Fantastic Fest Review: Survival of the Dead

Written by Brad McHargue

The air was thick with anticipation for the North American premiere of Survival of the Dead, an event made all the more poignant by the appearance of George A. Romero himself. Given that his prior film, Diary of the Dead, was (in my opinion) a pathetic attempt at capitalizing on the cinema verite phenomenon and thus a giant middle finger to the horror fans, expectations for an improvement were low.

Occurring approximately three to five weeks after the initial outbreak of the zombie virus, Survival of the Dead follows the exploits of an AWOL band of National Guardsman and one Guardswoman (who were featured for a scant two minutes in Diary of the Dead) and their attempts to survive the mayhem surrounding them. They join forces with Patrick O'Flynn, an Irishman cast away from Plum Island by a rival family over the proper way to deal with the infected. Zombies, Irish accents and laziness ensues.

But in the end, Survival of the Dead's biggest flaw is that is does not accomplish anything new. Romero has become pigeonholed by his own creation, content with focusing on the same rehashed themes and loose metaphors, as if that somehow makes up for a weak story. Given that Diary and Survival are contemporary, in relation to the "old-school" events that occur in Night of the Living Dead, Romero has nowhere to go with his mythology, and he's actually taking a step back. The zombies are still the slow, shiftless walking sacks of flesh and bones that we have all grown to love, but alas, they have simply become a tired concept. As a result, we're given a film that's so middle of the road, it's neither a big-time zombie-fest nor the cerebral commentary one would hope for. In the end, I felt like I was watching an average, run-of-the-mill zombie film, not necessarily a George Romero zombie film.

George Romero's legacy has ensured that all of his remaining ...Dead films, no matter how disposable or steeped in mediocrity they are, will be received with open arms by the horror community simply by virtue of the fact that they were made by the man who invented the modern conception of the zombie. Survival of the Dead is enjoyable, but Romero has just become lazy, content with constructing half-assed plots that showcase monumental leaps of story logic, yet capable of distracting the audience with clever kills, fascinating characters and heaps of gore.