Even if you didn't like 2004's remake of Dawn Of The Dead you have to give it credit for something and that credit would be that it's success at the box-office played a part in finally getting George A. Romero's fourth "Living Dead" film off the ground after numerous years of false starts and an inability to find funding to make it. So here we are, twenty years after Day Of The Dead and able to finally say to ourselves, "I'm going to watch Romero's latest zombie movie!". That in itself can make any seasoned horror fan grin ear-to-ear and while the results aren't quite on the level of his other three entries in the series it's still a highly entertaining time that packs in enough zombie mayhem and gore to make it completely worth watching.

Feeling like an apocalypse movie mixed with zombies this starts off with a group of self-appointed soldiers who roam a wasteland of the undead in order to collect supplies to take back to the heavily fortified city with them. It's within the walls of the city that the classes have been separated into the poor and the rich with Dennis Hopper's greedy businessman creating the "Fiddler's Green" complex in order to make those with money ignore the goings on around them. This upsets the poor of the city who are scrounging to get by and also trying to survive a World overrun with the dead. It's here that Simon Baker and a group of fellow survivors (that includes fanboy favourite - and daughter of legendary Dario - Asia Argento) have to try and stop Hopper and turncoat John Leguizamo from causing havoc as well as the zombies who are starting to become more than just mindless killers by learning to use tools and logic (under the leadership of "Big Daddy", played by Eugene Clark).

It's plot points like these that helps separate a Romero zombie movie from your usual zombie movie. Romero has always been concerned with building a script that concerns well-realized human dilemmas and situations and he's done that again with Land Of The Dead. While it feels like a lot of the ideas weren't explored quite enough (I suspect the studio wanting to keep the movie at a reasonable running time, as in, "Hey George, we need to wrap it up, it's going on too long... less talk, more blood!") and the movie certainly doesn't reach the effectiveness of the past films, this still manages to have a strong enough story to keep you interested. Of course all that bloodshed helps too.

This isn't the "ultimate zombie movie" that fans have been yearning years for and it's not nearly as effective in the tension department as the past efforts, but it packs in enough awesome gore effects and attack scenes to forgive the fact most of the characters here are sort of underdeveloped (and given wacky video game-ish nicknames) and it could've easily used about half-an-hour more of plot development. Romero also keeps things moving on a quick clip and manages to come up with some striking imagery (like the scene with the zombie rising slowly from the water, something used to great effect in many a horror flick).

Despite my minor gripes though, Land Of The Dead is the best zombie movie of the last few years without a doubt and you'll respect Romero's attempts to make a true, realistic society while you're getting excited about the numerous action scenes and effects (like the amazing "flip-head" zombie). Plus if you keep an eye out you'll see numerous cameos by such people as Tom Savini (playing a zombie that looks similar to the character he played in 1978's Dawn Of The Dead) and the guys behind the Romero loving Shaun Of The Dead.

Review based on unrated version. (Chris Hartley, 11/9/05)

Directed By: George A. Romero.
Written By: George A. Romero.

Starring: Simon Baker, Dennis Hopper, Asia Argento, Robert Joy.

Picture Ratio: 1.85:1 Widescreen.

Picture Quality: Universal presents the movie in both unrated and R-rated discs with an above average transfer that has a mild amount of edge enhancement but it generally pretty flawless. It looks good enough that we can mildly groan at the CGI bloodsprays abundant in the movie.

Extras: While the batch of special features here isn't as impressive as other recent genre discs (like The Devil's Rejects) there's a decent batch here with "scream tests" (which is basically dancing computer animated zombies), storyboard to film comparisons, a featurette showing the films use of green screen effect, "Scenes Of Carnage" which is basically extended gore scenes, "When Shaun Met George" a brief featurette about Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's trip to the set to play zombies, deleted scenes, a featurette on the zombie effects, a "Day On The Set" featurette with co-star Leguizamo, a "making of" featurette, and a modest commentary track with Romero. producer Peter Grunwald, and editor Michael Daughtery.