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.

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.

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.

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.

'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

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

The front cover of the DVD

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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.