Dead Ends: The Confounding Legacies of George Romero’s Second Zombie Trilogy
摘要
George A. Romero’s influence on horror media has been greatly expanded through his numerous twenty-first-century projects, especially his final three feature films in the Living Dead continuity. This chapter examines the shifting social commentaries of Romero’s second zombie trilogy, introduced in the early 2000s. Beginning with 2005’s post-apocalyptic fable, Land of the Dead, Romero gives sympathy and personality to his ghouls while expanding and intensifying his bleak views on living human experience. In 2007’s Diary of the Dead, Romero reconceives his Living Dead scenarios through Found Footage horror with surprising commentaries on our media consumers’ addiction to both making and viewing continuously streaming enthralling content. Romero’s final zombie feature, 2009’s Survival of the Dead, offers an even more offbeat chamber drama that blends war, horror, Western, and road genres to both embrace and beguile the themes and structures of his previous cinema.