LAND OF THE DEAD

In a near future, the Earth will be completely dominated by zombies. Only one city, built like a fortress, will resist the hell that slowly spreads around it. In this microcosm, however, there is always someone who wants to keep their power and wealth, offering the survivors entertainment and drugs to ignore the tragedy. They all seem afflicted by a collective madness that drives them to a self-destructive behavior. Authorities often intervene to restore order in desperate panic situations and suppress revolts against the most powerful castes, until someone crosses the red line that separates the living from the dead... That the cinema of an uncomfortable author, disliked by the bureaucrats of the majors as well as the financial societies of low-budget productions, like George Andrew Romero, would reach a turning point like that of "Land of the Dead", few frankly believed it. The fourth chapter of his now legendary saga on the undead is a kind of refoundation of the myth of a slow, unstoppable, and silent monster like cancer: the zombies and their land, a metaphor for a society that no longer knows the light of a day that is not the dawn of yet another war, which has entrusted progress to technology and capitalism suffering the attack of the last of this unjust society in the form of anthropophagous dead. If in "Day of the Dead" (1985) the critical discourse of/sur a new era for humanity controlled and protected by rough military was sharpened, science was desperately resorted to as a placebo in such an obsessive way that the scientists looked like so many little Dr. Frankensteins engaged in re-educating their terrible creature; in this new film, we witness a powerful re-reading of the concept of organized society. And at a certain point, we will notice how Romero has served us on a silver platter a cocktail in which the politics of George W. Bush, Orwell's 1984, and biblical quotations, Plato's Republic, and the unhealthiest splatter are mixed. The great city built with fortified walls and the Tower of Babel, the socio-economic differences, and the division into castes that persist even in this almost as if they were the rule to restore an appearance of normality in a scenario that is at least apocalyptic. These artifices take on a nearly parodic value throughout the duration of the film, appearing simply as brakes of a humanity that must now definitely die to be reborn. If the remake of "Zombi" (2004) signed by Zack Snyder had the dynamics of a video game and developed a plot that, instead of having socio-political value, focused on the introspection of the various stereotyped characters, showing us then the cynicism of certain situations and the unrestrained sensationalism of those who have spent more time on the console than on the cinema seats. "Land of the Dead" is instead a complete work - very cultured, almost literary, with the intuition of the drug as a weapon to ignore the dead that seems taken from a novel or a comic by Tiziano Sclavi - a type of horror that makes you think about the possibility of completely re-evaluating (rehabilitating) the genre by the snobbish official criticism. Although Romero's direction retains its typically 1970s touch with long linking scenes and moments of dialogue sometimes too long. Nothing can be said about the acting of the actors, Asia Argento in a state of grace and Dennis Hopper as usual granite and fierce. We would have liked, however, to see the faithful Mike Gornick as director of photography. Let's hope that this director's career can continue and that his creative vein can find a new vital, new, and prolific impetus after this excellent horror. After years spent recounting in various specialized festivals his ambitious projects (punctually never realized like Twilight of the Dead, Dusk of the Dead, Dead Reckoning or the long-awaited direction of Resident Evil), after having seen his zombies exalted by video games (but also betrayed) and after the mockery of producers like New Line and entertainment factories like Konami, Romero finally manages to propose his nightmares on celluloid. If these are the results, there is a lot to hope for the rebirth of Western genre cinema and the end of the dominance of teen movies in the style of "Scream".