It must be a mixed blessing to make a movie that helps to start an entire subgenre of horror. It is probably even worse when your follow up to that film is widely considered one of the best horror movies of all time. Those are pretty big legacies to live up to. So it is no real surprise that over forty years after creating Night of the Living Dead, George A. Romero’s latest zombie films have been a disappointment. His latest entry, Survival of the Dead, is probably his worst Dead film yet, and is probably enough to convince even the most strident of Romero’s fans that the aging director should probably throw in the towel.
As with all the Dead films, Survival takes place in a world in which the dead have risen and have begun feeding on the living. Society has been destroyed, and the last remnants of humanity are attempting to hold out against the undead. The film follows a group of AWOL soldiers who are looking for a safe place to ride out the apocalypse. When their leader, sarge learns of a possible safe island off the coast of Delaware the group sets out for the island. But when they arrive, they find that the small island has been embroiled in conflict between two feuding families. It seems that the O’flannigans want to kill off all the undead, while the Muldoons want to keep the undead alive, and hope to find a cure to the outbreak. Sarge and his men quickly become drawn into the conflict.
Survival is heavily influenced by the western genre, and with its premise tries to set itself apart from other zombie movies, but I found many of the films elements to be wildly out of place and shoehorned into the plot. I found it curious that this small island off the coast of Delaware was home to cowboy hat wearing Irish Ranchers. The fact that the Muldoons want to save the undead is equally baffling. There is no indication of why they think the undead are salvageable, and their entire plan seems to hinge around trying to train the zombies to eat horses, rabbits, and pigs which doesn’t really mean the zombies will become functioning members of society, or stop eating humans along with farm animals. It is even hard for me to see how a small island inhabitanted by two families would even have very many zombies on it.
One could argue this could just be more of Romero’s often talked about “social commentary,” and that may be true, but the problem is that Survival spends far too much time on this poorly developed family feud, and the zombies simply take a back seat as simple plot devices rather than central antagonists. In Night and Dawn, the zombies were true forces to be reckoned with always trying to close in on the survivors. In Survival, the zombies are simply there, never really posing a threat or creating any tension. Romero’s direction doesn’t help things much. The film jumps around a lot, and often times things just happen for no apparent reason. The film is plagued by terrible cgi gore that looks like it came straight from a syfy channel original movie.
Survival of the Dead is not even a movie that is enjoyable on a basic level. The film is poorly plotted, unscary, and amateurish. Perhaps this is not completely Romero’s fault. It is clear to me that the budget for this movie was not huge, but neither was the budget for the three original dead films. What we have here is a film maker who seems to have gone of the rails, and is content with putting out second rate, mediocre films.
1/10
As with all the Dead films, Survival takes place in a world in which the dead have risen and have begun feeding on the living. Society has been destroyed, and the last remnants of humanity are attempting to hold out against the undead. The film follows a group of AWOL soldiers who are looking for a safe place to ride out the apocalypse. When their leader, sarge learns of a possible safe island off the coast of Delaware the group sets out for the island. But when they arrive, they find that the small island has been embroiled in conflict between two feuding families. It seems that the O’flannigans want to kill off all the undead, while the Muldoons want to keep the undead alive, and hope to find a cure to the outbreak. Sarge and his men quickly become drawn into the conflict.
Survival is heavily influenced by the western genre, and with its premise tries to set itself apart from other zombie movies, but I found many of the films elements to be wildly out of place and shoehorned into the plot. I found it curious that this small island off the coast of Delaware was home to cowboy hat wearing Irish Ranchers. The fact that the Muldoons want to save the undead is equally baffling. There is no indication of why they think the undead are salvageable, and their entire plan seems to hinge around trying to train the zombies to eat horses, rabbits, and pigs which doesn’t really mean the zombies will become functioning members of society, or stop eating humans along with farm animals. It is even hard for me to see how a small island inhabitanted by two families would even have very many zombies on it.
One could argue this could just be more of Romero’s often talked about “social commentary,” and that may be true, but the problem is that Survival spends far too much time on this poorly developed family feud, and the zombies simply take a back seat as simple plot devices rather than central antagonists. In Night and Dawn, the zombies were true forces to be reckoned with always trying to close in on the survivors. In Survival, the zombies are simply there, never really posing a threat or creating any tension. Romero’s direction doesn’t help things much. The film jumps around a lot, and often times things just happen for no apparent reason. The film is plagued by terrible cgi gore that looks like it came straight from a syfy channel original movie.
Survival of the Dead is not even a movie that is enjoyable on a basic level. The film is poorly plotted, unscary, and amateurish. Perhaps this is not completely Romero’s fault. It is clear to me that the budget for this movie was not huge, but neither was the budget for the three original dead films. What we have here is a film maker who seems to have gone of the rails, and is content with putting out second rate, mediocre films.
1/10
2 comments:
I just found this on Netflix instant streaming. Will watch soon and post my own review. Not optimistic after reading yours though LOL.
http://matthewlanka.blogspot.com/2011/02/review-survival-of-dead-2009.html
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