Diary of the Dead

The thing to keep in mind as this movie begins is that it is not a sequel to “Night of the Living Dead.” Depending on how you look at it, this is a reboot of the franchise. Or, like, a side-quel, which starts at the same time “Night” does – which is to say, in the opening moments of the zombie apocalypse.

Of course, to pretend they happen at the same time, you have to assume everyone in the original “Night” just kind of forgot their cell phone. And that the farmer didn’t have cable. And that they just had one really small TV.

Honestly, though, I can’t say that anything that happens in “Diary” contradicts what happens in “Night.” So, there you go.

“Diary of the Dead” exists in sort of a strange limbo of filmmaking. It’s meant to be a documentary of sorts, detailing the zombie uprising, and as such we get voiceover, and camera twitches, and various other things.

For example, the opening footage has some narration over it. It’s touted as footage that a news cameraman uploaded. He was the one that shot the footage.

The actual footage shown shows some cops, and an ambulance, outside a dwelling. Inside, a dad murdered his wife and sixteen-year-old son, and then put the gun in his own mouth and pulled the trigger.

A newswoman starts stating these facts, while the corpses are rolled towards the ambulance in the background.

But then the cameraman interrupts the newslady, in order to film what’s going on. To wit, the dead woman sits up and bites one of the ambulance workers. And then, the sixteen-year-old also gets up, and one of the cops shoots him in the head.

There’s some more action, but it’s not all that important. Because now we’re into the narration, which says that the narrator (who’s a female, by the by) and her companions (who we haven’t seen yet) have been downloading video from various online sources, and also took their own film they’ve been shooting, and they cut it all together to make the documentary we’re about to see:

“The Death of Death.”

That’s a pretty amusing in-joke right there. If you’re not aware, Romero has used that title in at least two places. Once when he started writing a zombie novel in sections, and selling it on the Internet. And he also made a comic book with that title.

And now, the film-within-a-film presents “The Death of Death.” Which our narrator notes sometimes has music, in order to scare us.

Now we’re into the footage that the narrator and pals shot, along with a burn-in that says October 24th, 11:00 PM.

We’re in the woods somewhere, and a woman in a white dress is running. She stops for a second, looks behind her, and a mummy steps out of the woods.

The woman screams, then stumbles, and the mummy catches her, and someone yells, “Cut.” I guess we have to assume this is the director.

The director complains that the “mummy,” who’s obviously a student actor, that corpses can’t walk fast. The “mummy” retorts that is the girl is going fast, he has to go fast.

The director, whose name is Jason, says that if the mummy catches the girl, the movie is over.

And then… then it’s just a whole discussion about this being a student film, and about getting credits for college, and about how the drunken professor promises that everyone will get five credits for making the film.

And then some random dude standing off in the woods says that “there’s something on the news” they should all hear.

So we cut, and go over to where everyone is listening to the news, and we learn that five, no wait, six corpses have gotten up and attacked people.

The mummy says he’s not waiting around to find out if this is a hoax or not – he’s headed back to his place. Another dude says that the mummy’s place is huge. That guy is named Eliot. I think he was the guy who said everyone needed to listen to the news.

There’s also a makeup artist named Tony. Just so you can have a name to cling to. Cling hard. I’m still not sure who two thirds of these people are.

The mummy says everyone is free to join him. One blonde chick who has no name as of yet opts to go with him.

The crew packs up and heads to the dorm, because “Deb” is there. Whoever that is.

And now we’re in a long point-of-view shot in the women’s dorm. I think Jason is still holding the camera, but I have no idea.

There’s no one there, except for one dude who’s stealing a small TV. Which he’s completely honest about.

Jason goes to Deb’s room. Deb is there, and she’s upset because she keeps calling home and no one is answering.

Ah – Deb is our narrator. Thanks subtitles.

And now we’re in a Winnebago. Mary’s Winnebago. No clue who Mary is. And they’re driving along to somewhere-or-other.

Ah. Mary is the driver. That clears THAT up.

Okay, now they do a run-down of all the names. Is it worth mentioning they’re all in the University of Pittsburgh? And that they’re all trying to get home? Sure. So there you go. That’s the plan.

So, yeah, names and identifying characteristic. Trust me, there’s not much to hang onto.

Mary: Owns the Winnebago we’re all in. Brunette.

Deb: Narrator. Brunette.

Tony: Makeup artist. Really short hair.

Eliot: Wears geeky glasses.

Gordo: With Tracy. Longer hair.

Tracy: Blonde. Actress.

Professor: He’s the professor. And he’s drunk all the time.

Some dude goes driving by at about 120 miles an hour.

And then they stop the Winnebago, because there’s a crashed and flaming car in the road. Actually, there are two crashed and flaming cars, and Mary doesn’t think she’ll be able to get by them.

The group sees a state trooper, and it takes them a minute to realize that he’s walking kind of funny. And it takes them until he gets to the window and tries to grab Mary to realize he’s the walking dead.

Mary freaks out, people swear, and Mary hits reverse and drives away from the state trooper.

Then she goes forward again, plowing into the state trooper and various other dead people as she drives along.

Some time passes, and it’s 3 AM. Mary freaks out about the fact that she hit three people, and might have killed them, because she’s not quite on board with the whole dead-returning-to-life thing.

The crew gets out of the Winnebago, all of them watching Mary, who is sitting out in the middle of a field not doing much of anything. At least until she shoots herself in the head.

Everyone gets all freaked out by this, wondering if anyone even knew she had a gun.

I guess it’s worth mentioning that Tony is also not on board with the walking dead thing. He thinks the news is right – that nothing is really happening, and that everything will calm down soon.

And then Deb says, “She’s still alive.”

So the gang goes to a hospital, which is empty. They’re carrying Mary, and trying to find a doctor. Or the ER. Or probably anyone who knows what to do with a woman who shot herself in the head unsuccessfully.

Some of them find a police radio, which they listen to for a while. They hear people panicking, and gunfire, and it finally starts to sink in that, hey, there are dead people out there walking around and biting people.

The crew wanders around the hospital some more, searching for anyone who can and/or will help them.

Finally, they spot a person moving behind a curtain, and call to him.

Only him’s dead. And him’s also just finished eating someone, so he’s all covered in people juices.

Someone yells to use the gun.

Gordo has the gun. He shoots the zombie a few times, and then someone tells him to shoot the zombie in the head. He does. It’s effective.

A former nurse gets up. She’s a zombie, too. Gordo tries to shoot her, but the gun is jammed. He tries to fix it.

Meanwhile, Deb finds a pair of those electro-shock panels, fires them up, and sticks them on both sides of the zombie nurse’s head. The nurse burns, and her eyes melt and pop out of her head. She falls.

Then she gets back up again, and Gordo shoots her in the head.

Mary makes a groaning noise, and the group once again decides they should try to find her a doctor. A live one.

In the corner, the battery light keeps showing in the corner. Which is the kind of thing that would never show up on actual camera footage. But let’s move on.

Jason says he needs to plug in and recharge, and the rest of the group says that he should leave the camera. Jason refuses, noting that the camera “is the whole thing.”

So the rest of the group leaves. Jason stays, and plugs in. And as he pans around, talking to himself, and looking at the dead people on the floor, he points the camera at Mary.

This means the rest of the group went to get help for Mary, who is currently sitting in a wheelchair, as far away from the rest of the group as possible. This is not a well thought out plan.

Jason apologizes to Mary, stating that he’s sorry if anything he or Tony said caused her to shoot herself in the head.

At that moment, Mary wakes up.

Elsewhere, there are screams and gunfire.

Jason calls out.

He looks out the door, and in the hallway… is Deb. Who found another camera. So Deb turns her camera on, and Jason has his camera on, and they go back and forth, cutting between their footage, as Deb tries to explain to Jason what it’s like to have a camera shoved in your face while people are dying around you.

Jason finally gets Deb to tell him that she was attacked, and that Gordo shot the dead guy in the head.

Deb screams to demonstrate how she screamed in the other room, then screams for real, as one of the nearby “dead” patients gets up.

Gordo appears and shoots the guy in the head, then notes that he’s shot three men and a woman in the last half-hour.

The professor points out how easily it came to Gordo. And then goes on. “I remember the war. In wartime, killing comes easily.”

Did I mention the professor sounds British? I really want to know which war he’s talking about.

Mary dies. Then starts becoming undead, which involves a lot of wheezing, and maybe her eyeballs rolling back in her head, or maybe she develops a film over her eyes. I have no idea.

Gordo isn’t mentally capable of shooting her, so the professor gently takes the gun from Gordo and shoots Mary in the noggin.

Then the professor gives the gun to Tony, noting that it’s “too easy to use.”

The gang walks out into the hallway, where they’re confronted by some more dead patients.

One of them has an I.V. pole attached to him. So Eliot grabs it, and stabs the zombie through the chest with his own I.V. pole. While he does this, he loudly points out that clearly the zombie is dead, since Eliot can just keep ramming an I.V. pole through the guy’s chest with no effect.

Oh, and did I mention that Gordo got bit in all this? He did. He says that, “It hurts.”

Eliot knocks the zombie over and jams the I.V. pole through its head.

Deb realizes that she’s still holding a video camera, and she hands it off to the Professor with a, “Take this, it’s too easy to use.”

And now, a bunch of stock footage, with statements about how everyone with a video camera or a blog is talking about what’s going on.

The next morning, they bury Mary. Gordo is dead. Then he comes back, and Tracy shoots him right in the noggin.

Deb wants to get on the road, like, right now, so she can get to her family.

And then, more stock footage, coupled with narration about how they managed to avoid the crowds and looting by staying on country roads.

But now the bad news – the Winnebago has died. Tracy thinks she can fix it, which is supposed to be funny, I suppose.

At any rate, they plan on pushing the Winnie into a nearby barn and repairing it, when an Amish guy comes towards them, grunting. But he’s not a zombie – he’s just deaf. He tells them this using a little slate he carries around.

They inform him they want to use his barn to fix the Winnie, and he writes for them to hurry – then points behind them, where a small group of zombies has gathered and is coming towards them.

The Amish fellow runs back into the barn, grabs a stick of dynamite, and heaves it at the zombies, who blow up real good.

The Amish guy writes that his name is Samuel.

Later, Tracy fixes the Winnie.

