Survival of the Dead

Sometimes I think George A. Romero exists solely for the purpose of giving fans of the subgenre he invented someone to beat up. It started quietly with Day of the Dead (1985), which was merely deemed a disappointment by comparison with Dawn of the Dead (1978). Then Romero waited 20 years to come out with Land of the Dead, which was an occasion for pointing out that the old boy wasn’t what he used to be. But that was nothing compared to the ire invoked by Diary of the Dead (2007). Now we have Survival of the Dead, which has resulted in the heaping of even more coals on Romero’s bloodied head.

Maybe it’s due to the fact that Romero’s brand of shambling, gut-munching monsters never struck me as particularly exciting or important in the first place, but I mostly enjoyed this newest entry. I don’t really understand some of the criticism against it. Why waffle at the believability of an island off the coast of Delaware inhabited by stage-Irish-accented knockoffs of feuding Hatfields and McCoys, but not bat an eye over a premise where dead folks get up and lurch around trying to eat the living? Did this island suddenly make the whole thing unbelievable? If I can buy the zombies, the island isn’t a hard sell. Is the CGI as good as it should be? No. But except for the zombie heads on sticks, it didn’t strike me as distractingly bad.

Viewers who were turned off by the deliberately digital look of Diary of the Dead will be pleased to find that Romero has here utilized the Red One Camera and produced a film that looks like a movie instead of a video. The shaky-cam work of Diary is also absent, which isn’t surprising, since that was a specific style (or adaptation of it) that was suited to the one film. Unfortunately, also absent is the unsettling tone of Diary, which made it one of the most interesting of Romero’s zombie films. What we’re left with in terms of thematic content is a reasonably effective commentary on the politics of divisiveness for its own sake. (The film’s final image is very strong in this regard.) What we’re left with otherwise is a different matter.

Romero here offers a zombie film that almost seems like a catalog of zombie movies from the post-Night of the Living Dead (1968) era. He has crafted a scenario that reduces the concept to its bare minimum by moving the bulk of the action to the island setting, creating a microcosm of zombiedom—and humanity. The idea of feuding Irish clans—one side out to eradicate the zombies, the other wanting to contain and possibly domesticate them—may be goofy, but it serves the film’s purpose well enough.

Since this is a Romero zombie picture, it has to deal in a requisite amount of gore, entrails ingestion and carnage—and it’s effective at this. Romero seems to enjoy finding new ways to undo the undead. There’s been some complaining about the jokiness of it all, but really, apart from a very unfortunate bit where a zombie cocks his head and goes, “Huh?” (like a cartoon dog just before dynamite explodes in his face), it’s no more jokey than things Romero’s been throwing in since 1978. That there’s a certain blasé attitude on the part of the humans as concerns encountering these monsters is only to be expected at this point. When the film calls for it—as in the ferryboat sequence and the climax—Romero plays it with a straight face and proves himself perfectly capable of crafting an effective horror set piece.

Survival of the Dead is either a 70-year-old filmmaker offering a kind of absurdist compendium of the themes and events of his entire zombie cycle, or a 70-year-old filmmaker out of ideas and spinning his wheels. I’m inclined to believe it’s the former, and I think time will vindicate the film as Romero’s oeuvre is reassessed over the years. It will never be a great film (I don’t think any of Romero’s zombie films are), but it will be seen in a different light than it is now by its detractors. Rated R for strong zombie violence/gore, language and brief sexuality.