Review of Survival of the Dead (2010) by Rod E — 22 Jan 2013

The latest entry by George Romero into the zombie genre might be the weakest yet. I always enjoy his films and especially the special effects and makeup. From that perspective, this is a good movie. There is no shortage of great zombie kills.

Where the movie fails is that the story is focused a lot more on the people and less on the zombies. The zombies are more or less just a side story. This movie is basically a Hatfield versus McCoys movie which incorporates the undead.

Sarge tries to escape to an island off of Delaware and finds himself in the middle of two feuding families, the O'Flynns and Muldoons. There are two perspectives on how to deal with the zombies. The O'Flynn clan wants to kill all zombies and the Muldoons want to save them in hopes they will feast on something other than humans.

There are definite political undertones to this film and it reminds me of the capital punishment debate currently going on. Some people believe murderers, which the zombies are, deserve the death penalty and others believe that murderers can be rehabilitated and eventually behave differently.

I definitely enjoyed that aspect of the film, but it completely ignored what made this genre famous to begin with-the zombies. Unlike Day of the Dead, which is completely reverse and focuses on the zombies ability to utilize tools and think more "human-like.".

Overall, this movie would be for the diehard Romero fans only.