The zombie outbreak has become the new normal, local communities have found ways to handle their situations. But all is not well. The fight for mere survival has turned into selection, and from there into a battle of beliefs. When the dead walk the earth - what's wrong and what's right?
It has taken the world at least 20 years to appreciate George A. Romero's "Night of the Living Dead". Today it's a celebrated milestone of cinema, and part of New York Museum of Modern Art collection. Pretty much the same goes for Romero's "Dawn of the Dead". "Day..." is slowly getting the same level of appreciation. "Land..." was a big budget production, and a box office success. "Diary..." is still mostly being ignored, but will sooner or later be recognized as another milestone. Which brings us to the relevance, or the lack thereof, of "Survival of the Dead". It was a tremendous failure at the box office, and has pretty much completely disappeared from public consciousness, except maybe as an example of a bad zombie comedy.
But is it really that bad? First of all, it's a quality low-budget production. It looks good, the cast is great, there are zombies and some ok special effects (albeit no Tom Savini here, but too much CGI), it has a good story, etc. - so in that regard we can't complain.
Where it fails, is in its rhythm, and tone. To some degree, a sober, underacting style has always been a part of George A. Romero's directing oevre, as has been comical quirkiness in his zombie movies. But in "Survial of the Dead" it mixes in a comparable unfortunate way, lacking the strong characters and center storyline that push things forward, as are masterfully displayed especially in "Dawn of the Dead". "Survival..." seems to meander from scene to scene, without really creating a steady pace, or a definitive direction. Did Uncle Georgie just get confused while telling stories?
Maybe he did, a little bit. But there's a certain depth to "Survival of the Dead" that must be explored. George A. Romero was 69 years old when the movie got released. It's about tradition vs. enlightenment, belief vs. science, family vs. community, and it's about the older generation. At the time (and even long before), Romero's insight into human existence was miles above that of the average zombie movie viewer. "Survival of the Dead" is different - expectations are everything.
In a sense, it's like trying to impress someone with a Miss Marple movie who's just watched "Se7en". Nope, this is not your spectacular "survival of the living", fight-to-the-death situation. But that doesn't mean that Miss Marple is a bad detective. "Survival of the Dead" certainly isn't the best of Romero's movies, but it's still far more interesting than many other zombie film productions.
Somehow, the questions remains: What is it, that Romero was really after with "Survival of the Dead"? In some interview, he says something along the lines of "...and I wonder how long it'll take them to get it..." about the movie, and its critics.
It's the new normal - which is the old one. It's the channel you tune in to on TV, it's if you go to Starbucks or prefer Black Bean, it's if you vote red or blue. It's about the old guys in the back, that fight over paper, and send others to war. It's about the "why" of things in our cultural, civil society.
Only two years after the release of "Survival of the Dead", Donald Trump would start eyeing to become president of the USA, and when he finally did, in 2017, he'd put family before qualification, and superstition before science.
Uncle Georgie told ya.
Verdict: Really not as bad as they say. 6/10
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1134854/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_Dead
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