Survival of the Dead (2009)

Today I decided to watch the most recent of George A. Romero's zombie movies: Survival of the Dead. I'm pretty sure I've seen all of his other movies, even the 1985 Day of the Dead, with Bub the zombie! George A. Romero is largely credited as being the "Godfather" of the modern zombie, or at least that was before they once again evolved into their faster versions with the remake of Dawn of the Dead in 2004. He continues his own zombie series here, sticking to the ground rules he laid out so very long ago. So did the dead rise again with this latest film, or did it just rot in the ground? Hit the jump to find out! Don't worry, no gore is on the other side!


The film opens up with Sarge "Nicotine" Crockett explaining the current situation that the dead have been walking the Earth for quite some time now. They're slow and shambling, so they're easy to kill, except when they used to be your friends, as the Sarge notes. We then go to an island on which two rivaling families have been in a sort of feud for as long as they can remember. I got the impression it was largely civil until the dead started walking. The head of one family, Patrick O'Flynn, believes they should just all be wiped out so the living can stay in relative safety. The head of the other, Seamus Muldoon, believes that one day there could be a cure, or that perhaps they can be trained to eat something other than people, and so wants to keep them alive. We head back to our military team, lead by Crockett, and we follow them from there as a series of events leads them into this feud of the dead.

Sarge "Nicotine" Crockett & Patrick O'Flynn

The thing with George A. Romero's zombies, as has been true in all of his films, is that they slowly learn. They tend to act in a similar fashion to how they lead their lives before death, with other wants and desires besides eating people. This tends to give his films a bit of a cheesiness, especially the later films. Day of the Dead features Bub being trained by a scientist to be more human, and he succeeds to an extent. Land of the Dead shows even further memory retention and the ability to learn and adapt. Similarly Survival of the Dead deals with similar issues. Although, it clearly has a much smaller budget than Land of the Dead for example.

I'll be honest, I went into Survival of the Dead expecting it to be a total write-off. The previous film in the series, Diary of the Dead, was just that. What's interesting is that this movie actually shows how Diary and Survival overlap in that Crockett mentions encountering a small group making a film, which is exactly what Diary was about. Upon further investigation, I found out that Alan Van Sprang, the actor who plays Crockett, in fact appeared in Diary, and also in Land of the Dead. It's of note that this is the first time a named character returned has starred in multiple Romero movies, showing a level of inter-connectivity above the previous films. It was actually really cool at that moment to recognize the scene from the previous movie and realize this character was in both films.

A ranch hand risks his life while trying to get a zombified friend to recognize him

"But how is the movie?" you ask. I realize I've been rambling on about the history of Romero films this whole time so I'll cut to the chase. Technically, this movie wasn't very good at all, however, I quite enjoyed it despite all that. The special effects, be they computer or practical, have a level of cheesiness I've rarely seen in movies. Really nothing about the movie stands out as very quality. The actors make due, but they're all extremely stereotypical. One good thing I could say about the film is that it's incredibly gory, for those of you that like that kind of thing. You can't believe how hard it was to find images of this movie that weren't filled with blood.

One of the Muldoon clan corrals a "dead head"

It's hard to pin down why I enjoyed it. I think the key word here though is "cheese". If a film is bad, it's just bad. However, as soon as your brain is able to label something bad as being cheesy instead, it is suddenly acceptable. I think it has to do with the absurdity of some of the zombie deaths and the fact that there is a certainly level of low level comedy constantly running through the movie. It's just really hard to take it seriously, and it's quite fun to see that often neither does the movie. For some parts of it, it just seems like Romero was just having fun. I mean, at one point there's a zombie riding a horse in this film!

If you're a die-hard zombie fan, and have seen all the previous Romero films, you probably have a good idea what you're getting into with this. Go in with lowered expectations if you bother with it like I did, and you might find that it's not all a complete waste of time. Be warned though, this is in no way a good movie. Even so, I didn't mind it at the end of the day.