Land Of The Dead (Director's Cut) (DVD)

...out and to protect the land of the living. Zombies are gaining in intelligence, they are not the inferior beings that they once were and as time elapses they are constantly becoming an increasingly advanced society. A revolution is planned to overthrow the leadership of the living, no one is safe as this film unfolds; the zombies are a constant thorn in the side of those still alive and remaining undead may soon prove an incredibly difficult task. ...
...'Undead Again: The Making of Land of the Dead', an interesting insight into how the film was made including insights from some of the actors, the films writer and director George A. Romero and producer Mark Canton also. It's not entirely engaging to hear about how and why they made this film the way that they did, but to hear George A. Romero's thought process and intentions in making the poor film that is 'Land of the Dead' I found to be quite interesting ... more

My obsession with zombie films started some years ago now when I was browsing through the channels late one night and stumbled across George A. Romero's 1978 telling of 'Dawn of the Dead'. The film has since been successfully remade by Zack Snyder and his own adaptation of that film was released in 2004. An interest in the George A. Romero films of old was thus renewed, and in 2005 the much anticipated 'Land of the Dead' was released, a follow up to the film 'Day of the Dead' which was released some 20 years previously. When released at the cinema I did not go out of my way to view this film, I had a bad feeling about it and therefore left it until the DVD was released in order to give the film a go.

'Land of the Dead' is aptly titled as zombies have now taken over the world as we know it, with few still alive and well a walled-in city has been created in order to keep zombies out and to protect the land of the living. Zombies are gaining in intelligence, they are not the inferior beings that they once were and as time elapses they are constantly becoming an increasingly advanced society. A revolution is planned to overthrow the leadership of the living, no one is safe as this film unfolds; the zombies are a constant thorn in the side of those still alive and remaining undead may soon prove an incredibly difficult task.

This film had a massive budget of 16 million dollars, but did the end result really warrant the great expenditure? In my opinion 'Land of the Dead' is a massive let down of a film and as I watched it I could feel nothing but disappointment. I had a feeling that it wouldn't be too great, but still I remained as optimistic as possible before obtaining this on DVD and when I sat down on an evening to watch it I was actually greatly excited. A few friends of mine that had seen it at the cinema seemed greatly impressed, and I had began to think that my refusal to see this at the cinema had perhaps been a mistake. This was obviously not the case, for the majority of the duration of 'Land of the Dead' I actually found myself to be really rather bored. It is not typical for a zombie film to bore me, and what should have been scaring and shocking me was instead merely sending me to sleep.

'Land of the Dead' can not be viewed as a horror film, but instead as a rather dull display of an action film. Some of the scenes are quite enjoyable in that the special effects are of a high standard and it is therefore a fascinating visual display, but the acting that is on offer here is incredibly poor and at all times a huge let down. No one really puts in an impressive performance whatsoever, and other than the wry smile of a zombie as he causes a great explosion and resultant death of a living human; every performance here is entirely unmemorable and no longer than 40 minutes after watching can I honestly say that any one persons display of acting is anything other than a blurred distant memory.

Conventionally I would say that there are elements of horror here. Yes it's a zombie film, and yes they love to eat flesh; but at no moment is 'Land of the Dead' ever scary and it is this that makes it so utterly disappointing. It's billed as an 'Ultimate zombie masterpiece', a zombie horror to scare its audience around the globe. The film is devoid of any scares whatsoever and it would seem that George A. Romero should have remained on his zombie film hiatus and not have come forth with this epically disappointing zombie film flop. I had such a high opinion of the man before this film, each of the three films that came before this had me utterly engrossed and scared in my seat as I watched on whilst the zombies devoured flesh and always emerged at the most inappropriate of times. 'Land of the Dead' is nothing like its predecessors, it's a far inferior example of a horror film and is not one that I found at all enjoyable to watch.

Predictable and bland, 'Land of the Dead' progresses without any real shocks or surprises and on the few occasions I have watched this always I have been appalled by the lack of imagination that is shown here by the once great zombie film director George A. Romero. I watch this with renewed enthusiasm every time, perhaps there was something I missed on previous viewing occasions I think to myself but every time I realise that my initial thoughts and feelings about this film had been correct and that this film is in fact not very good at all. Without doubt there are worse zombie films out there than this, it goes without saying that George A. Romero has not here directed the poorest film of this sort in history but nonetheless it is still pretty terrible. At the box office this film grossed a total of $46,770,602, not bad for a film so lacking in depth and substance. It just goes to show how little you have to do to make so much money if you take a twenty year absence from a zombie series as popular as that of George A. Romero's, the film made over $10 million dollars in its opening weekend alone in America; a figure that alone returns two thirds of what it cost to make this poor excuse for a zombie film. It's really quite ridiculous how well this film fared, I personally am actually quite ashamed to have paid good money to have purchased this DVD and yet had to really in order to complete the collection.

