I LIKE MOVIES #9: Survival of the Dead

George Romero has made three of the greatest zombie movies ever made. With Night, Dawn, and Day he laid the ground work for the majority of the zombie genre. His newest movie, Survival of the Dead, is the sixth in the "Dead" series and the first one to directly connect a character to its predecessor. So it is the first "sort-of-direct-sequel." When he made Diary of the Dead in 2007, he went back to the beginning, to the first night that the dead came back to life. Part of Survival's story follows a character briefly encountered in Diary.

The other part of the story follows two rival families living on an island, the Muldoons and the O'Flynns. These two families are clashing over the proper way of dealing with the reanimated dead. O'Flynn wants a bullet in every walking corpse and Muldoon wants to keep the dead restrained and hope for God's judgement or perhaps even a cure.

Given that this is a George Romero movie, I was surprised that this war of ideologies was not entirely beaten like a dead horse (the phrase "dead horse" being unintentionally funny after having watched the movie). And I say that with love. I really do love his first three Dead movies, and I definitely enjoyed the later three entries. It just seems that with this newest installment Romero restrained himself from an overindulgence into themes of religious zealotry in favor of shootouts and a general theme of people with different ideas not being able to live peaceably together, dead or alive. And for me that was a good thing. Fans who have left his previous two zombie films with unfulfilled expectations will probably feel similarly after watching Survival. This isn't the grand epic of world wide proportions everybody seems to keep wishing for from George Romero.

Instead of letting social commentary overwhelm the movie (as I worried it might have earlier on) Romero goes for laughs and a quick pace. This isn't as much a horror movie as it is a modernized Western with zombie gags. The zombies do not provide scares for us or for the characters they are trying to eat. They are nonchalantly manhandled by characters throughout the movie. The focus of the story is more on how the dead are treated by the characters.

For example, the idea of family members unable to kill one another after they have become the walking dead has been explored in Romero's other movies. Most memorable might be the scene in Dawn of the Dead, when we see the basement of an apartment building full of what used to be tenants' relatives but are now flesh eating ghouls. It was scary and kind of sad as Roger and Peter had to put them all down. In Survival, the dead are treated like cattle or livestock. But not scary. Just another day on the farm for the Muldoons. I think it was an intentional transition though.

Since the movie doesn't get too bogged down in social commentary, which is always a danger in the genre, there is room for playing. George Romero introduced the movie when I saw it and described it as having several "Looney Tunes" moments. He went on to say that people should not be afraid to laugh. It's a movie. Have fun. Perhaps it was due to this granting of permission, but the audience was going wild for some of the more outlandish stuff and I was glad. It seems George Romero is at a point where he just wants to have some fun with his zombies. It was as if the scene from Diary with Samuel the Amish mute had spread out into most of this movie. There was a lot of silliness to be had here.

Zombies get lobotomized with fire extinguisher foam, used as cigarette lighters, ride horseback, and try to do chores around the farm while some of the living characters are entertainingly cartoonish with ridiculous accents. There is even a scene where a wall gets exploded, leaving the men who were hiding behind it comically covered in ash, like Yosemite Sam after pushing an ill-prepared dynamite plunger. These are, for the most part, what I consider intentional laughs. On the other hand there are moments that made me laugh that I don't think were supposed to. The introduction of a character's twin was a little iffy story-wise but hilarious nonetheless. And the end result of Muldoon's training zombies to eat something other than humans played out comically as well. I don't think it had the intended impact. Although I must say that the final shot of the movie is pretty great.

Bottom line, America: I had a fun time at the movies. Survival of the Dead is not the living dead epic that hardcore fans have been awaiting, but I'm totally fine with watching George Romero have fun with his zombies.

Today's arbitrary rating says that Survival of the Dead gets 46 empty graves out of 57.