Land of the Dead (2005)

If there ever was a flick that was over hyped during the 2005 summer movie season, it was the more or less remake of the 1985 zombie horror movie “Day of the Dead.” The original flick was ridiculous, overly long and an obviously cheap jack disaster. It was and is not a classic in any way. The 2005 version is the same as the original, except that its budget was much larger.

The only real difference between the two movies is that Day of the Dead concerned an underground bunker, Land of the Dead is about a walled city. This city is Pittsburgh, PA where the city’s elite reside in a skyscraper named “Fiddler’s Green.” There is no explanation in the flick on just how the city can survive despite the lack of sufficient farm land to sustain the inhabitants.

The world of Land of the Dead is an implausibly horrific one. Since the rest of the world has been overrun by undead zombies, the living have all gotten themselves holed up in the walled city of Pittsburgh. The wealthy all live in skyscrapers like Fiddler’s Green while everyone else have to tough it out on the streets.

Even more implausible is the nature of the walled city of Pittsburgh’s defense force. The defense is built around a single tank called “Dead Reckoning.” The men of the defense force are all mercenaries who were hired by the city’s leadership to defend the city from zombie attack. You would think that there would be more than just one tank to protect the city. Even worse is the idea that in a future when there is only one bastion of non-zombie humanity left, then there would be no need to hire mercenaries since the citizens would willingly volunteer to man the barricades. Besides all this, since the mercenaries were all hired from outside the city, then would that not mean that there must be other islands of freedom safe from the rampaging zombies? Clearly, this was not a well thought out aspect of Land of the Dead.

Even more poorly thought out is the ethnic and racial stereotyping that permeates Land of the Dead. It has slum dwelling Irish folk, an angry black man zombie and a loudmouthed young Puerto Rican. In addition to the stereotyping, there are tons of awful dialogue.

Essentially, Land of the Dead is a stupid movie that was obviously made for the sole purpose of making lots and lots of money. There clearly was zero artistic reasons for this movie and zero artistry was invested in it. Basically, the movie moguls behind it thought that they could pull a fast one on the movie going public and reap huge dividends. Thankfully, they miscalculated and Land of the Dead turned out to be a disappointment at the box office. If you decide to rent this movie out, you will be disappointed as well, unless you are really into bad movies.