Land of the Dead

Eh, Michael Sullivan, what does he know? From The Washington Post:

Don't get me wrong. "Land of the Dead" is fairly intense. Intensely gory and violent, that is, as has come to be expected from the genre. It's just not very frightening. Not half as frightening as, say, last year's "Dawn of the Dead," a remake of Romero's own 1978 film. That remake was not just gory, but way scary, funny and smartly self-aware, with a touch of social critique and a deliciously pessimistic unhappy ending thrown in. Other than the opening shot of "Land," however, in which Romero's camera pans past a battered diner sign pointing in the direction of "Eats" (get it?), there's no real joy in this undertaking, which seems to prize grossing out the members of its audience above freaking them out.

Let's see what The New York Times thought:

In "George A. Romero's Land of the Dead," an excellent freakout of a movie, the living no longer have the advantage or our full sympathies. The fourth installment in Mr. Romero's vaunted zombie cycle (which began with his 1968 masterpiece, "Night of the Living Dead"), the new film is also the latest chapter in what increasingly seems like an extended riff on Dante's "Inferno." In the earlier "Dead" films, Mr. Romero guided us through circles of hell that, despite the flesh-eating ghouls, looked a lot like the exurban world outside our windows. With this new movie, we jump straight to the ninth circle, where Satan is a guy in a suit and tie who feasts on the misery of others, much as the dead feast on the living. An army of the dead in George A. Romero's new film. It's a sign of both Mr. Romero's waggish humor and control as a director that the guy in the suit and tie is played by the cult-movie icon Dennis Hopper, an often unrestrained performer who here is right on the money. snip With "Revenge of the Sith" and "Batman Begins," "Land of the Dead" makes the third studio release of the summer season to present an allegory, either naked or not, of our contemporary political landscape. Whatever else you think about these films, whether you believe them to be sincere or cynical, authentic expressions of defiance or just empty posturing, it is rather remarkable that these so-called popcorn movies have gone where few American films outside the realm of documentary, including most so-called independents, dare to go. One of the enormous pleasures of genre filmmaking is watching great directors push against form and predictability, as Mr. Romero does brilliantly in "Land of the Dead." One thing is for sure: You won't go home hungry.

As Zombie_Tom would say, MMMmmm. Brains. UPDATED. Slate liked it too.