Meanwhile, Eliot plays the footage from the video camera they found in the hospital. It’s a little girl’s birthday party. A clown arrives. The girl freaks a little bit. The father grabs the clown’s nose, and yells, “Honk, honk!” And then, the zombie clown bites him in the neck.

Putting George Romero at three for three zombie clowns in the last three “Dead” movies.

Suddenly, there’s pounding on the barn walls. The zombies have arrived.

Samuel tells everyone there’s a back door. They head down to the bottom of the barn… and discover that the back door is open.

Samuel slams it shut, then grabs a scythe.

Tony shoots a zombie in the head. Then another one.

Upstairs, Tracy almost has the Winnie fixed. Suddenly, a zombie grabs her arm. Samuel slams his scythe through the zombie and drags it out from under the vehicle, and Tony shoots it in the head.

Deb gets into the Winnie, and fires it up.

Samuel and Tony open the barn doors.

Everyone starts getting into the Winnie, only Samuel gets grabbed by a zombie. And bitten. Samuel, knowing that his time is short, jams the blade of his scythe through his own head, and subsequently, the zombie’s head.

Never make fun of the Amish, folks. They will MESS YOU UP.

Deb pulls out, ramming zombies along the way.

And then… more random footage, and narration.

The gang stops for supplies, and they’re trying to figure out how to gas up the Winnie and get food, when a random black guy with an M-16 comes out and tells Tony to drop his gun.

Tony does, and a couple more fellows of color come out, both heavily armed.

There’s gunfire nearby, and everyone gets into the Winnie to go… wherever the black dudes tell them to go.

The gang is taken to a large warehouse, where all the people of color in the town are holed up with a lot of supplies. They tell Deb they can have some gas to get where they’re going.

Jason asks if he can get online, and he’s told to go ahead. He uploads his footage to… ready?… MySpace. Where he gets 72,000 hits in eight minutes.

Deb shows up, asking what’s going on, and Deb and Jason argue about whether or not the footage is important. Deb states, once again, that she wants to get back to her family, and Jason tells Deb that the media and/or the government is covering up what’s happening, and making it sound like everyone is going to be fine.

Jason has the most amazing laptop ever. He has yet to run out of power, and he’s cutting together a movie at lightning speed, and getting it uploaded, and… I don’t even know. Let’s just go with, “He seems to be working implausibly fast,” and leave it at that.

Deb brings the argument to a close, and gets ready to walk off, when her cell phone vibrates. It’s a message from her little brother – her family was camping, and now they’re heading home.

It was sent the night before.

Deb figures this means her family is going to beat her home, but I’m thinking it’s more likely they’ll get eaten while driving along the road. So going home is probably futile at this point. Perhaps they should throw in with the local militia? They seem to have a good thing going…

Deb goes to get some gas for the Winnie.

Jason’s computer buzzes, and some dude comes up on webcam. Ridley. He’s the guy who went, “Oh, hey, there are reports of zombie attacks. I’m going back to my house/fortress.” The other chick is there with him.

Ridley says he’s having a great time.

In the warehouse, Deb talks to Tony – something is going on.

One of the militia fills us in – one of the “soldiers” had a bad heart, and died. Only no one knows where he went.

And we’re back with Jason, who wanders through the warehouse, camera on. I think we see where this is going.

He sees something, starts to panic, then realizes he’s looking at himself in a mirror.

Tony appears suddenly, and tells Jason there’s a dead guy walking around, and they need to go.

Back at the Winnie, they check the vehicle for zombies. Nope, none there.

The head militia guy tells everyone to freeze and shut up.

Jason and Tony find the rest of the group, just as the militia spots the dead guy. They shoot him in the head.

Whoops – that wasn’t the dead guy.

The dead guy grabs Tony, who moves out of the dead guy’s grasp, and starts backing up.

One person yells out to shoot the dead guy, only the dead guy is standing near gas. So Tony grabs a jar of acid and shatters it on the dead guy’s head.

Over the course of a minute, the acid eats into the dead guy’s head, and then his brain, and then the dead guy dies.

A woman pumps some gas into the Winnie. The Head Guy tells her to stop, as they aren’t going very far. He also tells Deb that they aren’t getting any supplies – no guns, no food.

Deb says they won’t leave until they get some. Otherwise, Head Guy will have to kill them.

Head Guy gives them more gas, and food, and guns. What a pushover.

Everyone loads up. The professor decides he doesn’t want a gun, and takes a bow and arrows instead, noting that they seem “friendlier” than the guns.

Dude. When dealing with zombies, the word “friendly” should not apply.

As they’re leaving, Head Guy tells Debbie that he thinks Debbie is a lot like him.

As they drive, Tracy uses her cell phone to pull up a video from Tokyo on YouTube. A nice lady notes, “Don’t bury dead. First shoot in head.”

Then Tracy’s cell phone signal gives out. Eliot turns on the TV, and there’s no signal there either.

The end is nigh, folks. Or nigh-er, anyway.

And now, more stock-looking footage, and statements about how the mainstream was gone. You know, in case you missed it.

Back with the gang, hey, they finally made it to Deb’s house!

Deb says she’s going to go in the house, even though her family isn’t there. She tells everyone else to head out.

They opt, instead, to come in with her.

Deb opens the front door with the key, and then says she can’t remember the code for the house alarm. It’s either 102 or 201.

I’m sorry, I thought she lived here? Were her parents in the habit of installing alarm systems while she was away at school, or is she just kind of stupid?

Probably the latter.

Regardless, she punches in the wrong code, and the alarm goes off.

Eliot figures he can shut it off if he goes to the breaker box. Deb tells him it’s in the garage.

Deb goes through the house to the garage, opens the door, and sees that her family’s stuff is in the garage – they are, or were, home.

Deb starts calling for her parents, and then Tony notices something, which he points out to Deb – the passenger-side window has a hole smashed in it.

Did I mention the professor is wandering around this whole time carrying his bow and arrows? Because he totally is. I’m sure this will be important soon.

Deb tries to calmly figure out what the hole in the passenger-side window would mean. She determines that, you know, that’s her mom’s blood on the passenger-side window.

Tony figures out that Deb is about a second away from freaking right out, and he plays some bizarre psychological game with Deb, where they’re going into the house, but they’re NOT looking for her parents. They’re looking for her old doll. Whose name is Michael, Deb says. Like the archangel.

They go into the house, and Deb does some narration about how she debated whether to leave this part in the film. Oookay.

Deb wanders through the house, and her zombie brother, who looks to be in his early teens, jumps on her back and tries to eat her. The professor shoots an arrow through the brother’s head, which pins the zombie brother to the wall.

I guess he hit a stud. Or they have exceptionally strong drywall holding him up.

Deb runs out of the house. Then she runs back into the house, and finds her mom. Who is eating her dad. In, like, a zombie way.

Mom starts walking towards Deb, and the professor shoots mom through the head with an arrow.

Then he notes they should leave. This is because he’s got a doctorate, so he’s all smart.

Deb does some more narrating. It’s kind of dull. Let’s skip it.

In the Winnie, Jason sets the camera down for almost a full minute to comfort Deb. Then he gives up.

Deb asks the professor where he learned to shoot a bow and arrow. He replies, “Eaton. Archery squad. Targets, of course.”

I guess that’s a good thing. Better than it being a “The Most Dangerous Game” situation.

There’s some more banter and character-building stuff which, quite frankly, isn’t interesting enough to document. And then – headlights!

It’s the National Guard. Eliot pulls over, a member of the National Guard steps in, and asks them where they got all their stuff. They say they got it from friends.

The leader of the Guard says, “Can we be friends?”

Then he tells Jason to turn off the camera.

When the camera comes back on, the gang has been stripped of all their food, and the National Guard folks are driving away.

The “documentary” then cuts over to a group of people we’ve never seen before. Some kind of SWAT team kind of thing. They encounter some old people in what appears to be an apartment building. Then they go into an apartment, and one of them gets bitten.

They blow the zombie’s head off.

Then they kill two more zombies.

Then they get mad at the two old people, who were clearly hiding the living dead in their house. “They were family!” pleads the old man. Then they shoot him.

In the heart. So they can wake up dead. Oh, and they do the same to the old woman.

Then the dude who got bit in the neck blows his own head off.

This is followed by some commentary by Deb and Jason.

Moments later, Eliot pulls the Winnie up to Ridley’s place. The front fence is open, and the front door is unlocked.

This makes everyone nervous.

They go into the house anyway.

I guess the good news is, some of them are armed.

The better news is, there are security cameras everywhere, which gives an alternate source of black-and-white footage, instead of showing us just the stuff Jason is shooting.

They wander into the library, and the professor discovers the bookshelf, which has a bunch of first editions on it.

Suddenly, the bookshelf flies open – it’s a door to a panic room, and Ripley is behind it. Dressed in his mummy costume from the start of the film.

Yeah, that’s not creepy. At all.

They ask Ridley where his parents are, and he says out back. They ask why he left the door open, and he said it was an accident, and adds that he’s stupid.

Ridley has clearly lost his mind.

Ridley tells everyone to go do, like, whatever it is they want to do. Get some food. Drink some hooch. Take a bath.

Someone asks him why he was in the panic room, and he says that he was testing the generator.

Finally he asks where everyone’s stuff is, and they basically say they haven’t got any. Except bags of dirty clothes.

All right, let’s pause for a second.

Here are the problems with this movie:

1. There’s kind of no plot. The goals in the movie, so far, have been: Get to Deb’s house. Which led to her learning her parents were dead. So then they, 2. Go to this other house, where I’m sure we’re about to learn that everyone is dead.

As plots go, it’s sort of boring.

Added to that, we’re watching a film “made” by a bunch of student filmmakers, so they restate stuff we already know, narrate things that don’t need to be narrated, and in general, kill the suspense of going from scene to scene by intercutting news reports and the like.

If that’s what Romero was going for, it’s sort of brilliant. And the man can still put together creatively creepy stuff.

But somewhere between making “Night,” and making this movie, he went from telling a great story that happened to be layered with societal commentary, to telling a societal commentary that occasionally gives us a really interesting way to dispatch a zombie.

This whole, “All we have is dirty clothing,” line sort of lays out this problem for us. We don’t care. Dirty clothing doesn’t tell us about the characters, doesn’t really up the suspense, and doesn’t really crackle, as far as jokes go.

