Today’s quick review: Survival of the Dead. Weeks after the dead began to rise, Sergeant Crockett (Alan van Sprang), formerly of the National Guard, leads his men to Plum, an island off the coast of Delaware where Patrick O’Flynn (Kenneth Welsh) promises they can live in peace. But when they get there, they find the island ruled by Seamus Muldoon (Richard Fitzpatrick), a man with delusions of protectign the zombies from the living.
Survival of the Dead is the sixth and final zombie movie from director George A. Romero. A loose sequel to Diary of the Dead, Survival of the Dead follows a unit of AWOL soldiers who land in the middle of a conflict between two feuding Irish families. Unlike Romero’s earlier zombie movies, his last one does not have a clear vision in mind. Flat characters, an aimless story, and weak zombie work will make it a miss for most viewers.
Survival of the Dead has a hard time mustering any energy. Crockett and his men are opportunists with no long-term plans, and they have nothing to contribute to the blood feud between O’Flynn and Muldoon. For their part, O’Flynn and Muldoon are a disappointment. Neither man comes across as sympathetic enough to root for, and the question that divides them—whether zombies can be rehabilitated—is not compelling enough to drive the film.
Survival of the Dead also struggles with its zombies. The zombies receive a fair amount of screen time, but they rarely do anything. They exist only to be killed in casual, almost cartoonish ways and to cull the occasional character who lets his guard down. Making matters worse, the human characters tend to underreact to both the zombies themselves and the deaths they cause, robbing their presence of any real impact.
Even fans of the zombie genre will find Survival of the Dead to be a questionable pick. There is no overarching vision, little action to speak of, and no scares worth noting. The movie does manage to tell a dark story with a couple of twists and turns, but the audience is given little reason to care. As such, most viewers would do better with one of Romero’s other zombie films or something else altogether.
For a tense, gruesome zombie film that examines whether the question of whether zombies can be changed, try Day of the Dead. For a post-apocalyptic survival movie with a better grasp of human dynamics, try The Book of Eli or The Road. For a zombie comedy that leans into the slapstick side of the genre, try Zombieland or Shaun of the Dead.
[4.9 out of 10 on IMDB](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1134854/). I give it a 5.0 for tepid thrills and an aimless plot.