Survival of the Dead

As an avid watcher of zombie movies, particularly George A. Romero's Of The Dead movies, I was optimistic for this latest instalment. Survival of the Dead is Romero's sixth Of The Dead movie, but after 2007's disappointing Diary of the Dead it's beginning to show that he's running out of ideas.

Survival of the Dead does try to put an original spin on things though, with a group of people attempting to get the zombies to feast upon something other than human flesh. It's an interesting idea, too bad it isn't played out as well as it could be. The acting isn't as bad as in Diary of the Dead, despite its relatively low budget feel and slow story progression, it manages to outdo Diary of the Dead in literally every way.

Another major flaw: it's not scary at all. Romero's previous Of The Dead instalments (we'll forget Diary) have all been, at least, a little scary. This, sadly, is where Survival fails. There isn't anything even remotely scary here, and the jumps are far in between and very, very few. Romero leaves the scare factor box well and truly unchecked.

As you may have gathered, it's not terribly amazing stuff, but the cast all play likable characters and there's enough gore in here to satisfy. Nothing on Dawn of the Dead but miles better than Diary of the Dead.

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A military group that has turned into bandits during the zombie infestation decides to follow an online infomercial and tries to make it to the peaceful island it promises. At the harbor they realize they have been ambushed by the guy pitching the island. He robs the potential clients and dumps them on the island, which is nothing but zombie-free.

Earlier in the movie we meet this guy O'Flynn, a fisherman on the island. He's runs one of the two Irish clans on the island. His nemesis is Seamus. When zombies infest the island, O'Flynn opts to eliminate them all while Seamus wants to keep them "alive" and chained. They kick O'Flynn of the island leaving his daughter behind.

Now the military guys make it to the island followed by O'Flynn who sees this as an opportunity to avenge himself from Seamus. They find that Seamus is trying to domesticate the zombies, enchained and treated like cattle or horses. His special project is trying to teach zombies to eat animal meat and not human. So far he has been unsuccessful.

Eventually we have the confrontation between the two clans plus the zombies in a bloody and brutal outcome.

As all Romero movies, this one is smart, sometimes funny and with plenty of zombie violence. Even what should be a lame scene, Romero manages to make it interesting. He's particularly good as showing human interaction. And of course there is the usual criticism of human inhumanity in how they treat the zombies. The last minutes are particularly entertaining for those who are into gore. The only problem I have with this movie is that the final zombie mayhem is presented as a comedy. It's unnecessary and doesn't suit the violent tone of the content. Otherwise this is classic Romero in a quickly paced and gory zombie movie.

I've always complained about so called "Zombie movies" that are actually just movies from any other genre with zombies. That's what this movie is: A shooter with zombies. Romero defined the Zombie genre, and he's now out of it. This was officially not a zombie movie.

There's been many attempts before. When-bugs-attack + zombies, teen flick + zombies, prom-night + zombies, etc,etc. Out of all those weird cross-gender movies, this is one of the best I've ever seen. It'll still get many negative reviews for a simple reason: People is judging it as a Romero movie, and at that, it sucks. And it's fair that people do that. They go to the movies expecting a Romero movie, and they get this. I would've been disappointed too if I'd expected that. I watched this sort of expecting a crappy movie, and I got a better-than-expected non-zombie flick. Not a bad deal.

The plot is certainly shallow, but the characters are still interesting, even if a little bit more empty than the usual lead roles from good old George A.

The deal is, there's nothing more to look for in Romero's movies. The social commentary is still there, except this time it doesn't really make sense. At a point, it looked like it was heading towards an anti- religious view of things (euthanasia), which looked interesting, but it dissipated into an old cheap western ending.

My theory:

George died at the end of the shooting of Land of the Dead, and both Diary and Survival where delivered but the Zombie of George Romero. Not bad (for a zombie).

Much better than I expected..i wasn't sure what to expect after the let down that was Diary of the dead but this is much better.

Its a nice idea, developed well and beautifully shot.There are good performances and a lovely touch of dark comedy.I enjoyed this film.

The main thing that marred it for me- and most people wouldn't notice but its my pet hate- is the cgi blood splatter and effects.STOP IT! you can always tell and it looks fake as hell.

I'm not 100% sure that survival is an 8 out of 10 but it followed a godawful vampire comedy called Umbrage and anything would have seemed good after that. Its a solid 7 at least and worth watching. Nice to see Romero back on almost top form.Welcome back George...there are lots of people trying to copy you but none come close.

In any case if it wasn't for this and Carriers Frightfest would have been crapfest.

I did not dislike this film for the most part like so many others seem to have. I liked parts of it, I thought it would have been better had it simply followed the national guardsmen of the "Diary of the Dead" film rather than having the feuding island clans plot, but it at least was not boring. I would give this one a seven, but the use of computer generated kills and blood made me lower the score a point. I never thought George Romero would resort to using computers to do his gory kills. Still, there is enough none computer kills that I will only lower the film a point rather than two. The film follows those wacky guardsmen from the Diary movie which I liked as it seems more like a sequel film than any of the previous Romero movies. Though this one can survive independently of the previous movie as well, the only thing one might be curious about had they not seen that movie is the scene where the one guardsmen goes over there scene in that film. Well they end up going to an island where one group believes they should try to kill all the zombies on the island while the other thinks they should try to coexist with them. The zombies look good at times and there are a lot of them. So as far as zombie action goes this one does all right. I just wish the film could have done more with the national guardsmen just going from place to place rather than bogging the film down a bit on the island of the living dead and incredibly stupid people.