After George A Romero’s Diary of the Dead – a fourth instalment in his ongoing Dead saga of films – which was frankly abysmal, Romero is back with Survival of the Dead. Much like the slow-paced and rather boring Diary, Survival is another snooze-fest of zombies vs humans. The characters take the normal route of not believing in zombies even when they are being stared in the face by beings from beyond the grave. And when people should be killing zombies or running away from them it seems they would rather be having a nice cup of tea or a lengthy chat about family issues.
Despite the roaring success of films such as 28 Days Later, 30 Days of Night, Zombieland, Shaun of the Dead or Zack Snyder’s Day of the Dead, Romero has decided to remain rooted firmly in the past where his breed of slow-moving, stupid, and dull zombie still rules. So instead of zombies that can run and actually pose a genuine threat to human life here we have stumbling, groaning zombies that are a strictly laugh-free affair. They don’t even look particularly putrified or gross, so there’s not even any gross-out horror.
The characters really do just stand around talking for pretty much the entire movie, with zombies just feet away, groaning and moaning, unable to circumnavigate even the simplest of barriers between them and a nice bit of human flesh for dinner.
There is a distinct lack of suspense and subsequently very few scares, jumps or chills. And did I care about the characters? Did I hell as like! After watching this movie you’ll be left wishing that Romero’s franchise hadn’t survived past the first couple of films.
