The social overtones of the original remain in Land of the Dead America is still a place haunted by the living dead, and still unable to forgo the class, race, and gender distinctions that defined it in the pre-zombie world.

Romero’s first film in the series, the 1968 classic Night Of The Living Dead, stands as a powerfully nihilistic analysis of racial attitudes in America that, despite being trotted out on cable every Halloween, still has the power to shock with its spare, beautifully shot story of an African-American hero fighting off a zombie invasion only to survive and be gunned down by a posse that was sent to save him. It should come as no surprise that George Romero would be the one to get directly to the heart of the matter (literally) and expose the externalization of American anxiety as a vicious circle of violence wrapped neatly in a bow of self-serving greed. In the 1970’s, when the gore-filled slasher genre rose to prominence as the central vehicle for scaring the bejeezus out of us, filmmakers were responding to the violence of the Viet Nam era that they had witnessed every night on the television news. And why not? Political anxiety in the real world manifests itself in actual life and death circumstances the invasion of Iraq and the fear of terror attacks in the United States have become central to the American experience in the last five years. The history of the horror story is soaked in political metaphor, from the aristocratic cannibalism of Dracula to the dread of a communist invasion laying quite visibly on the surface of Invasion of The Body Snatchers. Not that this should come as any surprise. But no movie this summer packs a bigger political punch than the fourth installment of George Romero’s zombie series, Land of The Dead. From the denouncement of absolutism craftily planted in the regrettable Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of The Sith to the excellent critique of fundamentalism of all stripes in the outstanding Batman Begins, the summer fantasy blockbuster has suddenly become the de rigueur platform for the informal political critique. Of course, while Michael Moore has decided to spend his time this summer setting up a film festival in Traverse City, MI as he works on his upcoming documentary about the American health care system, Hollywood’s biggest films have taken on the political mantle and delivered political parables in the least likely of places.

If 2004 was the summer of the political documentary, with Fahrenheit 9/11 and the election season documentaries presciently defining the divisive political landscape that still consumes American society, Summer 2005 is shaping up to be just an equally compelling political season at the movies.

George romero's land of the dead