But whatever. Let’s wrap this up.

Jason tells Tony to take the camera. Tony, of course, resists taking the camera, because people arguing about whether or not shooting “this kind” of movie is pretty much the main focus of discussion, and it’s been nearly three minutes since someone got on Jason’s case for filming everything.

Tony follows Ridley around with the camera. Ridley babbles about his dad shooting a rabbit.

Deb enters the room, and asks where their blonde friend is, who had like three lines in the movie so far, so who really cares?

“She’s out back, with my family, and the staff,” says Ridley.

I’m going to guess they’re not out there playing a round of croquet.

Deb asks why they don’t just go see her, and Ridley says that’s a bad idea.

I know I mentioned this before, y’all, but Ridley is still wearing his mummy costume. Just keep that in mind.

Ridley explains that his dad was the first to die. Dad ate mom. Dad and mom ate the help. The help bit blondie on the face. So Ridley buried them all in the backyard.

Ridley then takes Deb and Tony to the backyard. Deb thinks this might be a bad idea, while Tony says he has to see. Way to, like, use your scruples and stuff, dude.

Ridley takes them to a big glassed-wall structure. He flips in the lights.

It’s the poolhouse. All the dead people are walking around on the bottom of the pool.

Ridley wanders off. Or runs off. I have no idea, as it happens off-camera.

Tony notes that Ridley had blood on his arm, and we get an insert shot of his arm, and sure enough, there’s blood.

Tony wonders if Ridley got bitten.

Cut to the security footage, with Ridley stumbling into the house and falling over, dead. And Eliot getting ready to take a bath. And Ridley’s undead self waking up and heading out to eat him some people.

Outside in the Winnie, Tracy throws bags on the ground, and asks Jason for help, only Jason says that he’s shooting.

And here comes Ridley, who Jason actually notes, out loud, is dead.

Ridley attacks Tracy, and Jason doesn’t do anything to help. I suppose we could argue that this is supposed to demonstrate the power of the video camera, and how it gets ahold of us, but really, all I can think is that I really hope Ridley eats Jason a lot.

Tracy calls to Jason for help, and Jason tells Tracy to run. Tracy runs. Ridley shambles after her.

Jason yells out, “See! I told you dead things move slow!” You know, from the start of the movie, when he was complaining that Ridley was walking too fast? Also, I’m sure this Romero commenting on the so-called fast zombie controversy.

Hey George, remember when your zombies were afraid of fire? No? You might want to look into that.

At any rate, Jason doesn’t lift a finger to help Tracy. Finally, he tries to “distract” Ridley by yelling, “Cut!”

Oh, it gets so much worse.

Tracy knocks Ridley over the head, which appears to re-kill him, and then she says: “Don’t mess with Texas.”

And The Yellow Rose of Texas plays on the soundtrack.

You know what? I take all my criticisms back. This is the greatest takedown of student films ever created.

As the song continues to play, Tracy gets back into the Winnie and drives away.

Deb peeks out the window and sees Tracy take off, and she and Tony debate the merits of hitting the road. Deb is all for the panic room option.

In the bathroom, Eliot blow-dries his hair until Ridley eats him.

Downstairs, Jason, Deb, and Tony do the whole, “Hey, where’s Eliot?” thing, and then the professor shows up with a gun and says he saw Ridley attack Eliot in the bathroom. He saw it on the monitors in the panic room.

The professor grabs a big old sword off the wall.

And the remaining three students argue about whether or not it’s better to survive the zombie apocalypse, or record it. Deb comes down on the survival side. Jason comes down on the recording side.

So Jason takes off, and goes to another room, where he encounters… Ridley.

Ridley bites Jason. As this happens, Deb and the professor and Tony show up. The professor puts a sword through Ridley’s head.

Jason asks Deb to kill him. So Deb shoots him in the head.

Then we cut to footage of the living Jason talking to the camera, about being given the gift of being able to document the events that have gone on.

And now we’re back in the house, with Tony and the professor calling to Deb, who’s sitting around and doing some smoking, and saying she’s going to finish Jason’s movie.

Then it’s the next day, and the professor does a whole thing about how he doesn’t like mornings and mirrors, and how they both terrify old men.

Oookay.

And then we get all the closed-circuit camera footage. Zombies are walking towards the house. Zombies are coming out of the pool. The Eliot zombie is coming out of the bathroom.

Deb tells the professor to close the door of the panic room. He does.

Deb cuts to some footage that Jason downloaded, of two dudes with guns who tied some dead people to trees and had target practice.

As the movie comes to a close, we see a dead woman hanging in the air, tied to a tree by her hair. One of the guys shoots her in the face, so her body drops away just below the mouth line, while the eyes keep looking around.

Deb says, “Are we worth saving? You tell me.”

Annnd… credits! Complete with chick-sung alterna-song.

Land of the Dead

“Land of the Dead” opens up with something of an anomaly: The ancient Universal Logo that was used back in the days when “King Kong” was a brand-spanking-new film.

This is followed by a few more credits, and then a burn-in: “Some Time Ago.”

From there, we get black-and-white footage of “the recent past,” with an old-fashioned radio broadcasting various and sundry voices, who explain what we’ve learned in the last three movies.

In other words, anyone dead gets up and kills, as long as anyone is alive they’re essentially a food source, you have to knock out the brain of the creatures to kill them, and so on.

Finally, black-and-white turns to color, and we get another burn-in: Today.

Man, I hope not. I’m a little nervous to look out the window now.

At any rate, as the movie really begins, we’re in a park, where a bunch of zombies are shuffling around. Except for the one playing the tuba. He’s mostly just standing there, playing the tuba.

At a nearby gas station, a zombie steps on that little hose that tells the dude inside that there’s someone outside who needs his gas pumped.

A black zombie steps outside, picks up the gas pump, and looks around for a vehicle to fill. But of course, there isn’t one. Unless that other zombie is headed off to grab a car and drive it over.

In the nearby bushes, two dudes who are not dead debate what the creatures are up to. One of them says they’re learning to be “us,” by which he means living, breathing, people.

The Black Zombie sees the two men in the bushes and does a large grunt at some other zombies, who turn towards the Black Zombie.

The two dudes realize that now would be a good time to go.

Elsewhere, a bunch of dudes dump crates filled with “trash,” at a dump site. One fellow notes that there’s a lot of trash, while another points out that the trick is to not end up as part of it.

Since one of the boxes is bleeding, I’m guessing the “trash” in question is, or was, some version of human.

And then we’re back with the two dudes who were spying on the Black Zombie. They’re walking towards what looks like the band of raiders from “Day of the Dead,” but which is in fact a group of professional raiders. As opposed to the amateur ones from “Day.”

Behind the two dudes, another guy who looks semi-dead stalks up behind them. One dude turns around, and the not-zombie asks if the kid is any good with his gun.

Thanks to the subtitles, we learn that the guy who did NOT draw his gun is named Riley, and the dude doing the stalking is Charlie, who claims he was only doing it because he doesn’t like it when Riley heads off without him.

Charlie, by the way, has something of a messed-up face.

Riley talks to someone on the radio, and tells them to “Put some flowers in the graveyard.”

Which, apparently, means, “Set off some fireworks to distract the zombies.”

Charlie asks why they call them flowers. It’s a whole long thing. You don’t really want to know. They’re just babbling for a bit anyway, so that Riley and crew can get to a nearby jeep, which is sitting in front of… I don’t even know what to call it.

The words written on the side say, “Dead Reckoning,” so I guess I’ll call it that. It looks like what you’d get if a school bus and a tank mated.

And here comes the dude dumping garbage and talking Spanish from earlier. His name is Cholo, and he and Riley do a whole back-and-forth thing that basically comes down to:

Riley: Hey, these zombies are communicating with each other. Also, don’t screw up, this is my last night in command.

Cholo: These things are stupid, and they are NOT talking to each other. And it’s my last night, too.

The New Kid gets on a motorcycle with Cholo, and he asks why they go out at night, instead of the daytime. Cholo says that the zombies can’t take their eyes off the fireworks.

Did I mention they’re here to raid the local town for supplies? No? Because neither did they, really, but it’s kind of implied.

The group rolls out, and the zombies just stand around, watching the fireworks. Except for the Black Zombie, who seems seriously miffed about the fact that no one is watching all the living people driving through the town.

Black Zombie grabs one of his compatriots by the head just as a biker blows off his body. The head looks at the Black Zombie, who throws it to the ground and crushes it.

You know, Black Zombie needs a name, or something. I think I’ll call him Buzz, in memory of Bub, who is still probably running around in Florida somewhere, looking for more soldiers to eat.

The raid commences, with people taking food and medicine. Then, suddenly, the fireworks stop firing, and the zombies stop looking at the sky.

This is Not Good.

Riley tells everyone to get out of town, while Dead Reckoning lays down some cover.

Dead Reckoning is being driven by Pretty Boy. Who’s a girl. Just FYI.

Riley contacts Cholo, who says he’s picking up some supplies. By supplies, he means booze, which sells for a lot of money back at… wherever they live.

Cholo is there with a guy named Foxy and a guy everyone calls The Kid, who doesn’t have a name, so he’ll be dead soon. Real soon.

Cholo goes to get something of a fridge in a liquor store, and gets attacked by a zombie. Foxy and The Kid try to help Cholo, but Cholo grabs his weapon and deals with the zombie.

Then Cholo knocks some cigars onto the floor, and tells The Kid to pick them up. The kid does, and a zombie takes a bite out of him.

The Kid runs outside, where Cholo and Foxy are loading up the hooch. Riley and Charlie pull up in their jeep. Riley shoots the zombie that bit The Kid.

He then goes to help The Kid, only The Kid jams a gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger. I’d say his chances of recovering just went down pretty significantly.

Riley and Cholo exchange meaningful looks. Cholo and Foxy drive away.

Riley radios everyone to cease fire, pack it up, and call it a night.

Everyone drives out of town, really, really, really angering Buzz.

As everyone drives away, Buzz moans at them loudly. Then heads after them, with his various zombie buddies following along behind him. And did I mention he’s now carrying a semi-automatic weapon?

Okay, the next couple bits are a little jumbled, but it comes down to this:

Riley is mad at Cholo, since Cholo is responsible for the kid’s death. Cholo says the kid knew the risks, that they all know the risks, and that he’s going to be moving on up.

