Survival of the Dead Review: Another Lifeless Sequel from George A. Romero

More than four decades after his directorial debut, Night of the Living Dead, set a brand new standard for horror movies, patriarchal auteur George A. Romero may have to carve a new niche for himself in the genre he helped create. While vampires have enjoyed the bulk of the walking undead’s recent surge in popularity, Hollywood’s particular fascination with zombies has also held steadfast over the years. Both Night and its equally classic follow-up, 1978’s Dawn of the Dead, remain two of the strongest cultural barometers upon which modern horror films are based, yet Romero can’t seem to keep up with their contemporary counterparts. While the stylized efforts of director Danny Boyle helped 2002’s fantastic 28 Days Later make zombies scary in ways no one had ever seen, 2004’s Shaun of the Dead and last year’s Zombieland each brought a satirical, slapstick zing to Romero’s formula. Meanwhile, Romero’s lackluster Land of the Dead in 2005 and flat-out disastrous Diary of the Dead in 2007 seemed to poorly imitate his own motif and pitifully try to keep up with the joneses – Diary, in particular, unwisely jumped on the bandwagon propelled by Cloverfield and attempted a single-camera, mockumentary approach. With last Friday’s opening of the latest addition to his franchise, Survival of the Dead, Romero’s movies have officially begun to shuffle into theaters as dutifully as their flesh-eating antagonists.

Survival of the Dead begins “six days after the dead have begun to walk,” following a small gang of rogue militia led by chain-smoking Sarge Crocket (Diary’s Alan Van Sprang), whose dexterity with firearms has kept them alive as the plague of undead spreads like wildfire across the country. A tag-along teenager (Devon Bostick) informs the group of “Captain Courageous,” a gruff Irishman who has been notifying the public via the Internet about a remote refuge for safety. After determining they ultimately have nothing to lose, the crew decides to pack up and head for the mysterious “Plum Island.” Turns out, Captain Courageous is actually Patrick O’Flynn (Kenneth Welsh), whose family has been sparring with rival Plum Island natives the Muldoons for generations. The outbreak of zombies has brought the feud to a head, as the survivalist O’Flynns believe anyone infected is beyond redemption and should be killed on sight, while the fundamentalist Muldoons, led by evangelical slime-ball Seamus (Richard Fitzpatrick), believe the undead should be kept alive, restrained, and trained to dine on non-human flesh in case a cure is eventually discovered. Sarge and his cronies are caught in the middle of this familial warfare, made all the more resonant because every remaining ghoul on Plum Island is related to one of the squabbling kooks.

Romero’s slick ability to juxtapose shrewd social commentary within his plotlines has been evident throughout his career. However, some efforts have been more successful than others. While the statement about America’s rampant consumerism in Dawn of the Dead was biting and fresh, Romero’s attempts to dissect the politics of war and satirize the euthanasia debate in Survival seem rather out of place and banal given the lazy screenplay and inert production quality. The acting is cringe-worthy, the editing sloppy, and plot holes run as amok as the zombies themselves. However, the biggest film-making crime is the complete lack of any suspense or sense of fright throughout the movie’s entirety. In cases where a “scary” movie isn’t actually scary, one would hope the result could evoke laughter in lieu of shrieks, but Survival of the Dead isn’t even unintentionally funny the way a camp-ridden romp should be. Instead, Romero has created a haphazard, often nonsensical series of unconnected ideas seemingly slapped together over a long weekend.

The most relevant use of imagery arrives at the end of the film in which Plum Island’s last zombies standing find a way to exhibit a new way to “beat a dead horse,” so to speak, which sadly speaks volumes about both the movie and Romero’s diminishing significance in the same cinematic domain he helped create. I viewed this final sequence optimistically, however, since Romero at least seems to be in on the joke.