Survival Of The Dead

March 21, 2010 by Editor
Filed under Film Reviews

Survival Of The Dead (2009)
Written & Directed By: George A Romero

Review Written By: Justin Bozung
Mondo Film & Video Guide Co-Founder
IMDb.com Link

George A Romero’s Survival Of The Dead will be released theatrically in the USA on May 28th, 2010

These are difficult times we are all trying to adjust too. With a “war” running strong in the background, killing hundreds, we’re dealing with massive unemployment, gas prices blasting up through the rooftops, rogue politicians, creating scandels after scandels, and people murdering people for no good reason, just because they “looked” at them funny. When you think about it, if you threw in some blue berry faced zombies walking the earth, you’d have a real life zombie movie, right here, right now in your front yard. Enter George Romero…

The sixth film in Romero’s…Of The Dead series, Survival Of The Dead is a interesting look again into the lives of characters SOMEWHERE on the east coast, just trying to survive the unknown plague of the dead coming back to life and feasting on the living. This time around, we get two different sets of characters, that collide in the middle of the continued chaos. First, we have a small group of AWOL military personnel, led by “Nicotine” Crocket, who where actually a brief footnote in Romero’s previous entry in the series, Diary Of The Dead. They have been running up and down the east coast, trying to find a safe place while looting and robbing others looking for the same. Lastly, we have two different sets of cliched Irish families (the O’Flynn’s and Muldoons) fighting each other AND the undead ranks (which are now being dubbed “deadheads”) on Plum Island, off the coast of Delaware.

As you may have guessed, Crocket and the gang make it to Plum Island, ala, a internet advertisment by Mr. O’Flynn to “come to safety”. They head thata way in a large armored truck carrying over one million dollars. Mr. O’Flynn has been outcast from the island for his assault on the undead. The Muldoons refuse to kill the blueberry faced mongrels. O’Flynn bates guests into port, robs them, and sends them toward the island, where they are murdered apon arrival by the Muldoon family, for being strangers not welcomed to what is “theirs.” The superior Muldoon family is of larger numbers, and they believe is keeping the dead at bay and NOT putting destroying them. They have a theory that soon the dead will learn to eat “other” things besides live humans. And lastly, that soon there will be cure for this. (Even though, according to the title card at the front of the film, it’s only been six days since the outbreak.)

With the arrival of Crocket and gang, O’Flynn uses them as a way to sneak back onto the island. Apon arrival, there is an all out war, with Crocket and crew assisting O’Flynn and family against the Muldoons, whom don’t welcome visitors to their island, won’t allow change, until the theory about the dead “eating other things” is proven. There is scathing social commentary here, as the two Irish families regardless of past history, friendship, and birth right, stop at nothing to destroy each other simply to prove the other wrong. Sounds a like what’s happening over in the Middle East? The body count sours, both Irish families ALL dead, only leaving the AWOL’d Crocket, a young kid, and a super sexy Latino lesbian solider mama, that we get to see pleasuring herself at the beginning of the film in front of the other soldiers through her military fatigues! As fate and irony play out, all human life has been destroyed on the island, and the zombies suddenly DO discover that for their survival they must “eat other things” so they begin to start to enjoy the fruits of the pasture, attacking and snacking on some horses and pigs. Bacon anyone?

There is a incredible sequence at the end of the film, where both heads of the Irish Families. Mr. O’Flynn and Mr. Muldoon have both risen as the undead, and are facing off in a duel with pistols on the top of a very “IRISH” inspired hillside, standing in front of this massive tinted full moon, and Crocket narrates “people care more about upholding their flags then about what’s really right“. It’s the most beautiful and poignant sequence of the movie.

This time, Romero omits Tom Savini for some reason, and it does prove to be a mistake. The zombies are typical Romero fare, but he decides NOT to be gory at his usual level. There is a large amount of CGI work in the film, and it just doesn’t work. Just watch for the zombie heads alive on a stick sequence and you’ll know what I’m yapping about. The CGI makes me feel like I need some 3D glasses, and it also simply just doesn’t work for some of the more essential Romero zombie effects that back in the Dawn Of The Dead era worked so amazingly well, like shotgun blasts that take off the entire head for example. There is a pretty grotesque sequence at the very end of the film, where a hoard of undead rip the flesh off a live horse and eat it. This is the Romero gore that we all URN and expect. Overall, the film is another chapter in the series, with characters in which, we’ll never quite know their end fate. And that’s the beautiful thing about it. Survival of the Dead is another amusing chapter in Romero’s work. While, it does have some minor flaws in the special effects department, it is grossly entertaining the way a Romero film always is. And for zombie nutzoids or “deadheads” it’s their new must see.