William Bibbiani Reviews Survival of the Dead!
The Boondock Saints vs. Zombies. Now THERE’S a spin-off we would have WANTED to see…
There is a plot point about halfway through Survival of the Dead that is so contrived, so utterly ludicrous that by itself it seems proof positive that George Romero just plain doesn’t care anymore. This was the man who created the now ubiquitous zombie genre (although he did appear to crib liberally from Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend), who used the same basic premise to illustrate such diverse issues as cold war paranoia, racism, consumerism, and class warfare over the course of his first four – generally rather good – Of the Dead movies. So he knows how to make good films. I’d go so far as to say he even knows how to make a great zombie film. Even Diary of the Dead appeared to have something on its mind. But in making Survival of the Dead he appears to have abandoned such lofty ambitions just to screw around a bit. It’s a mildly watchable movie of almost no particular value, a straight-to-DVD George Romero rip-off that just happens to have been made by the master himself on what we can only hope was an “off” day.
Survival of the Dead picks up where some of the cast of Diary of the Dead kinda-sorta left off, but unlike “Frasier” or “Torchwood” or any of the other successful spin-offs in the world, we follow a group of forgettable characters from an already forgettable original story. That group of soldiers who stopped the kids in Diary of the Dead? Well, now they’re the protagonists for some reason. Soon they’re driving around an armored car full of cash and looking for a nice quiet place to ride out the zombie holocaust, after which they can spend said cash. Although after the events of Diary of the Dead made them internet celebrities for being douchebags – an idea Romero brings up early on but never capitalizes on – their options once society goes back to normal seem limited to jail time and… more jail time.
“You bastard!!! Don’t you see what you’ve done?! You’ve doomed us all! You’ve… Look! Horsey!”
These soldiers, who spend most of their time looting, masturbating or trying unsuccessfully to sleep with a lesbian, get swindled by Irish rednecks and end up on Plum Island, which fans of Silence of the Lambs might remember fondly as “Anthrax Island.” In addition to animal disease research facilities, it is apparently also home to two feuding Irish families, the O’Flynns and the Muldoons. When the dead arose, the O’Flynns went around putting them out of their misery, while the Muldoons kept their dead “alive” and domesticated while they awaited a cure. The Muldoons’ biggest problem is that they can’t get the zombies to eat anything other than human meat, so they’re constantly corralling zombies with various animals to see which if any of nature’s varmints they’re willing to settle for. So far, nothing has worked.
Nothing really comes together in Survival of the Dead. The soldiers’ arrival on Plum Island doesn’t directly threaten the land or even really shift the balance of power. By the inevitable climactic shootout they may be involved in the proceedings but never really feel connected to it. And the conclusion of the Irish redneck feud/zombie cattle concept manages to make no sense whatsoever and feel trite all at the same time. All this might have been gone down easily with strong characters but while all the actors seem game, the game itself is clichéd and stale.
Alas, even the gorehounds will find themselves disappointed by an over-reliance on low-rent CGI-splatter effects, which cheapens the entire film. The fact that Survival of the Dead was shot digitally doesn’t help. Digital cinematography was once so bizarre an idea that Romero devoted all of Diary of the Dead simply to justifying it, but I suppose Diary then set a precedent in George Romero’s world that all the “bad” zombie movies look the same. At least from now on they’ll be easy to spot at a distance.
Everything about this movie bites.
Survival of the Dead is just a jumble of ideas, none of which really worth filming. I’m not entirely sure what happened, but the end result is so haphazard and goofy that the only explanation I can think of is that George Romero didn’t really take this film seriously. So neither should we. Survival of the Dead isn’t the worst movie ever made. It’s not even George Romero’s worst (Diary of the Dead still qualifies). But it still isn’t worth anyone’s time. Survival of the Dead is just plain dead on arrival.
Survival of the Dead, written & directed by George A. Romero, starring Alan Van Sprang, Kenneth Welsh, Kathleen Munroe, Richard Fitzpatrick and Athena Karkanis, opens theatrically this Friday, May 28th. It is currently available on Video on Demand.