Moving on up to what?

Well, there’s a commercial on the TV talking about that – it’s called Fiddler’s Green, and it’s a big old building in the middle of the city where all the people with money live now.

Cholo thinks he’s going to move in there. Riley says it’ll never happen, they’re “the wrong kind.” I’d think it’s a racial thing, only Riley is white. So I’m at a loss as to what “The Wrong Kind” means. I’m guessing it’s a poor people issue, but if everyone is dead, how does one define wealth?

Cholo takes the cigars and liquor to some kind of office area, where a man behind a barred window asks Cholo what he’s doing. Cholo says he’s brought essential supplies for Kaufman.

Moments later, Cholo is in the middle of a massive way-upscale mall-type place, with shopping and eating and other such things. Imagine a mall for adults. Like that.

Cholo looks out of place, carrying his booze.

Elsewhere, Riley and Charlie walk through the deserted streets until they end up on some not-deserted streets, where a few scattered military guys let them into the area.

The area is a massive outdoor market, only with prostitutes among the other goods and services.

Charlie asks if Riley wants a drink, but Riley says he has to go see a man about a car.

Elsewhere, a handful of people in military garb explain how the city stays protected. It’s protected by water, for the most part, plus a half-mile electric fence. A zombie walks into the fence and starts on fire. So, you know, clearly this method works.

Inside the market/slum, a dude named Mulligan tries to get people to join forces with him, to storm Fiddler’s Green and take it over. Riley and Charlie show up, and Mulligan asks them the join his forces.

If I knew a dude named Mulligan, every time he did something stupid, I’d be like, “Hey dude. Do you want to take a you?”

Riley gives Mulligan antibiotics for his sick kid.

Inside Fiddler’s Green, Cholo goes into Kaufman’s apartment, where he encounters the black butler. Or whatever he is. The butler heard crying, so Cholo goes to investigate the apartment across the hall.

Cholo finds a dead man, who’s an older dude, hanging by his neck from a ceiling lamp.

Cholo gets ready to re-kill the dead guy once the dead guy wakes up, only the dead guy’s wife comes around the corner (she was the one crying) along with the dead guy’s son, who sets up the chair the dead guy jumped off when hanging himself, and tries to help his father.

Only the dead guy wakes up, and takes a bite out of his own kid.

Cholo tries to keep the dead guy’s wife quiet through all of this.

Then he clubs the dead guy back into death with a heavy statue.

Security shows up, armed and ready to do some killin’, and Cholo says it’s security’s problem now.

Out in the slum, Riley goes to get his car, only his car isn’t there.

So he heads to the slum’s version of Vegas, which has gambling, drugs, ladies in cages, and a chance to have your photo taken with a live zombie.

Riley approaches a fellow named Roach, and asks where Chihuahua is.

Roach tells him. Then he explains to a couple of folks about a new game, wherein two zombies fight over food.

It goes like this. Two zombie in chains go into a pit with fencing around it. Then they stick a person – in this case, a woman – in there with them and she tries to survive while the zombies fight it out.

This goes on while Riley confronts Chihuahua, who is a little person in a purple suit with a huge hat. Say what you will about George Romero, the man has his demographics covered in this flick.

Chihuahua says he’ll check into the missing car. Then he goes to the bar, and orders a drink and his gun.

Riley stands around waiting, when he hears a scream and notices that a person is trapped in a cage with two creatures that want to eat her, and that this totally isn’t Babylonian times, so that probably shouldn’t be happening.

He pulls out a gun and shoots both zombies in the head. Chihuahua takes aim at Riley and tries to shoot him, but shoots another guy instead.

Chihuahua takes another shot at Riley, only the woman he just saved kicks him in the head and knocks him to the ground. She appears to take the bullet meant for Riley, but it’s just her arm, so she’ll live.

Chihuahua runs around the gate to go shoot Riley. Only Charlie has pulled his gun, and he takes aim, and he shoots Chihuahua right in the noggin.

Riley shoots the lock off the fence, and goes to help the person he just saved. He sees that she’s bleeding, and gets ready to shoot her in the head. She sits up, and yeah, she’s just been shot in the arm, so she says she’s all right.

They both do a, “I’ve seen you around” kind of thing, and then guards come running in, and arrest Riley.

And Charlie, and what’s-her-name.

Oh. Slack. Thanks, subtitles.

Charlie asks Slack how she ended up in the cage with the zombies. First, she spouts some exposition about how Kaufman runs and owns everything, and then she follows that up with how she got thrown in the zombie cage for helping Mulligan and his people.

More information comes out. Riley plans to head North, to Canada. He wants to be where there are no people.

Charlie says he might be able to come along, because he’s useful.

Slack says she can be useful, too. She was training to be a member of the army before they figured out she’d make a better lady of the evening.

I don’t even want to ask how someone makes that determination.

Riley says he doesn’t want to hear her story.

But hey, it’s time for a new prisoner. Mulligan. A couple cops drag him by. Charlie asks if they’re going to kill him. Slack says they’ll get information out of him first – information about people like her.

Ladies of Easy Virtue? That seems like a strange thing to grill a man about. I guess everyone’s feeling a little lonely, at this point.

Out in the middle of nowhere, the zombie gang led by Buzz encounters a poorly constructed wall. Seriously. It appears to be made of plywood.

Buzz grabs a zombie carrying a cleaver and has him chop through the plywood. Which is one whole layer thick. The mind boggles.

Buzz peaks through the plywood, and sees a half-dozen zombies hanging in the air, strung up by their feet, with targets on their chests. This does not please Buzz.

Beyond the “targets,” Buzz can see Fiddler’s Green. That’s probably a bad thing, for the folks who are less than dead.

Back in the Green, Cholo finally delivers the box of booze to Kaufman, who mentions the neighbor that Cholo clubbed in the head. In an appreciative way.

Cholo opens up a bottle of booze and offers some to Kaufman, who notes that this is very extravagant.

Cholo says that it’s all right – with the $20,000 Kaufman owes him, plus some other money Cholo saved, Cholo now has the money to get his own place in The Green.

Kaufman says that there’s a “very long waiting list,” to get in, and Cholo replies, essentially, that if Kaufman doesn’t think Cholo is good enough to live there, Cholo will start telling people about what goes out with Kaufman’s garbage.

Something tells me that Cholo is unfamiliar with people in power. My suspicion is that if Kaufman took Cholo to the center of the mall, and then killed an ate him, as long as Kaufman had Cholo roasted first and/or used barbecue sauce in the eating process, no one would really care.

Kaufman suggests he and Cholo can talk about this when Cholo is “a little less excited.” And then in comes a guard.

Kaufman tells the guard, “I won’t be needing this man any more.”

Cholo starts walking down the stairs with the guard, then beats the guard down. And takes his gun.

Cholo heads out into the slums, and collects Foxy.

Out at one of the guard posts, two dudes who’ll surely be dead soon are having some target practice with a giant balloon-zombie. There’s no real sense of scale, so the thing appears to be Macy’s Parade-sized. I think a smaller target would be a better practice option.

Did I mention I suspect these guys’ll be dead soon?

Cholo and Foxy go up to another army dude and tell him they’re taking the truck out. Army dude asks for their orders, and Cholo hands him some.

Army dude tells Cholo that the orders are from the night before. Cholo reaches for his stolen gun, but pauses when he hears shots. The army man assures him it’s just target practice.

The two dudes having target practice get into an argument about one of them making too much noise. The noisemaker claims it’s not him, and turns on the search light. They see Buzz. They scream.

Cholo inquires if this is screaming practice. Sirens go off. The army faces down the cadre of zombies being led by Buzz, and shoots a whole lot of them.

Cholo, Foxy, and the rest of the Dead Reckoning crew get into the Dead Reckoning. Pretty Boy asks if they should do something about the zombies storming the single gate that’s holding the zombies back.

Cholo says that’s their way out.

The zombies knock over the chain link fence which, I think I should repeat, really was the only thing keeping the zombies away. So let’s recap. Keeping the zombies out:

One sheet of plywood.

A single chain-link fence.

I’m looking forward to the “line of banana peels” defensive strategy that I’m sure is coming up soon.

The zombies move in and starting eating army men, and the Dead Reckoning takes off. As this happens, Buzz accidentally pulls the trigger on the gun he’s been carrying around. It goes off. So Buzz points it at the Dead Reckoning and fires off a bunch of useless rounds.

No, wait, I take it back, he manages to hit a drum of something flammable, which blows up.

And so, the zombies walk on towards Fiddler’s Green.

In Dead Reckoning, Cholo calls Kaufman and says he wants his money, with interest. Five million dollars, or he blows Kaufman’s castle out of the sky, using Dead Reckoning.

Possible? Plausible? I have no idea. I didn’t realize that Dead Reckoning was that heavily armed. Maybe they’ll use the fireworks to torch the place?

Eh.

Either way, Cholo hangs up, and Kaufman tells the dude who’s in the room with him (don’t ask me who he is, what he does, or what his name is, ‘cause I don’t know) what’s going on.

Random Dude says that Kaufman should pay Cholo, but Kaufman notes that they don’t negotiate with terrorists, and says they have other options.

I feel I need to reiterate this fact: In a world where money has lost ALL meaning, why NOT give Cholo 5 million bucks? Where’s the guy going to spend it? And on what? All of that paper money is just that – paper.

But I guess that wouldn’t make for much of a plot.

So Kaufman drags Riley out of prison, which makes Charlie sad. It seems to make Slack sad as well, which is interesting, since she just met the guy a couple of hours ago.

Kaufman tells Riley that he wants Riley to get Dead Reckoning back from Cholo. Apparently, Dead Reckoning is worth 2 million dollars. Oh, and it was designed by Riley.

In exchange, Riley wants a car, and enough weapons and ammunition to head North. And he wants to bring his friends. I find it odd that he used the plural, since as near as I can tell Charlie is his only friend. He can’t be talking about Slack, right? They JUST met.

We get a short scene where Cholo drops off a dude named Mouse at the pier where someone is supposed to drop his money. It’s meant to build tension, but nothing actually happens, so I’ll just mention it’s there and leave it at that.

Back in a locker room at The Green, Riley, Charlie, and Slack are suiting up and getting ready to go out and find Dead Reckoning. Okay, it appears no one is listening to me: They JUST MET Slack. Why is she even on this adventure? Anyone?