The best thing about this DVD has probably got to be the extras, their inclusion make this purchase seem like a little less of a waste of money to me. I'm not generally one to watch extras, but when a film is particularly poor I do tend to make an exception in order to feel as though my money has gone a little further. This Director's Cut edition of 'Land of the Dead' contains a total of ten extras and some of them are actually quite good. The first of these is 'Undead Again: The Making of Land of the Dead', an interesting insight into how the film was made including insights from some of the actors, the films writer and director George A. Romero and producer Mark Canton also. It's not entirely engaging to hear about how and why they made this film the way that they did, but to hear George A. Romero's thought process and intentions in making the poor film that is 'Land of the Dead' I found to be quite interesting anyway. Thirteen minutes is a little long for this feature and it soon becomes a little tiresome, but it's definitely worth watching at least once.

'A Day With the Living Dead' as an extra is as poor as the film itself, it is a behind the scenes look at the film but has the most irritating host ever in John Leguizamo who stars in the film and really is incredibly dull. Throughout this feature there is constantly some instrumental metal music that plays in the background which attempts to increase the energy levels here but it just doesn't work. 'Bringing the Dead to Life' provides quite an interesting insight into how the zombies are made to look as believable and realistic as possible. The commentaries are all quite dull, but visually at least this is an interesting one to watch.

'The Remaining Bits' is a three minute collection of out-takes, a montage of dull events that were two poor to even make it into the shoddy film itself. 'When Shaun Met George' follows 'Shaun of the Dead' director Edgar Wright, and its star Simon Pegg as they travel to Toronto in order to be zombies within the film. It was an interesting idea on paper, put doesn't pan out too well on film and is in fact another entirely disappointing extra from this poor film. Seeing the two of them dressed up as zombies is quite an amusing sight, a couple of minutes would have been plenty long enough for this extra but thirteen is just overkill. 'Scenes of Carnage' is merely a few minutes of flesh eating set to classical music and is yet another fairly pointless extra. I don't really want to waste minutes of my life merely watching zombies eat flesh, I'd rather not in fact and disguising this as a featured extra is really just a little sneaky. Similarly, 'Zombie Effects: From Green Screen to Finished Scene' has an interesting enough title but is just another montage of events as zombies are displayed on screen in various circumstances.

'Bringing the Storyboards to Life' was an interesting one to watch for me, but what I found most amusing about this feature was that I found viewing the storyboards themselves to be more rewarding than watching the events played out on film. I found the storyboard drawings to be artistically interesting, the pictures were well drawn and looking at these made me wish that I was actually any good at art myself. Sadly, stick men are about as sophisticated as my own personal drawings get and to see good art fills me with jealousy and rage, but also quite a strong appreciation. I would say that for the art this is my favourite extra and is one that time after time I have gone back and viewed again. 'Scream Tests: Zombie Casting Call' is also quite an intriguing one, mainly because it is so odd and truly rather bizarre. It features dancing zombies in what looks to be computer game form, a music video is made as what starts to be a pack of zombies dance a routine and then are focused on individually. It creeped me out a little, but nonetheless this extra amused me and I couldn't help but laugh as the zombies bounced around on the screen.

It would seem in this day and age that no DVD is ever complete without an audio commentary. 'Land of the Dead' is no exception to this rule and therefore contains a feature commentary with director George A. Romero, producer Peter Grunwald, and editor Michael Doherty. Watching the film with the commentary playing is certainly more entertaining than watching it without, still however 'Land of the Dead' is not a film that is worth watching and although the commentary adds heightened depth to this film it is still fairly dull. What it does make you aware of however is where the 'Director's Cut' deviates from the initial cinema released edition of this film and gives detail of why these scenes were not originally included and why they saw it fit to include the added bits for this edition. The bits added were for the most part not included originally due to George A. Romero's belief that they needlessly slow down and break up the flow of the film, why then he would want to release a 'Director's Cut' edit complete with these scenes can surely only be viewed in terms of monetary gain. Within this commentary George A. Romero speaks of his appreciation for the horror spoof 'Shaun of the Dead' and how pleased he was to have Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright appear as zombies, there are some interesting things said here but these things are few and far between. You have to listen to the whole 93 minutes of film to find the interesting bits, this of course can be a long-winded and really quite dull task, particularly as the film itself is so disappointing.

In no way can I recommend this film, even the extras are really rather poor on the whole and aside from a few moments of promise are entirely forgettable. Paying good money to see 'Land of the Dead' is really not something that I would advise. Unless like me you feel you need to own this DVD in order to complete your collection then I'd say steer well clear of this film. For me 'Land of the Dead' is just one huge disappointment, a poor film from a director I once thought so much of. Watching the extras you notice that George A. Romero does seem to genuinely still hold a fond love of zombie films, he doesn't however seem capable of capturing his enthusiasm on film and as such has directed a truly terrible zombie film in 'Land of the Dead'.

Director: George A. Romero
Year of release: 2005
Genre: Horror
Language: English
Runtime: 93 mins
BBFC Rating: 18 

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