George A. Romero has long been a beloved figure among horror fans. It's because of him that zombies as we know and love them today even exist. But outside of his zombie movies, he hasn't really had a whole lot of success. I mean, Creepshow was great, and The Crazies has found some cult popularity, but it's Romero's zombie movies that people want to see. So I guess that's why, with the surge in popularity that the living dead have enjoyed over the last several years, Romero just keeps coming back to them.
I can't say I blame him. Any zombie movie with his name slapped on it will immediately have an audience. That's probably why he's ventured away from his previous "one zombie movie a decade" format and cranked out three of them since 2005. Unfortunately, those three movies are marked by a noticeable decline in quality. While I enjoyed Land of the Dead more than I probably should have, Diary of the Dead was disappointingly mediocre. And that brings us to Romero's latest effort, Survival of the Dead. And let me be honest with you: it's not his worst, but it most certainly is not his best.
As our story begins, we're introduced to a group of National Guardsmen led by Sgt. Crockett (Alan van Sprang). With the zombie outbreak becoming more and more widespread, the soldiers have gone rogue, robbing civilians and killing whatever zombies stand in the way between them and their survival. They find an online invitation to Plum Island, a small island off the coast of Delaware, and set a course for what they believe might be a safe haven from the zombie horde.
But they arrive to find that Plum Island is the scene of a tense family feud between the O'Flynns and the Muldoons. The feud is caused by the clashing ideals of the family patriarchs; Patrick O'Flynn (Kenneth Walsh) wants eliminate the zombies on Plum Island, while Seamus Muldoon (Richard Fitzpatrick) simply wishes to keep them restrained until they can learn to be docile. The rogue soldiers are caught in the middle of the war, one that's only made worse by the zombies running loose on the island.
While the movie is an improvement over Diary of the Dead, it still gave me the feeling that Romero is starting to run out of steam. It's as if he's making these zombie movies because it's what people expect from him and because he knows there's an easy paycheck in it. I hate saying that, but that's the impression I got from Survival of the Dead. It's not that bad of a movie in spite of the overwhelmingly negative reviews it's gotten on Rotten Tomatoes, but it's nowhere near the quality of some of his other movies.
One of the biggest problems I had with Survival of the Dead was its lack of scares. If you're going to make a scary movie, why the hell would you leave out the scares? While Romero's direction was technically sound, the fact that it just wasn't scary at all really hurts it. That really crummy CGI gore doesn't help anything either. It looks way too fake to be taken seriously. And to top it off, the whole thing doesn't even feel like it should be a Romero movie. The whole movie has the presence of some direct-to-video zombie movie made by somebody who wished they were Romero. The whole thing is just plain disappointing.
And I unfortunately thought Romero's script was a little on the weak side too. The whole thing is pretty much Romero utilizing every possible entry from the "George Romero Trope/Cliché Handbook." There are the amoral soldiers, a battle of "kill zombies vs. experiment on them," zombies remembering habits from their old lives. A character afraid of turning into a zombie asks to be shot. And it even ends the same way as all of Romero's others zombie movies, with the living dead getting loose and wiping out most of the characters.
There's nothing new in Survival of the Dead. Romero doesn't have to reinvent the wheel, but it's like he wasn't even trying to go beyond the ordinary. I don't ask for much out of zombie movies, but I'd at least appreciate something that wasn't the same old thing I'd seen a million times before. But at least he didn't try shoving his usual social satire down the viewer's throat like he did in his previous two zombie movies. It was more subtle than that, to the point that I'm not even 100% sure there was a social satire beyond his usual "the living are more dangerous than the dead" concept that Romero has been using since all the way back in 1968 with Night of the Living Dead. Again, it's nothing new.
At least I dug the cast. Alan van Sprang puts forth a good performance as the leader of the National Guardsmen, and though he has a few iffy moments, he manages to pull through with a respectable performance. Richard Fitzpatrick wasn't bad either, though I thought he came off as a little too hammy. Devon Bostick and Kathleen Munroe put forth some good performances, and Stefano Collaciti is funny and likable. But my favorite performance came from Kenneth Walsh. Walsh is a lot of fun, playing the role with a charm that makes his presence a welcome one. He's the best part of this whole thing, and the movie is better for it.
There once was a day when news of a new zombie movie from George Romero would be a cause for celebration among horror fans. But after Survival of the Dead, I'm not sure if that's news I want to hear anymore. If Diary of the Dead was the equivalent of a race car driver hitting the wall at 200 miles per hour, then Survival of the Dead is the race car flipping and catching fire. The movie is an utter disappointment all the way through. It's a by-the-numbers effort with as much life in it as the zombies. It's watchable, at the very least. But it's nothing special at all. I've heard Romero thinks he has two more zombie movies in him, so let's hope those can improve upon this.
Final Rating: **
No comments:
Post a Comment