Seriously, now. If she shoots Riley in the head and takes off on her own, will anyone be surprised? At all?

Argh.

On with the show.

Slack wants to know why Riley is helping Kaufman. Riley points out that if Cholo shells The Green, it’s going to hurt the people in “the city.” By which I’m guessing he means the slums.

In addition to our lovable losers, Riley is given three more people for his team. They all get cute little names and such, but I’m just going to call them Skinny Solider, Chick Solider, and Fat Soldier. Because they’re really just along to keep the body count high.

Riley and crew head outside, to the place where all the vehicles are kept. Of course, this is where all the dead people just were. Along with, like, the flames and stuff.

Uh… say… question… Why aren’t there more soldiers there now, cleaning up the dead bodies? And/or wiping out the undead ones? Did they somehow just miss all the explosions and such? And the fact that their gate has been knocked over?

Riley tells Charlie to go fire up The Woody, which I hope is some sort of vehicle. He then radios back to Kaufman that the zombies got through his tiny little weak fence, and that they’re headed for The Green.

Kaufman says that the creatures will never get past the water in the way, which is pretty stupid, as it’s not like zombies even need to swim. They don’t breathe. So they can just, like, walk across. I’m not really sure what kept them back this long.

Kaufman adds, “Zombies, man. They creep me out.” Which I think might be the very first time someone has used the word zombie in one of these movies. Though I could be wrong.

Probably not, though.

I confess I love the next scene, but it’s totally pointless. They find “Woody,” which is a big old car that has guns welded to it. They keys are melted (they fat guy points at the fires, so I guess they used to keep the keys on top of easy-to-explode fuel drums) so Chick Solider hotwires the car.

Charlie looks down his rifle, carefully aiming for a zombie that’s somewhere. Eventually, he’s pointing his rifle right at Slack’s head. Charlie fires, Slack jumps, and then turns around and sees that there was a zombie RIGHT behind her, which Charlie shot.

Instead of, say, telling her to duck first. Or maybe telling her to run away so he could shoot it. That was pretty reckless, all things being equal.

Riley and Skinny Solider go into the ammo room, and get ammo. And shoot a bunch of zombies in the head.

Back at the car, Slack sees a zombie behind Charlie, and she shoots the zombie. She also nicks Charlie’s ear with the bullet. On the side of his face that looks normal. Poor dude just can’t catch a break.

Riley and Skinny Solider run up to the vehicle, and they all pile in.

Then an nearly-headless zombie trundles up, his head hanging by a bit of skin at the back of his neck. Headless swings forward, and bites Skinny Solider. Then he falls back, and Charlie shoots the zombie through the chest, and the bullet goes all the way through the zombie and through the zombie’s head.

Riley asks if Skinny Solider is bit. Fat solider says yes. Riley says, “Go!” Meaning the car. Not skinny soldier. Who actually should leave, before he becomes undead and tries to kill them all.

The crew drives out. Slack asks Riley how long Skinny Solider has to live. Riley said he had a brother who got bitten, and that the brother turned in less than an hour. Slack shoots skinny solider in the head.

Back in The Green, Kaufman assures his various “board members” that even if things go south, he has set up places for them to go to, where their families will be safe.

Over in Dead Reckoning, Cholo talks about how he’s never going to be anyone, because he never did anything. Then he shoots a zombie in the head.

Next, with Riley and crew, Riley tells Slack where to drive, because she’s driving now and he has a homing device.

Slack tells Riley she’s never been out of the city.

Riley tells Slack to pull over. He tells Charlie to cover the soldiers, and informs them that Kaufman is never going to see Dead Reckoning again. And if they have a problem with that, they can get out. Only, of course, they can see the various and sundry zombies walking around, so they know that’s not really much of a choice.

The crew drives on.

Cholo radios Mouse to ask if the money has arrived yet, and Mouse says no. Then Mouse gets attacked by zombies. And eaten by a zombie clown. And then some other zombies.

Mouse dies. There are intestines involved.

Elsewhere, Buzz and his zombie army encounter the water barrier that prevents them from getting to The Green. Buzz steps off the ground and into the water.

A couple of short scenes later, Buzz and his cohorts step out of the water. Yep. Bunch of zombies stepping out of the water and walking towards the city. If you’re a fan of this kind of thing, this is the moment where you simultaneously wet your pants a little bit, and start composing your fan letter to George Romero.

Oh, and there are some scenes where Cholo loads up the rockets on Dead Reckoning so he can blow things up. And Riley sees where Cholo is headed, and tells Slack where to go to stop Cholo.

Kaufman starts packing up his money, in preparation for leaving The Green. Seriously, y’all, the man is packing a bunch of green-tinted toilet paper.

I guess we’re getting into where everything is supposed to fall apart, so let’s just rock off some twists.

Long story short, the Fat Solider realizes he’s better off throwing in with Riley, so he punches Chick Solider in the face, and knocks her out. And leaves her in the back of the stolen vehicle, which has no roof. And she’s unconscious. I can’t say I feel really good about this particular story piece.

And Riley and Charlie go to “talk to” Cholo about his poor life choices.

And Slack and Fat Solider chase after them, after punching Chick Solider out and leaving her lying around like a tasty, tasty steak.

Cholo opens up Dead Reckoning, and lets Riley and Charlie in. Then he sticks a gun in Riley’s face, and tells Pretty Boy to get ready to shoot the rockets at The Green.

Meanwhile, at the city, everyone outside is getting eaten. So, you know… maybe being blown up wouldn’t be so bad at this point.

In the midst of all this, Buzz teaches another zombie to shoot an automatic gun, so they can more efficiently kill their prey.

Back at The Woody, Chick Solider wakes up. And grabs a gun. And wanders around for a little while, almost effects the main plotline but doesn’t really, then she gets eaten.

Cholo goes to blow up Fiddler’s Green, only Riley uses his homing device/remote control to keep Cholo from doing anything. And then he destroys the remote.

There’s some gunfire, and Charlie takes the guns out of the hands of the people holding guns on him.

Did I mention Cholo totally got shot in there, somewhere? He did. The chick solider did it, just before she got eaten. But like I said, it doesn’t really effect the plot, since Cholo is still super-alive.

Kaufman is confronted by one of his cohorts – whose money is in the bag? Kaufman pulls a “look over there!” trick, and shoots his friend in the head.

Riley calls Kaufman to tell Kaufman that they caught Cholo. Kaufman is saddened by this, as he wouldn’t have had to kill his cohort, if he had known this.

Suddenly, something in The City blows up real good. And now everyone is finally aware that The Dead have totally gotten into the city, and that they are totally eating people.

Riley tells his people to pick Cholo up and put him in Dead Reckoning. Cholo says he’d rather take The Woody. Foxy opts to go with Cholo.

Foxy is the stupidest person in this movie who doesn’t end up as lunchmeat.

Cholo says he’s going to head to an outpost in Cleveland. Riley says they haven’t heard anything from them in a while.

I just cannot get over how dumb Foxy is, following this guy.

Moving right along.

Riley tells the crew that they’re going to head back to the city, and see if they can help anyone.

Man, that’s like an hour’s drive. Everyone’s going to be a chew toy by the time they get there.

Kaufman states, “You have no right.” I guess he’s talking to the zombies. He is a silly man.

Riley and crew head back to the city, informing whoever is still running the place that they need to shut down the electric fence that surrounds the city so that people can escape. A few army folks say they can’t get ahold of the power people – everyone is gone. Or dead. Or whatever happened, they don’t know, they just know they’re leaving. So they do.

Riley babbles a bunch of, “We can’t help people in any of the following ways,” lines, but notes that he has a plan.

I should point out that in the middle of all the zombie mayhem, a biker from “Dawn of the Dead,” now available in zombie form, hacks up some people with a machete.

Back with Cholo and Foxy, Cholo spots a zombie, and shoots it in the head, and then gets bitten by another zombie. Foxy cocks his shotgun and gives Cholo a choice of whether or not he wants a shot in the head now, or not.

Cholo opts to NOT get shot in the head, stating, “I always wanted to see how the other half lives.”

In the city, it’s more zombie mayhem. And things blowing up. And zombies on fire. Buzz headshots the zombie on fire. Zombie mercy killing, apparently.

They all just keep on heading to Fiddler’s Green, the big old building at the heart of the city.

Foxy drops Cholo off in the city so that Cholo can do whatever, and then Foxy takes off. Adios, Foxy. I have no idea how you lived this long. I truly do not.

Buzz and his cohorts break into Fiddler’s Green and start eating people.

Riley and Dead Reckoning arrive at a bridge, and Riley goes to lower the bridge, which will hopefully allow people to escape.

Meanwhile, a bunch of residents of Fiddler’s Green have managed to run outside, only the electric fence is still active.

Riley goes into the bridge-lowering building, and goes to lower the bridge.

Inside Dead Reckoning, the various people inside realize that they’re surrounded by zombies.

They open the roof hatch, and Riley runs up the front of Dead Reckoning. Only he can’t get in, because Pretty Boy is driving Dead Reckoning around.

They cross the bridge. Riley is still up top.

Riley tells them to fire off some sky flowers. Sky flowers are fired.

Over by the electric fence, a bunch of people have a fence on one side, and a bunch of zombies on the other. And here come the flowers.

The zombies are distracted for about a second, and then they get their focus back, and people are gonna get eaten. In a big way.

Kaufman and his man-servant head out of Fiddler’s Green and go to Kaufman’s car, pausing to shoot at Buzz on the way. Kaufman hits Buzz twice, which makes Buzz mad. This is probably not a good thing.

Kaufman gets into his car, and his man-servant goes to open the garage door. Did I mention they’re in some sort of underground garage? They totally are.

A hand slams Kaufman’s window. It’s Buzz!

Kaufman’s driver makes a run for it – and he’s got the keys.

Buzz pounds on the window. Kaufman goes to shoot him, but he’s out of bullets.

Buzz grabs a nearby gas pump, and makes as if to pump Kaufman’s gas. Then he jams the gas nozzle through the car’s front window, and just kind of wanders off, with gas leaking into Kaufman’s car.

Kaufman gets out of the car, gets some ammo, and reloads. And here comes Cholo, who fires at Kaufman. Kaufman fires back, but Cholo keeps on coming. Because Cholo is all dead and such.

