Dawn of the Dead (2004)/George A. Romero's Land of the Dead [2 Discs] [Blu-ray]

Dawn of the Dead
The feature-film debut of director Zack Snyder, Dawn of the Dead is a modern retelling of George Romero's 1978 horror classic, which was actually the second film in a trilogy that began with Night of the Living Dead and concluded with Day of the Dead. Sarah Polley and Ving Rhames star as two of the last remaining people on an earth that has been ravaged by flesh-eating zombies. After escaping to a shopping mall with a handful of other survivors, they decide that they only way to truly elude the approaching throng of undead is to somehow make their way to an island that is supposedly zombie-free. Jake Weber and Mekhi Phifer also star. ~ Matthew Tobey, Rovi

Land of the Dead
George A. Romero, who revolutionized the American horror film in 1968 with the instant classic Night of the Living Dead, returns to his dystopian zombie cycle with this horror thriller. In Land of the Dead, the zombies whose numbers had been slowly but steadily growing through Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead now dominate the streets of most American cities, while urban skyscrapers have been taken over by surviving humans, usually greed-addled opportunists who allow the living to stay in their fortified compounds for a price. Guarding the buildings are rough-and-tumble mercenaries who have learned to do battle with the zombies, making use of powerful weapons to gain advantage. But as the zombie civilization grows, the creatures have begun to slowly evolve, with their dormant thought processes beginning to awaken, and as unrest begins to ferment among the mercenaries and the entrepreneurs who pay them, the ghouls may have found a way to defeat the last stronghold of humanity. Land of the Dead stars Dennis Hopper as arch capitalist Kaufman, and Simon Baker, John Leguizamo, Robert Joy, and Asia Argento as some of the mercenaries; Asia Argento's father, Dario Argento, served as a producer on one of the earlier films in the series, Dawn of the Dead. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi