Then again, I dropped semiotics

I was never a big fan of George A. Romero ’s original “Night of the Living Dead.” Even though I can see through the cheap feel of some films and appreciate the artistry underneath – George Sluizer’s 1988 version of “The Vanishing,” for example – Romero’s three-dollar trek through the woods around Pittsburgh never felt scary to me. It felt simply silly, from the attack in the graveyard to begin things to the little girl eating her mother. Only the end, with its KKK overtones, had any real sense of surprise.

Now the 66-year-old Romero has returned with “Land of the Dead,” another in his seemingly never-ending zombie films. Question is, do I want to brave the Hoopfest crowds in downtown Spokane to go and see it? I imagine I will. What better way to get away from the people, and the heat, than by taking refuge in the cool dark of a movie theater?

But I don’t expect much. After all, Danny Boyle and Zack Snyder already updated the genre, and the team of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg pretty much did a “Scream” kind of deconstruction of it. After that, how can anybody think lumbering, slobbering zombies are scary?

Then again, when it comes to Romero, I never was that scared to begin with.