Kaufman locates an extra set of keys, then turns around, and realizes that Cholo is still moving, because Cholo is a zombie. A really rotted one, which is strange, since Cholo has been dead for like 20 minutes.

Eh. Whatever. We’re talking about a movie that involves the walking dead. Time to suspend some disbelief, methinks.

Anyway, Cholo grabs Kaufman, and Buzz rolls a firebomb kind of thing into the garage, which hits all the gasoline on the floor and causes the car to blow up. Thus allowing Kaufman to be killed by a Latino and a black fellow, both of whom were poor. Romero might have gone just a touch over the top with the irony.

Outside, Dead Reckoning finally gets to the electric fence, and Charlie prepares to fire. But they’re WAY too late. As I predicted. Because seriously, that was a long, long, long drive they had to make.

Riley tells Charlie to shoot. Charlie shoots three rockets, which… kills a bunch of zombies, I guess. Seems like a waste of ammo, really.

Pretty Boy says they’re too late.

Slack says, no, wait. And then all the poor people come wandering out. Guess they’re better at hiding from zombies, or something. And explosives.

Riley steps outside and says howdy to Mulligan. He and his people are staying, and planning on attempting to rebuild the city. Somehow. Seriously, does no one realize that Fiddler’s Green is like ten blocks away, and TEEMING with the living dead? Run, Mulligan! Take a You!

Or is that the joke? Mulligan gets a second chance at creating a safe city?

All right then. I’m just going to let that go.

Riley notes, once again, that he’s headed out of here. In a gigantic gas-guzzling vehicle, which I hope runs on solar power, because I can see no way he’s going to find gas, or diesel, or corn oil, or whatever that thing runs on.

Inside the Dead Reckoning, Anchor, a guy who didn’t have a name until now, gets attacked by a zombie. Which someone shoots and tosses out of the vehicle.

Riley looks outside, and sees a bunch of zombies, including Buzz, walking across a bridge. Pretty Boy goes to fire at them.

Riley says, “No. They’re just looking for a place to go.” Then he tells his crew to fire off the last of the sky flowers. And to head North.

That way, we can get a shot of the Dead Reckoning heading off on the highway, while fireworks fill the air. Happy Ending!

And really, that’s the end.

I feel the need to bring this up because, if you know anything about these movies at all, you’re probably well aware that there’s another movie in the series: “Diary of the Dead.”

But here’s the dilemma – “Diary” doesn’t follow this movie.

There are a lot of words used when it comes to “Diary.” Reboot. Starting over. Sequel. But really, it’s more of a side-quel – “Diary” takes place at the beginning of the zombie uprising.

Only, of course, the zombie uprising happened in 1968.

Now, honestly, even that’s in question when you take the first four “Dead” movies into consideration. If you tried to timeline them out, “Night,” follows the first night of the zombie uprising. Which is followed by “Dawn,” which partially takes place at the same time as “Night,” even though it was shot roughly ten years later.

And then ten years after that came “Day,” which may or may not take place at the “same” time as “Dawn.” Seeing as how there’s a pregnant woman in “Dawn” who never gives birth, we have to assume the heroes of that movie are only in the mall for a few months. Six. Maybe seven at most.

And the people in “Day” haven’t been in their hidey-hole all that long. Months? A year? There’s no way to tell.

“Land” is, in fact, the only one of the three that must take place after the other movies, though trying to figure out an exact timeline is probably completely impossible.

So… what to do with “Diary?”

I’m going to include it.

But I wanted to note, here and now, that “Land” really completes the story of the dead. In the first movie, they’re mindless beings. In the second, we learn that they’ve retained some memories. And that to some degree they can learn.

In the third movie, we discover just how much they might be able to learn – and in part four, the zombies are on their way to building a new society. One that’s going to run out of food pretty quick, seeing as how there aren’t a ton of people left.

Day of the Dead

“Day of the Dead” begins in an all-white room that appears to have been made from cement blocks. There’s a person sitting against one wall as the credits roll.

And now the person looks up, and we know it’s a she, and not just an it. Though I suppose they could just be building to a twist, wherein the only men left in the world try to mate with the one remaining woman, and discover that “she” isn’t actually a she at all.

There’s an award-winning short him in there somewhere.

The woman looks at the opposite wall. There’s a calendar there, with every day crossed off in October. She goes to touch the calendar, and a bunch of undead arms burst through the wall. Dream sequence!

And now we’re in an awake sequence. We’ve got:

Dream woman, dude with a big beard, dude with a little beard, and black dude.

The woman appears to be in charge of the operation, and the operation is this: They’re flying over Florida in a helicopter, in an attempt to contact any survivors by radio. But no one is answering, so dude with the small beard wants to head back to their base.

The woman insists that they land, and tells John (the black dude) that they’re touching down. John says he’ll land, but he’s not stopping the engine and he’s not getting out of the helicopter, and at the first sign of trouble he’s taking the chopper back up.

The helicopter lands, and Big Beard and Dream Woman hop out of the chopper and go looking for people.

The streets are very, very, very empty. Big Beard yells out, using a bullhorn, asking if anyone is there.

At long last, we hear someone walking, and see the shadow. But it turns out that the “person” walking is super-duper dead.

As are the other various and sundry people we see. Although I can’t tell if the alligator is alive or undead.

In the chopper, Short Beard and John radio out to whoever is listening. John notes that it’s a dead place, and that you can hears the sounds of the dead.

In the city, Big Beard takes off, clearly determining that there’s nothing to be done here.

Later, the chopper flies right on back to base.

Base, in this instance, seems to be an actual base of some kind, with a large fence around it. The dead press against the fence, but don’t manage to push it over. That is some industrial-grade fencing right there.

John tells two dudes, who I guess are soldiers, to gas up the chopper. Dream Girl says to wait until dark, because there are too many of the dead things out there and having people in sight riles them up.

John disagrees – if they need to make a fast getaway, then the chopper needs to have fuel in it at all times.

They reach an impasse, and the soldiers, who don’t appear to like working very much anyway, opt to put off gassing up the helicopter.

Dream Girl opens the door of the chopper and talks to Big Beard, whose name is Miguel. Miguel is clearly freaked out, or at Dream Girl puts it, collapsing from stress. Miguel points out that everyone is collapsing from stress, except her, and gets super-defensive about it.

Then he storms out of the helicopter.

Dream Girl looks around and notices there’s a new grave nearby. John walks up to her and says, “And then there were twelve.” Also, he calls her Sarah.

Sarah notes that the burial must be why the dead outside are all riled up. Well, Sarah, you might be correct, but have you stopped to think that you’re the only food for something like 150 miles?

Frankly, if there was one Burger King sitting in the middle of nowhere, and I hadn’t eaten anything in a few weeks, I’d probably be pretty riled up, too.

John isn’t done yet. He points out that what they’re doing is crazy, and presents an alternative – they should hop onto the helicopter, take off, and use whatever time they have left to soak up some sunshine.

Which, as a romantic notion, sounds great. As a practical one, whatever time they have left would probably be cut pretty short by the lack of food available. Or maybe I just have a bad attitude.

No matter. The foursome gets onto a metal platform, Little Beard presses a button, and they all descend into the ground.

A solider yells out, “Another waste of time?”” as they get off the platform. John confirms that’s the case.

Another pair of soldiers pull up in what appears to be a golf cart, and ask if they found anything. Sarah says no, and tells him that they went 100 miles up the coast each way.

The other solider in the golf cart tells Sarah they need to go collect two more zombies. Sarah asks what “Logan” is going with them. So I guess we’ll meet him soon.

Sarah also asks if anyone else can go, and the solider points out that there isn’t anyone else – they’re it.

Sarah says they’ll go, and Miguel decides to join them.

The four people on collection duty drive around the underground bunker, passing, among other things, a whole bunch of boats. Man, would I love to know what those are doing down there.

I suppose it would be helpful to describe the bunker in general, but I have to say, it appears to be some kind of massive mine that’s been re-purposed. Rock walls, rock floor, rock ceiling. And a bunch of random flotsam lying around. So there isn’t much to describe.

Eventually, the group reaches the “end” of the mine, where a large wooden fence has been erected to block off a really wide hallway. Or whatever you call it when it’s a cave. Tunnel, maybe?

Either way, big wood fence.

Sarah notes that the list of zombies taken out from behind the fence doesn’t seem to have been updated recently. One of the soldiers says that sometimes, they forget to update the list. This makes Sarah upset, since they won’t know how many they have left if they don’t keep track of them.

I’d love to say I understand how crabby she is about it, but seriously – it’s not like they can’t collect a bunch from outside, right? I mean, I’m sure it’s tricky and all, but it can’t be all that rough.

The other solider starts screaming, alerting the zombies to their presence. But they’re really slow about coming for the solider.

The first solider points out that the zombies are scared – they’re worried about what “Dr. Frankenstein” will do to them.

Sarah points out that if they really are scared, it means the zombies are learning.

There’s some more taunting, because this is a low-budget movie and it helps to pad the running time a bit, and then Miguel goes to get up on the platform on top of the fence, along with one of the soldiers.

Sarah protests, since she knows Miguel is pretty much on the verge of losing it, and heated and somewhat sexist words are exchanged. Then Miguel goes on up.

The solider hooks one of the zombies using a pole, and then Miguel grabs it by the neck using a hook and collar contraption. They drag the zombie through a couple of gates, to keep it separate from the others, and then we’ve got:

A solider and Miguel up on a platform, each holding a zombie using a pole.

Sarah and another soldier are on the ground, getting ready to deal with the zombie who is already outside the gate.

The zombie Miguel is pole-holding suddenly yanks forward, and the pole comes out of his hand.

Sarah grabs the pole.

This causes the solider up top to freak out. He grabs Miguel by the collar and holds Miguel’s head over the zombie struggling in the pen below.

Sarah cocks her gun and tells the solider to let go, and the solider tosses Miguel to the floor.

Later, the two soldiers chain the zombies to a wall in a laboratory.

Elsewhere, Sarah, preps a sedative for Miguel, who angrily throws it against the wall and says he isn’t going to let Sarah dope him up. Sarah says that Miguel needs a sedative, and that he’s behaving dangerously.

Once again, Miguel says that Sarah hurt his feelings. Sarah walks towards him, and he tells her to stay away. Then he slaps her across the face. Twice.

