George A. Romero’s Survival of the Dead

With George A. Romero’s Survival of the Dead, George A. Romero’s Dead series has officially crossed into irrelevance – as the movie suffers from an egregiously low-rent sensibility that’s perpetuated by an emphasis on wholly unappealing elements (eg characters, dialogue, visuals, etc, etc). The movie, which follows several soldiers as they arrive on a small island hoping to escape the zombie menace but must instead contend with an ongoing feud between a pair of rival clans, opens with some promise, admittedly, as writer/director Romero effectively returns to the atmosphere established by 2007’s Diary of the Dead (with the decision to jettison that film’s handheld visual style certainly working in its favor). But it’s not long until the almost aggressively uninteresting storyline becomes impossible to overlook; the uniformly bland characters would be enough to sink the movie alone, yet it’s the hopelessly silly subplot revolving around the two families’ conflict that signals George A. Romero’s Survival of the Dead‘s death knell (ie it’s just boring). The lack of decent kills or attack sequences ensures that even the zombie stuff grows repetitive almost immediately, and one can’t help but walk away from the movie with the feeling that Romero’s reserve of undead tales has run completely dry. Stripped of Romero’s iconic name, George A. Romero’s Survival of the Dead would hardly be likely to earn a spot at your local Blockbuster let alone within the festival’s Midnight Madness program.

* out of ****