Surivival Of The Dead

Actors: Alan van Sprang Kenneth Welsh Kathleen Munroe Athena Karkanis

Synopsis: A group of mercenaries encounters a group of survivors that are determined to prove that the dead will evolve and seek a source of "food" that isn't humans.

For the first time ever, Romero decided to connect two films together by opting to follow the group of mercenaries who briefly made an appearance in the last “dead” film, Diary Of The Dead. Three weeks after the incident that took place in the previous film, the group finds an internet video about Plum Island (an island off of Delaware) that appears to be a safe haven from the world of murderous zombies. Little does the group know that those living on the island are doing all they can to keep their loved ones, who are zombies, alive. These survivors believe that the zombies will adapt and go after a different food source than humans. In typical Romero fashion, we know this is a recipe for disaster.

It took me awhile but I finally was able to sit down and watch George Romero’s 6th installment into the “Dead” series, Survival Of The Dead. For starters the film saw an incredibly limited theater release, that which by the time I both found a theater and set aside time to see it, it was gone already. Then the film made its major release on-demand and PPV. It wasn’t until the movie finally made its way onto Netflix was I able to dedicate the time to watch this movie. Now after viewing it, I could have waited even longer.

I defended Georgie with his last two films. I can honestly say that I enjoyed both Land Of The Dead and Diary Of The Dead. Sure they were not on the level as the original three films but they were still solid in my mind. Now I can officially say that Romero has lost his touch. This film was bad on many levels and I found myself in the rare position of staring at the clock just hoping that it would be over soon.

There is no doubt that Romero is single handedly responsible for the success level of the zombie genre. Without the ground rules and foundation that Night, Dawn, and Day set back in the day, there is no way that the genre would be as big as it is right now. Even though he is the Creator, there is still a set of rules that he should follow himself, with this film he opted out of that. Zombies do not eat animals or ride horses. While they are two short complaints, they are pretty big ones. If one thing Romero has done since the start of the series, it’s that he builds off the circumstances from the previous one. Day Of The Dead started the “smart zombie” with Bub and it continued into Land clearly as you could see the zombies communicating with each other. Diary was the sole exception as the film took a step back to a time when the outbreak just started, but Survival goes right back into the evolution of the zombie. If Romero decides to do a 7th film that takes off where Survival ended, the zombie genre is in trouble. The idea of zombie animals is frightening and not in a good way. I don’t want to see it; you don’t want to see it.

Aside from the two horrible ideas that Romero decided to include in his newest film, he also took the cheap way out when it came to the gore. Tom Savini made the perfect zombies for both Dawn and Day. Hell, even the effects team that was responsible for Land Of The Dead was pretty decent. In his past two films, Romero decided to skimp on the real effects in lieu of CGI. The end result of computer blood and gore was nothing short of a disappointment. In this film, one of the characters shoots a flare into a zombie’s mouth, igniting its entire head in flames. It looked no better than your standard low-budget Sci-Fi channel movie.

It’s truly disheartening to see that the king of all things zombie has officially fallen off. I have a feeling that instead of calling it quits with this film, we’ll probably see atleast one more Romero zombie flick before he becomes of the dead himself. I fear that the next film will truly tarnish his legacy and he’ll go out on the bottom rather than on top like he should have. With all these great writers and directors cranking out really solid zombie flicks, you’d think George would take a few lessons from them. Instead he remains oblivious to the true evolution of the zombie film and he continues on his course.

With all the solid zombie films, both foreign and US, that have been released recently, I can’t honestly recommend to this to anyone. It’s like a group of newcomers, with little talent was able to gather up enough money to make a film, came along and decided to parody Romero, instead of something that we know Romero can crank out himself.