Then he moves forward to get a hug.

Just a tip, dude – physically abusing the only female around is probably not the best course of action. He also does some crying.

Then Sarah jabs him with the dope. So he lies down on a cot and cries some more.

Elsewhere, a doctor talks to yet another soldier, explaining that they need sterile conditions.

The doctor tells the solider in charge – man, I’d kill for a name right about now – that Cooper promised…

But Head Dude says that Cooper is dead, and that the doc can work with what the doc has got.

Sarah shows up, and asks whey they can’t all just get along. Yes, she really does.

Sarah goes on to state that Miguel needs to be pulled off active duty, but Head Dude says Miguel can’t be spared. Then he offers to put Miguel in quarantine, so that the rest of the men might have a shot with the one available woman in the place.

There are a few more sexist and racist comments tossed out as well, but let’s just skip to the end of the scene:

Sarah tells the doctor, whose name is Ted, that they should leave. Head Dude says he’s calling a meeting at 7 PM, and that everyone needs to be there, including “Dr. Frankenstein and Your Boyfriend.”

Bad words are exchanged.

Sarah and Ted leave, and while walking down the corridor Ted tells Sarah to watch herself – Rhodes is dangerous. Rhodes would be the head dude, I guess.

Sarah asks where Logan is, and heads over to talk to him.

Dr. Logan is in his lab, with a bunch of dead bodies and body parts – and also a zombie with a chain around his neck.

There’s more back-and-forth chatter here, but long story short, Logan is trying to domesticate zombies. Which sounds like kind of an awesome idea, until you realize that there are just way too many of them for domestication to be a practical solution to anything.

While they’re talking, Sarah realizes that there’s a uniform on the floor that says Cooper. Logan took the newly-but-not-dearly-departed Cooper’s body to use as a specimen. He even notes that Cooper is more useful to them this way than he ever was before.

The person buried earlier that day was one of the zombies.

Which isn’t quite a continuity error, I guess. I mean, Sarah did say, “Oh, it must have been that freshly-dead body we buried that riled up all the ghouls outside the fence.” But since they buried a dead zombie, that clearly wasn’t the case.

So what did rile them up? Do they just really like helicopters?

Over on an operating table, one of the specimens breaks his manacle, and as he tries to roll off the table, his guts fall out. Logan takes a drill to the creature’s head, and kills it.

Over at the mess hall, the chopper pilots eat. Short Beard, whose name is McDermott, I guess, says he can’t raise anyone on the radio. Which I thought we already knew.

Which is when we realize that this is that 7 o’clock meeting thing that everyone was/is supposed to be at.

The soldiers berate McDermott for not trying harder, or doing a better job, and McDermott points out that much of what he’s using is World War II technology. When someone points out that they used to be able to reach Washington D.C., McDermott explains that they used to use relays, but now they’re just going over the air. He concludes this thought with: “You know the power’s off on the mainland now in case you haven’t heard, and all the shopping malls are closed.”

That’s called an in-joke.

Sarah asks if Rhodes wants anything else, and Rhodes says he doesn’t think the weekly reports mean anything. He wants to know, in simple terms, if the scientists are accomplishing anything.

The various soldiers spout some more racism and sexism, and Sarah stands up and gets ready to leave – only Rhodes stops her with a, “Sit down or so help me God I’ll have you shot.”

Sarah stops and turns around. More heated words are exchanged.

Ted tries to jump to Sarah’s defense, and Rhodes demands that one of the soldiers shoot Sarah. The solider yells Bang!

Rhodes stands up, pulls out his gun, and tells the solider that if the solider doesn’t shoot Sarah, the solider is going to be shot.

The solider prepares to shoot Sarah.

John stands up and indicates that Sarah should sit down before she gets shot.

The solider is just about to shoot Sarah, when Sarah decides that not dying would be much more awesome than dying and she goes to sit down.

Rhodes does some monologueing about how he’s in charge, and about how now that he’s in charge, this isn’t a science installation, it’s a military operation. And this is a war. And a bunch of other stuff along those lines.

He points out that their job is not to bring the creatures downstairs, next to where they sleep – their job is to shoot them in the head.

And then Logan appears, and points out that they don’t have enough ammunition to shoot them all in the head. The time to do that would have been at the beginning. Now they’ve been overrun.

The numbers are about 400,000 to 1, by Logan’s calculations.

Logan goes on to say he was unavoidably detained, and he asks if there’s any food.

Rhodes replies with one of the greatest unknown lines in the history of cinema: “I’m running this monkey farm now, Frankenstein!”

Rhodes wants to know what Logan is doing with his time. He asks what’s stopping them from killing all the remaining specimens, taking his men and leaving the scientists here to rot?

Logan asks: Where will you go?

Logan goes on to assert that there’s no way they can kill all of the creatures now – their only hope is to domesticate them.

Rhodes wants to know what that means.

Logan says they should have something to show them in a matter of weeks.

Sarah tries to backtrack, explaining that it could be months or years before they have something concrete.

The conversation starts to loop around again, and finally Rhodes declares: “You’ve got a little more time.” He adds, a moment later, “I ain’t sayin’ how much.”

Bottom line, he wants results, and nothing happens without him knowing about it.

The meeting breaks up, and John breaks it down for Sarah, and the audience. Rhodes won’t kill John, because he’s the pilot. He won’t kill McDermott because the man knows electronics. He won’t kill Logan, because Logan can talk him out of it.

But everyone else is expendable.

Later, Sarah sits on the floor of her office, and has a nightmare wherein Miguel rolls over on the cot and his guts fall out.

When she wakes up, Miguel tells her that she’s afraid, and she tells him to get out. Man, this is going to make mealtime seriously awkward. It’s not like she can hide out in the crowd of people in the mess hall.

Sarah goes to a water fountain to take some aspirin, and hears some grunting. She walks down the hall and all the soldiers, who have gotten into some strange sort of wrestling match, come shooting out the door.

Which is, I guess, what happens when there aren’t all that many women around.

McDermott arrives, and walks away quickly with Sarah in tow, hoping to protect her from whatever might happen. Once they’re in another hallway, he pulls out his ever-present flask and offers her some brandy.

She takes a pull, then a longer pull.

They grab a couple of helmets with lights on them, and head somewhere inside the cave, until they find a trailer marked, “The Ritz.” This is where John and McDermott live.

Sarah and McDermott go in, and Sarah finds that the trailer is nicely decorated. They head out the back door, where John and McDermott have laid out astroturf and lawn furniture.

John asks what’s on Sarah’s mind. At firs she’s reluctant to say, but then she states that John and McDermott never lift a finger to help anyone, even though they eat “their” food and drink “their” water.

John notes, correctly, that his job is to fly the helicopter, and that they don’t believe in what they – they being the scientists and the military – are doing. He holds up a binder, and points out that the cave contains all the important records of the United States of America: Fortune 500 companies, who owes who money, and a bunch of other things that NO ONE WILL EVER CARE ABOUT AGAIN.

The place is a 14-mile tombstone.

He continues: He thinks everything they’re doing is a waste of time, and time is all they have left. What they really need to do is go somewhere, anywhere, and start over. Make some babies. And tell the babies to never, ever come and dig up the relics of what’s pretty much already a lost civilization.

Sarah says, “Hmmm…”

There’s some more philosophical stuff after that, but it all boils down to this: Man, these people are full of speeches.

Later, Sarah sits in her lab, trying to figure out whatever it is they’re never going to figure out.

She stops to take some more aspirin, and sees Ted in his office, where he’s trying to teach a zombie to eat Beef Treats.

Logan shows up, talking about his theories about how zombies can be trained to be good little girls and boys, based on possible future rewards. Just like children can be trained.

He tells Sarah and Ted to follow him, and when the zombie in Ted’s office knocks over a table, Logan shuts off the lights, and says the zombie can just sit in the dark and think about what he’s done. In the background, the “Gonk” music, which played during the “zombies go mall-walking” segments of “Dawn of the Dead,” plays for a couple of bars.

I’m guessing it’s meant to be sort of a trombone “Wah-wah-waaaaah” sort of joke.

I was just going to sum up what Logan does next, but it’s so deeply disturbing as you’re watching it, I’m going to type out his dialogue verbatim. Keep in mind, he’s talking about a zombie here – at least at first:

“I call him Bub. That’s what the club fellows used to call my father. Can you imagine a surgeon called ‘Buuub?’ Nobody seemed to mind, though. He was rich. My father was rich. He used to say that I’d never be rich doing pure research. I’d never be rich. Bub’s been responding so well lately, I’ve let him live. But is he alive or dead? Well that’s the question these days, isn’t it? Well, let’s say that I let him continue to exist.”

Have I mentioned that Logan’s white coat is totally covered in blood?

Logan goes in the greet Bub, and gives him a toothbrush, a razor, and a copy of the novel “Salem’s Lot.”

Bub sort of tries to shave, and ends up scratching himself, which is icky. Then he picks up the book, and tries to “read” it.

Logan says that Bub remembers everything that he used to.

Ted points out that just because Bub “reads” a book, it doesn’t mean that Bub is smart. But then Sarah points something out – Bub isn’t trying to eat Logan.

Rhodes and another soldier arrive, asking what’s going on. Rhodes is going to shoot Bub, but Logan tells Rhodes that Bub is safe, and gives Bub a phone, and sorta-kinda gets Bub to say, “Hello, Aunt Alicia.”

Rhodes drops something on the floor, and Bub looks up – and salutes Rhodes.

(And here, I think is everything that’s either right or wrong with this movie. If you love Bub, if you want him to succeed, if you love the idea of a zombie retaining his humanity, the idea that some small part of us is still human even after we’re dead, you’ll love this flick.

If you’re just waiting for people to get eaten, well, it’s a bit of a hike until you get to that point – and there aren’t many action sequences in the meantime.)

Logan tells Rhodes to salute back, to see what happens. Rhodes decides this is not a good idea.

Logan has a solider take the bullets out of his pistol, which he then gives to Bub. Bub looks at the pistol -–and then yanks the slide. He points the pistol at Rhodes – and pulls the trigger.

Later, Rhodes has everyone in a meeting. He’s crabby because he thinks that the scientists just want to teach the zombies tricks. Whereas Rhodes just wants to see them all dead.

