Back with the Dead

Ever since his genre-defining Night Of The Living Dead munched its imprint on our brains in 1968, what's marked out director George A Romero's bloody good zombie flicks is their extra bite. And we're talking social commentary, not (just) inexhaustibly innovative entrail slurping.

Thus, in the Land Of The Dead, our flesh-chewing friends are just one more impoverished underclass cowering in the suspiciously twin towers-style shadow of Fiddler's Green, a luxury apartment block run by gleefully evil Dennis Hopper.

'I don't deal with terrorists,' barks Hopper, who gets all the best lines. But he's not the only baddie here. By making the block's most intelligent dead dude a black petrol pump attendant, the antics of our good guy gun-toting mercenaries (Simon Barker and Asia Argento) take on a nasty lynching quality.

And though a bizarre, inarticulate plea for zombie tolerance may sound rather heavy, groansome stuff, fear not, because Romero's tongue is still firmly in cheek.

Packing more beneath-the-skin nasties than a burger van sausage, his first sequel for two decades not only shows up super-duper remakes like Dawn Of The Dead for the empty wraiths they are - it's also more fun than a food fight in a ketchup shop.

George A. Romero's Land Of The Dead
Cert: cert15