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'Land of the Dead': Please don't wake the zombies

Filmmakers always assemble their zombies in vast, desultory herds, because they know that one or a few of the arthritic walking dead don't add up to anything a sturdy rake couldn't keep at bay. So the zombies shamble and stumble in poorly formed crowds — to call them packs is to dignify rotten organizational skills — wearing tattered clothes and tattered flesh and tormented scowls. Their teeth are black and green with moss and they groan and keen as though enraged someone woke them from the best nap of their life. Or death.

Universal Studios 'Land of the Dead' 2 out of 5 stars The verdict: Genuine scares are scant because we've been to this land before, a land that we can officially call dead. Director: George A. Romero Starring: Simon Baker, John Leguizamo, Asia Argento, Robert Joy, Dennis Hopper, Eugene Clark, Pedro Miguel Arce Run time: 93 minutes Release date: June 24, 2005 Rating: R for pervasive strong violence and gore, language, brief sexuality and some drug use. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate "Land of the Dead"   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

In the gross, glorified B movie "George A. Romero's Land of the Dead," the zombies are a predictable bunch, staggering about a deserted metropolis, supple as tree trunks and about as frightening as firewood. The world has been overrun with zombies, and the few surviving humans, also known as zombie treats, have huddled together in trembling bunches, gripping all manner of gun and bludgeon. They are not delighted.

The apocalyptic despair that drapes most zombie films envelops "Land of the Dead" with claustrophobic tenacity. In an unnamed city on a river, wealthy citizens have found refuge in a glass skyscraper that bears an eerie resemblance to Austin's Frost Bank Tower. Theoretically, only those who can afford residency in the skyscraper — rich, white folks who blot out the misery outside — will survive the unexplained zombie plague. The poor have to fend for themselves in outdoor shanty towns lined with electrical barriers that fry the errant undead to permanent deadness. Most of the zombies reside across the river. Bridges have been drawn, while the military keeps lookout.

But the living need provisions, which sit in abandoned shops in zombie land. The Trumplike despot who runs the skyscraper (Dennis Hopper, who tries to amuse with a spittle-flying air of entitlement) owns an armored RV called Dead Reckoning and runs a team of thickly weaponed vigilantes who risk all to fetch goods. One them is the unsubtly named Cholo, played by John Leguizamo, who acts tough by talking from one side of his mouth. Too short for such swagger, he looks like a Looney Tunes character.

The standard zombie combat happens whenever the living cross the river — duck! fire! splat! — but things get messy when the mass of slow walkers learns the backstroke.

If the title isn't clear enough, George A. Romero wrote and directed this tediously familiar horror jamboree. So identified is Romero as the grandpoppa of the modern zombie flick — a genre he reinvented with 1968's sincerely creepy "Night of the Living Dead" — that he gets possessive credit for the movie, a mark of authenticity (and egocentricity) suggesting that recent zombie movies like "28 Days Later" and "Shaun of the Dead" are nice gestures, but there's nothing like the real thing.

The master may be back, but not even Romero can find much new to do with the ragged subject, save for an itty tweak here and a bitty twist there. So he relies heavily on graphic gore, from intestinal ropes gleefully pulled from a victim's belly to zombies chomping human sinew, pulling on the stringy meat like it's bubble gum.

Gore is good; I like to see scabby-faced fellows gnaw on human femurs as much as the next guy. But also good is plot, character and a sense of purpose, all of which are sorely lacking. Such deficiencies are a common malady of horror movies, of course, but when it comes to grizzled horror subgenres, such as zombies and slashers, you need something novel to keep you involved. "28 Days Later," a valiant spin, used fuzzy digital verite to give it urgency, while "Shaun of the Dead" tossed romance and comedy into its bloody blender.

Yet better than both was last year's savvy remake of Romero's 1978 zombie classic "Dawn of the Dead." An improvement on the original, the movie took Romero's premise of zombies besieging a near-empty shopping mall — love that zombie-consumer subtext — and embroidered it with shrewd character and situational ideas and nuanced emotion, never shirking on violence and humor.

Humor? Yes. Zombies are funny because they're dumb. In "Land of the Dead," the warriors refer to the Z-boys as "stenches," which is mildly funny. (Even the feeblest jokes play well amid pressurized terror.) But the only whiff of anything substantial is Romero's pointed class commentary, which isn't implied so much as stated.

An indie-film underdog himself, his sympathy appropriately lies with the poor outside Hopper's ritzy digs, those who must scrape for sustenance, battle the elements and the occasional lumbering dead guy. These are fighters, survivors, as are the zombies, ultimate society dregs who also receive the director's sympathy.

Romero shoots largely at night for maximum shadowy jolts — and so we can't see how plasticky the zombies' faces really look. But genuine scares are scant because we've been to this land before, a land that we can officially call dead.