YMMV / Land of the Dead

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Just before Pillsbury's Heel–Face Turn, he gives a wink to Motown (just before knocking her out). So it's quite possible that it was meant as a simple diversionary tactic (and that he misjudged his own strength and/or her resilience) and, when she wound up getting devoured, made the genuine switch as a Screw This, I'm Outta Here moment.
• Broken Base: People are divided over whether the fourth movie lives up to greatness of the previous three. Some thought it nicely satirizes the 2000s and had decent practical effects while others found it not as groundbreaking as its predecessors and its message over America's income classes too Anvilicious.
• Complete Monster: Paul Kaufman is the crook ruling Fiddler's Green, a sociopathic socialite who has let the city become a Wretched Hive where the poor suffer in squalor. Kaufman has the zombies outside his city—as well as any threats to his regime—killed by his Secret Police, and when their leader Cholo refuses to knuckle under Kaufman's demands, Kaufman declares You Have Outlived Your Usefulness. Kaufman also forced one of the heroes, Slack, into prostitution before deciding to throw her to the zombies for a cruel laugh. When the zombies finally break through, Kaufman leaves everyone to die, and doesn't even hesitate to shoot one of his own allies just to make his escape a little bit easier.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • "Big Daddy" has a pretty sizable fandom, many praising him as a worthy spiritual successor to Bub. Eugene Clark’s incredibly expressive and surprisingly emotional acting helps.
  • Among Big Daddy’s own zombie ensemble, "Number 9", the female baseball fan is also quite popular, partially for looking kind of cute despite, y’know, being a zombie and all.
  • Human wise, "Kaufman" is remembered fondly for Dennis Hopper’s excellent Large Ham, Smug Snake performance. Along with Friendly Sniper Charlie and (for those who don't find her Unintentionally Unsympathetic) Dead Reckoning's driver, Pretty Boy.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Looks like Luigi finally got his revenge on King Koopa after all.
• Jerkass Woobie: Riley and Cholo can be as unhappy and unlucky as they are abrasive.
• Magnificent Bastard: "Big Daddy" is a surprisingly intelligent Stench hellbent on toppling Fiddler's Green and avenging his fallen undead brethren. Leading a massive army of Stenches, Big Daddy uses his unusual deductive reasoning ability to lead his battalion to several victories, teaching himself and his fellow undead new skills to aid them in the future, culminating in him breaching Pittsburgh's defenses by proving to his colleagues that they can pass through water. After a bloody massacre resulting in the death of Fiddler's Green's leadership, Big Daddy and his fellow Stenches willingly spare the survivors of the assault, having already fulfilled their mission and choosing to march in peace.
• One-Scene Wonder: Tom Savini as Machete pops up during the final zombie attack, and is often regarded as one of the highlights of the movie.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: The FPS was buggy and less than fun other than a spectacularly horrifying level involving sprinting through a corn field surrounded by zombies who could only be located by their groans and the sound of them pushing through the corn.
• Retroactive Recognition: The zombie butcher is played by the same actor who played Tucker one year prior.
• So Okay, It's Average: While it was George A. Romero's most commercially successful film and was hailed as a return to form for him after several years in the wilderness, it's seen as a solid but unremarkable film compared to his three previous outings. On the other hand, it's also at least seen as better than the two films that followed.
• Squick:
  • Zombies devouring human flesh and ripping limbs apart is one thing, but to rip out a belly button ring in the process is another.
  • One zombie attempting the claw into the Death Reckoning so hard that his fingernails come off.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The film establishes a Haves vs Have-Nots conflict between those in the city and those outside, but so little time is spent with those in the city that it comes off as half-baked.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: In a film where the villains are the upper class who hide away from the danger and send out others to protect them, and the heroes are either very one-dimensional or assassins and hit men who would do anything to either be in Fiddlers Green or destroy it and plenty of innocent lives, many viewers found the zombies to be the more sympathetic characters of the film.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Anchor and Pretty Boy are both portrayed as reluctant villains at the worst, and survive the film to keep surviving with the other heroes, despite being perfectly willing to help Cholo murder hundreds of innocents over cash (although they do argue about it a little and its questionable if they would have let him go through with it in the end).
  • The zombies themselves are also portrayed in a more sympathetic light than in the previous films. The problem is that they're, well, zombies.

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