Land of the Dead: Unrated Director's Cut on Blu-ray Disc Review
By Brandon A. DuHamel
The Film
Land of the Dead is the fourth film in director George A. Romero's
Dead series of zombie films following
Night of the Living Dead,
Dawn of the Dead and
Day of the Dead. In this film it is years after the dead have begun to come back to life and the living have now walled themselves off in a city, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at the center of which lies a towering fortress known as Fiddler's Green. Fiddler's Green is a fortified luxury complex where the affluent reside. Ruled over by Paul Kaufman (Dennis Hopper) who controls not only the Fiddler's Green, but the daily activities of its surrounding slums, the living have formed armed guards who go out on nightly raids and hunting patrols outside the city walls killing off the "stenches" as the zombies have come to be called.
Leading one of these patrols known as Dead Reckoning are Cholo DeMora (John Leguizamo) and Riley Denbo (Simon Baker). Cholo and Riley have a confrontational relationship that becomes all the more intense when Cholo is denied the opportunity to buy housing in Kaufman's Fiddler's Green and goes rogue, stealing an armored truck and threatening to destroy Fiddler's Green. Kaufman hires Denbo to track Cholo down and stop him, assigning to him two soldiers to keep an eye on him.
Meanwhile, the "stenches", or zombies, have started to become self aware, unlike in the previous installments of the
Dead films where the zombies remain just slow, dimwitted flesh eaters. In
Land of the Dead, on the contrary, the zombies have begun to try to recapture their lives and slip back into their previous routines, setting up in a town outside of the walled city. The living's tactics, such as distracting them with fireworks or "sky flowers", as they are referred to by the humans, begin to falter, and the zombies mount a concerted attack on the humans' walled city, seemingly led by one "leader" zombie in particular.
Romero's
Land of the Dead is generally classified as a horror film, but in fact it is more an action film than it is horror. If you ignore the fact that you have flesh-eating zombies, what you have at the core of
Land of the Dead is a war film, good vs. bad. Most of the film is spent following the
Dead Reckoning team blowing up or shooting zombies, Cholo and Riley confronting each other, or Cholo going after Kaufman, with much of the suspense and chills left in the background. The zombie's "awakening" serves as the secondary story line and their attack against the humans' fortress could very well be part of any other action film, outside of the gory makeup and flesh eating, of course.
The film does, however, offer a great pace and buckets of blood for those who like that sort of thing. For the more squeamish out there, this is certainly not a film you'll want to be watching. I recently reviewed the remake of
Dawn of the Dead, and the carnage was far less than in this film. As for pure fright, I can't say this has much of that, but it certainly has an overabundance of gross violence that some will find makes for the perfect horror film.
The Picture
Land of the Dead comes to Blu-ray Disc in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1 in a 1080p/24 VC-1 encoding. Since the film takes place almost entirely at night, it was imperative that the transfer's the black levels and contrast were handled properly, first and foremost. Thankfully,
Land of the Dead appears on this disc with rich and consistent blacks that never crush and oodles of detail in even the darkest of scenes. Contrast levels are also good, so that overall the picture is not dull even though it lives in a world of darkness. There is a slight overemphasis on reds that helps the ubiquitous blood pop from the screen, but unfortunately gives just a slight tinge of red push to the flesh tones. The transfer is free from any artifacts and the source is clean, but detail is just a bit on the soft side. Overall, this is a good but not great transfer that viewers will be satisfied with, but it is of second-tier quality, not reference.
The Sound
Universal brings
Land of the Dead to Blu-ray Disc with English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless and Spanish DTS 5.1 audio options. The lossless 5.1 mix is competently done, though certainly not spectacular. The film has an abundance of action sequences, and the 5.1 mix takes advantage of this with aggressive use of the surround channels for many discrete sounds of gunshots, booming explosions and roaring engines. Low frequency extension is somewhat weak, which is disappointing for a film of this nature and high frequencies are a bit grating lending a bit of an artificial and fatiguing sound to the multitudinous gunshot special effects. Dialogue is full, clear and intelligible even during the most active sequences, making that the strongest part of this mix.
The Extras
The supplemental material offered on
Land of the Dead is fairly scant. There are some brief snippets of deleted scenes, storyboard comparisons and a behind-the-scenes featurette. The most in-depth extra offered on this release is the U-Control picture-in-picture feature (Profile 1.1), but it does take up a large portion of the screen during playback.
The extras available on this release are:
- Audio Commentary with director George A. Romero, producer Peter Grunwald, and editor Michael Grunwald -- This is a typical audio commentary bogged down in the minutia of the film's production and it is painfully dull. My suggestion is to skip it, unless you absolutely must hear all of the details of the filmmaking process.
- The Remaining Bits -- Brief segments of zombie visual effects.
- When Shaun Met George (1.78:1/standard definition) -- This behind-the-scenes featurette follows comedians Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg of Shaun of the Dead fame as they prepare for their cameos in Land of the Dead as zombies and also get a chance to meet George A. Romero.
- Scenes of Carnage (4:3/windowboxed/standard definition) -- A montage of gory scenes of zombies feeding on humans.
- Zombie Effects: From Green Screen to Finished Scene (4:3/windowboxed/standard definition) -- Green screen-to-final scene comparisons of several scenes.
- Scream Tests: Zombie Casting Call (4:3/standard definition) -- CG effects highjinks from the visual effects crew.
- U-Control -- This picture-in-picture BonusView (Profile 1.1) feature offers commentaries, storyboard sketches, behind-the-scenes looks at the production and more from cast and crew.
- Bringing Storyboards to Life (4:3/windowboxed/standard definition) -- Storyboard-to-film comparisons for several key scenes from the film.
Final Thoughts
Land of the Dead has a quick pace and is full of action and gore that horror/action fans will love. If you're sensitive to violence, then stay away, but this will make a good film for the Halloween season. This Blu-ray Disc release comes with a competent video transfer and lossless audio mix, but won't be worth more than a rental to anyone but the biggest of horror fans.
Where to Buy
Also available in the following boxed set:
Product Details
- Actors: Simon Baker, John Leguizamo, Dennis Hopper, Asia Argento, George A. Romero
- Director: George A. Romero
- Audio/Languages: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, Spanish DTS 5.1
- Subtitles: English, French, Spanish
- Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
- Number of discs: 1
- Rating: Not Rated
- Studio: Universal Studios
- Blu-ray Disc Release Date: September 30, 2008
- Run Time: 97 minutes
- List Price: $29.98
- Extras:
- Feature Commentary with Director George A. Romero, Producer Peter Grunwald, and Editor Michael Doherty
- The Remaining Bits
- When Shaun Met George
- Scenes of Carnage
- Zombie Effects: From Green Screen to Finished Scene
- Bringing the Storyboards to Life
- Scream Tests: Bringing the Storyboards to Life
- U-Control (BonusView/Profile 1.1)
