is very upset and tries to pick him up and “save him,” but before Riley has a chance, his friend pulls out his side arm and shoots himself in the head. “I don’t want to become one of those things,” he says. what doesn’t make sense is that Riley, a veteran of the zombie war, still thinks that he can save someone after they’ve been bit. that is ridiculous. someone in his position would be the first to kill someone who’s been infected to protect those that haven’t, even if that person was a friend.

this pattern continues throughout the entire movie: people that are on watch are listening to the loud music through head phones and get ambushed; people entering a secure vehicle don’t close doors behind them; people are always letting themselves get snuck up on, never turning around at the right moment, and getting bitten; people don’t kill zombies because “[the zombies] are simply looking for a place to go… just like [the humans]“; et cetera. all of this happens in a world where zombies have been roaming the earth as a threat for at least 15 years. this is a zombie-war torn world and these are mostly soldiers we are talking about. what the hell? these “soldiers” would be at the top of their game even if they were fighting a real enemy, BUT THEY’RE NOT!! they’ve been fighting lifeless, mindless zombies for over 10 years now and somehow they are still just a bunch of stupid fucking morons.

a few other areas need attention. at most times the zombies move slowly like zombies are supposed to: one leg at a time and wobbly. but some how, when the zombies are near any humans they all of a sudden transport like 50 feet ahead of where they were and are all of a sudden on top of people and eating them. also, the city in the middle of zombie infestation has extremely well guarded electric fences and moats, but then some areas only have a small fence or a single piece of plywood in place as defense. ridiculous.

by the end of the movie, you just want it to be over. this fantasy/horror world that is created becomes cartoonish and i just didn’t believe that it existed. these people were morons and very little of what they did made sense. the scare tactics were cheap and tired, and maybe only once did i jump in my seat. Land of the Dead was horrible and it really couldn’t have been over sooner.