Logan explains that what they’re doing is the bare beginning of social, civilized behavior. And civility is what separates humans from the animals.

And then it’s even later, and the soldiers are pulling a couple more zombies out from behind the wooden barrier they’re storing them in.

The collar on one of the zombies breaks, and it tears the throat out of one of the soldiers.

Miguel tries to stop another escaping zombie, and it takes a bite out of his arm.

Miguel runs away, and Sarah gives chase.

The soldier with the missing throat asks another soldier to shoot him in the head. The soldier shoots him.

Sarah chases down Miguel, finally catching up to him in from of John and McDermott’s trailer. John grabs Miguel, and Sarah whacks him on the back of the head with a rock.

Sarah chops off Miguel’s arm using a machete, then creates a makeshift torch, and cauterizes the rather massive wound.

The moment that’s over, Rhodes and two other soldiers come running up, claiming that Miguel is the reason their friend is dead.

Sarah tells them that she amputated Miguel’s arm, and that he’ll be okay, and that if he isn’t, she’ll shoot him herself.

But it doesn’t matter – the solider still plans on killing Miguel, no matter what. Until John and McDermott pull out their guns.

This puts everyone at an impasse.

A lot of harsh words are exchanged, which happens a lot in the movie. Budget cuts, I guess. Words are, after all, cheap, whereas action sequences aren’t.

Final tally: Rhodes says, essentially, that the scientists aren’t getting anything from the soldiers any more. The soldiers are going to go to the corral and kill all the remaining zombies in there.

The soldiers leave.

Sarah is shaking, and crying, and freaking right out. She falls into John’s arms, and he holds and attempts to comfort her.

And then they’re putting Miguel into a bed.

Sarah says she’s going to need to go to the lab, to get some morphine. McDermott says he’s going with Sarah.

John says if they aren’t back in half an hour, he’s coming after them.

In Logan’s lab, McDermott basically goes, “What’s Logan been doing here?” Sarah collects whatever she thinks she’ll need.

McDermott presses play on Logan’s tape recorder, and Logan’s voice starts up, doing that babbling thing Logan does so well. McDermott realizes there’s fresh blood on his shirt, and he looks down, and sees a sheet covering something.

That something is the head of the solider who was just killed while collecting specimens. Apparently, the solider who shot the guy managed to miss the brain, and now the head is just sitting there, trying to eat people, even though it doesn’t have any way to process the food.

It’s just a head.

Sarah goes to shoot the head in the head, and McDermott tells her not to, since it will attract Rhodes and the remaining soldiers, which is not a good idea.

To say the least.

McDermott says they should get out of there – and that he’s starting to think they should take the helicopter before someone else does.

They go out into the hallway, and spot Logan, who is going to talk to Bub. Bub has headphones on, which Logan adjust to go over Bub’s ears.

And, wonder of wonders, Bub doesn’t try to eat Logan’s arm. Even after Logan turns on Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.”

Logan then tries to teach Bub how to operate the tape recorder that’s playing music for Bub.

Logan congratulates Bub on his hard work, and then offers Bub a reward. Fresh meat. Fresh people meat.

Sarah and McDermott take in all of this, but have to turn away at the people eating. Which is right when Rhodes shows up, and demands to know what Bub is eating.

They take Logan to the freezer, where they find the body of the dead solider. Then they shoot Logan. A lot.

Rhodes tells his soldiers to take all of the scientist’s guns.

At the trailer, John grabs a gun and heads out to find his friends.

At which point, Miguel wakes up, or snaps to, or otherwise regains focus.

John finds all the soldiers and scientists, and Rhodes tells John to drop his weapons or the scientists are all going to die.

You know something? Considering how talky this flick is I suspect that with a little work, this whole movie could totally be a stage play. I would go see that in a heartbeat. Get on that, folks with a lot of free time and stage blood.

John drops his weapons, and one of the soldiers takes his machete.

Rhodes tells John that they’re leaving. Now. Just John and the soldiers.

John says no.

Rhodes shoots Ted in the head.

Sarah give a good old-fashioned, “Nooo!”

Rhodes has the soldiers shove Sarah and McDermott into the corral with the zombies.

John pleads for their lives, stating that he won’t fly if Rhodes won’t free his friends.

Rhodes says he’s not making deals.

John tries to grab a gun from one of the soldiers, but it doesn’t work, and Rhodes tells one of the soldiers to beat some sense into John – but not to kill him.

McDermott grabs a board for a weapon, and he and Sarah run into the zombie-filled cavern, away from the gate, figuring it’s their only hope to find safety.

The zombies, of course, give chase.

John punches out a solider, and then gets a few punches to the face.

Rhodes tells John to fly. John says not a chance.

John is just about to get another beating, when everyone hears a noise. It’s the elevator.

Miguel is headed outside.

Deep in the dark caves, Sarah and McDermott try to find a way out – until they get attacked. They fight off the zombies with a board and a shovel. Zany fun kill: McDermott shoves the shovel into one of the zombie’s mouths, and pops off the top of its head – but it’s eyes keep moving, since he didn’t damage the center of the brain.

And now we’re back with Rhodes and John. Rhodes takes his eyes off John for a second, and John jumps Rhodes and knocks him out – but he doesn’t kill Rhodes.

Back in the lab, Bub accidentally releases the pin holding his chain in place. Bub is a free man. Um... thing.

The two soldiers sent to find Miguel discover that Miguel broke all the controls to the elevator. The only way to operate the elevator now is with the hand box, which is currently at ground level.

Rhodes and the previously unconscious soldier awaken to discover that John has taken all their weapons.

This makes Rhodes sad.

John, meanwhile, is running through the caves, armed to the teeth. Although it’s tough to tell which caves he’s in. He might have gone after his friends, but I can’t tell. A bat flies by him, and I can’t say what the significance of that is.

He calls to Sarah and McDermott, so I guess he’s headed after that.

Sarah calls to John, John shoots a few zombies, and McDermott stops drinking long enough to club a zombie in the head. This causes him to drop his flask. Looks like he just gave up drinking.

Outside, Miguel walks up to the fence and opens that bad boy up. Zombies come pouring into the compound.

Miguel then runs to the elevator platform, waits for the zombies to overpower him, and presses the down button.

Is it worth noting the zombie clown? Because there’s a zombie clown. Zombie clown!

The few remaining soldiers, who are all trying to fix the elevator, see the platform coming down with a WHOLE lotta zombies on it, and they run for it.

Rhodes grabs the golf cart and drives away, leaving all his companions behind.

He finds a door, jumps through it, and locks it behind him.

Elsewhere in the complex, Bub locates Logan’s dead body, and shows him that his chain has come undone. Then he realizes that Logan is, like, really, really, dead. Really. Bub is grief-stricken. Really.

Bub spots a couple of guns on the ground.

Out in the caves, zombies are everywhere, and the soldiers are on the run. But we’re running out of movie here, so it’s time for some people to die real bad.

The first one gets his head ripped off his body, but his jaw is still working as it’s pulled off.

One of the other soldiers just keeps on shooting at zombies, but fails to hit any of them in the head. So he ends up dead.

A third solider goes full automatic on the zombie hoard, but aims for their chest area, instead of their heads.

Frankly, I’m shocked all these people didn’t die a long time ago.

The solider encounters the door that Rhodes locked, and tries to open it – and when that doesn’t work, he shoots it open.

The solider heads in the door, and here come all the zombies – including the zombie clown again. I kind of love that guy.

The solider finds Bub, and Bub, who picked up a gun, shoots at the solider.

The solider sneaks into a room and hides behind the door, waiting for Bub. So he fails to see the other zombies who come up behind him and take a chunk out of his neck.

And then – more zombies! It’s a plethora of zombies! All at markdown prices!

But no clown. Seriously, y’all – I want to see the clown eat someone. Can you imagine the nightmares you’d have after seeing something like that?

No matter. The solider finally head-shots a few of the zombies, but it’s too little, too late. He knows he’s on his way out, so he sticks the gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger.

In the caves, McDermott and Sarah encounter… even more zombies. Which I guess should be obvious by now, right? I mean, they aren’t going to get in a slap-fight with a tiger at this point. The word “Dead” is right in the title.

They get ready to fight, when finally, John catches up to them, hands out the guns, and they go to town.

They get all the way through the cave, and locate… another part of the underground bunker. Huh. All right then.

McDermott locates the elevator, which he notes is, “Temporarily Out of Service.”

So John sends Sarah up a ladder. McDermott and John follow, after John shoots another zombie in the head, and just avoids being bitten by another one.

You know what? I think they’re in a missile silo, or something. Though it could be anything, really.

And now, we’re back with Rhodes, who encounters Bub, who is still armed.

Bub shoots Rhodes. Rhodes calls Bub a bunch of bad names, and gets shot again. He ends up crawling along the floor as Bub slowly stalks towards him.

Rhodes yells out, “Come on!” He drags himself to his feet, and pushes himself along the wall, trying to find an open door.

He does, but it’s filled with zombies.

Rhodes screams and turns towards Bub.

Bub shoots him in the belly, and the zombies grab him.

Bub salutes. Rhodes falls to the ground, and they tear his legs off and eat ‘em up real good, as Rhodes yells out, “Choke on ‘em!”

Then there’s like three minutes of eating scenes, because I guess zombie fans like that kind of thing. Or maybe it’s a satire I’m just too subtle to understand. Sometimes that kind of thing goes over my head.

Above ground, Sarah, John and McDermott are now on the outside of the fence. They run to open the gate, and run to the helicopter, and John notes that he really hopes they filled the gas tank.

They run to the helicopter, Sarah opens the door, and screams as someone/something inside goes to grab her.

And then she wakes up.

She is/was asleep on a beach.

The helicopter is behind her.

John is fishing. McDermott is sitting on the beach, doing… I don’t know, some beach-sitting.

Sarah pulls out a handmade calendar, and marks off another day.

And that was pretty much the end of the trilogy, until years later, when George Romero was kinda-sorta forced out of zombie retirement.

Though I guess I should mention that, since this is an 80s movie, it features that staple of all 80s movies – the end credits song. And it’s a love ballad. No lie. With lines like, “Come take my heart, my soul, my life… Take me to the world inside your eyes.”

I’m not going to argue it’s a bad song, mind you. But wow, how astonishingly inappropriate.