Land of the Dead: Personal Film Review

George A. Romero's Land of the Dead

The Land of the Dead takes place in America where a zombie outbreak has ensued.  The difference between this film and other zombie films is the zombies start to coordinate with each other to overthrow the corrupt humans.

One of the scenes that I was most impressed with is when the group are out to find Cholo and a body without a head walks up to the side of the car, but flings his head over his shoulders to bite someone.  I liked this scene because of the collision cutting used.  The scene is quite and not much is happening but quite suddenly the music increases in volume and they start panicking.

Another scene I was impressed by is at the very end when the zombies are all walking away from the city and Riley decides not to shoot them.  I was impressed by this scene because it's a very unique idea for a horror movie to essentially forgive the bad guys and just part-ways.  This is a technique George Romero likes to use of flipping the stereotypes and making the monsters of the film have some morals.

We see a quick montage near the start of the film when zombies are being killed by people on bikes to connote the panic and anger that the black leader zombie feels as all the zombies around him are being killed.

The majority of the gore takes place on-screen but restricted narration is occasionally used.  there are 2 sillhouettes of violence, when a mans head is being ripped off, and when a hand is being ripped in half.

Most of the lighting in the film is low-key since a lot of the film takes place at night.  Fiddlers Green however is very well-lit, so as to give the feeling of normal life.

When Pillsbury is first introduced he is shot using a very low expressionist angle to show how powerful he is.  Whereas Kaufman is quite short so in over-the-shoulder shots he is positioned

quite a bit lower in the frame.  This shows how he hides behind his money when it comes to power, since he is physically weak.

The music in the film is all parallel and when zombies were on screen but no action happenning an eerie screeching sound would play instead of music which adds to the creepy scenes.

I quite liked having some of the gore as shadows on the wall and would like to include that in my film trailer since it would be cheaper to do, but is still effective.

I also think the collision cutting George Romero used would work well in my trailer because it's quite an easy technique but also reliably makes people jump.

In my trailer I would not want the audience to empathise with the antagonist like they did in Land of the Dead with the black zombie leader.

I feel the most enjoyable moment in the film is the quick montage of zombies finally breaking into Fiddlers Green and chasing people through the large entrance.  I enjoyed this scene because you know a lot of the rich snobs that lived were going to struggle fighting off the zombies like the more working class people (Charlie, Riley, Cholo etc.) did every day.  This would be too difficult to include in my trailer with the restricted resources, budget and amount of actors we will have.