Survival
of the Dead (2009)
Directed
by George Romero
Starring
Alan Van Sprang, Kenneth Welsh, Kathleen Munroe, Devon Bostick, Richard
Fitzpatrick
A
group of AWOL National Guardsmen are surviving in the post zombie apocalypse
world when they come across a local named Patrick O’Flynn. He’s from Plum
Island off the coast of Delaware. O’Flynn was recently forced off the island by
his longtime rival, Seamus Muldoon. The O’Flynn’s have been killing the undead,
while the Muldoon’s have kept them chained up waiting for a cure. The squad,
led by the tough Sgt. Crockett, agrees that the island sounds like a great
place to start over. The group sets sail for Plum Island, unaware of the
horrors that await them.
I
love Romero’s films, especially his zombie movies. Even when he re-launched the
Night of the Living Dead concept with
Diary of the Dead, I enjoyed Romero
trying new things and trying to keep zombie movies fresh. So when I started Survival of the Dead, I was expecting high
concepts and deep themes Romero loves to infuse into his ghoul stories. I was
hoping that the declining quality of his recent work would be carried by a
smart movie that’s well executed. I was so very mistaken.
Survival of the Dead
is poorly directed, shoddily written, and all around stupid. The grand theme of
this Romero zombie movie is the pointlessness of long standing feuds. Perhaps not
as fertile ground as consumerism or the abuse of one generation by another, but
it could still make for an interesting setup.
In
a move that’s purely Carpenter, Romero used a zombie movie to make what’s
essentially a western. Romero uses the idea to make a Looney Tunes-esque action romp with little going on otherwise. There
are big explosions, bad CGI, and lots of shooting. All of it feels thrown
together, the action lacks any real impact, and the computer effects are so
prevalent. They’re aggressively bad and omnipresent. There’s also overly
dramatic, almost campy dialogue. The characters are caricatures, and you end up
not caring about any of them. Suddenly, you also stop caring about the movie
altogether.
The
cast more or less stumbles through the clunky script. Alan Van Sprang plays Sgt.
Crockett like a cartoon version of Clint Eastwood: all grumbles and empty grit.
Kenneth Welsh and Richard Fitzpatrick play the fighting heads of their
respective families with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. The two play way
over the top and inexplicably sport full Irish accents, comically out of place
for two Delaware residents whose families were there long before the apocalypse.
I
don’t even know how this all went so wrong. This is the first Romero zombie
film that feels lazy and offensively simple. Maybe he is slipping in his old
age, or maybe he’s just out of good zombie ideas. Any way you look at it, Survival of the Dead is dead on arrival.
4 out of 10
