Survival of the Dead

George A. Romero is known for his zombie films.  I recently watched the newest zombie film from Romero, titled Survival of the Dead.  Survival of the Dead is the only true follow up to a previous film.  The plot follows a character that appeared in the previous film, Diary of the Dead.  This character is an AWOL soldier who has taken to robbing people for money with a small group of others.

If I were to say this was a good piece of art, I would be lying.  I don’t believe that the movie is anything special at all.  The biggest problem I have with it is that it had the potential to be a decent film but that potential was squandered by a low budget.

What do I mean by squandered?  I am not going to put anything against the writing of Survival of the Dead.  The writing was not that bad.  There is an island with two feuding families.  How is this feud affected by the zombie outbreak?  What happens when this outsider and his band of thieves come to the island seeking a safe haven?  Survival of the Dead has ideas and concepts that most horror films don’t strive to look upon.  Once again, it is entirely upon the budget that I place the blame.

The first strike against the budget comes in the acting department.  There are some potentially good actors in this movie.  I like the lead actor.  He was able to acceptably carry the movie.  A couple of the islands folk were fairly good.  However, there were others that were over the top, or they weren’t able to act.  When the movie is centered about the feuding people, you should be able to feel the anger between them.  You see it, you hear it, but none of the actors were really able to make you feel it.  The budget’s incapability to get better actors partially hindered this movie.

The second strike comes in the form of the CG.  There isn’t much to say other than it was bad, didn’t fit with its surroundings, and took me out of what I was watching every time it was used.  Bed CG, bad.

The third, and I think biggest strike was in the scope.  At one point, a character says that World War 3 was about to start.  What do we get to see?  A ten on ten gun fight that is broken up by a crowd of twenty zombies.  That seems a little bit less than World War 3.  The only time I felt true scope in the movie, in terms of the zombie problem was when a character was swimming for a boat and an undetermined amount of zombies were trying to pull him underwater.

This wasn’t the worst movie I’ve ever seen.  The problem is that it wasn’t up to the standards that Romero had set with previous entries Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead.  It was enjoyable enough for one sitting but I won’t be returning to this one any time soon.