Critics reviews

Romero's characterization of the villain may be a little too on the nose—unlike the writer-director's best work, the politics of Land aren't embedded in the storytelling, but rather sit above it. Still, the film's righteous anger is rousing, especially given the fact that Romero expresses it using the full resources of a major studio.

Land of the Dead (2005) is, at every moment, a jaw-droppingly audacious film. In fact, it is Karl Marx's Capital on the multiplex screen. George Romero's anti-Bush (indeed, anti-American) rhetoric is fearless and unrelenting... Only a supposedly trivial zombie horror movie – dismissed, overlooked or treated summarily by many mainstream, middlebrow critics – could manage to fly under the ideological radar so completely to work its savage, subversive mischief.

With each successive film in the series, Romero allies our sympathy more and more with the undead, who here are clearly standing in for the world's dispossessed. The film's emotional climax comes not when the human heroes save the day, but when Big Daddy and his followers decide they'll no longer be distracted from their goals by the illusory promises of the mass media (symbolized by fireworks displays). They're dead as hell, and they're not going to take it anymore.

It reveals a director in full control of style and meaning, explicitly delivering an allegorical message for audiences assaulted by the demeaning horror films of the last two decades. Style and content complement each other with CGI techniques subtly merged within the narrative rather than being a usual overtly spectacular tour de force as in most Hollywood movies.