My Movie Review: Survival of the Dead

My Movie Review: Survival of the Dead

2.5/5

Opening Statement: The King of the Zombie genre is back George Romero with Survival of the Dead, which attacks a sort of political outlook in the zombie universe. In this film we follow a couple of army troops struggling to survive when they head to an island and find themselves in the midsts of a family feud. Yes a family feud, where it is the people who believe zombies should be kept alive until a cure is found vs. the people who are trigger happy.

What's Good: In ways this is original (not many ways). The idea of not necessarily the apocalyptic world behind zombies but what comes after, how do we adapt. Will there be a cure? Survival of the Dead shows the characters who asks these questions and everyone has a different solution, so they fight each other. I love the established Man on Man fighting in here, its not all about zombie killing in this one, its about the honest dispute between these families. Also where Diary of the Dead failed this one brings back the scares, the zombies look haunting, and there are some funny, cartoony gore sequences that are enjoyable and give you the shock value you want from a good zombie flick.

What's Bad: Probably won't stay on the brain too long, but it is fun. Fun jumps, fun scares, fun gore. Nothing much more to this film though, which kind of makes me sad because we all know what Romero is capable of. Romero created the zombie genre, but now it seems other people are able to do his genre better than him, for expample earlier this year, The Crazies which was remaking a film of his was much better than this. I also didn't care for the finally of this film. Every zombie film as a specific "last stand" toward the end, where our heroes fight off forces, and many characters die. There is a last stand here as well, but with a name like "Survival of the Dead" there should be more Death and more action.

Consensus: Survival of the Dead gets its political point across early on, there is nothing new beyond that. Survival of the Dead is fun for a zombie flick, but there are so many better ones out there it is kind of pointless to see this one.