Survival Of The Dead

I likes me a good zombie movie. They seem to be the easiest things for younger filmmakers to tackle since they can cast family and friends as the undead while trying out all the fancy tricks they learned in film school. You either go pretentious and 'artsy' for your first film or you go 'zombie'.

This picture has some connection to 'Diary of the Dead', a zombie film I really didn't mind, and uses clips and characters from that film. They also did a pretty gruesome 'shoot the head OFF the zombie' effect within the first five minutes so I was hopeful for more of the same. After all, isn't that why we watch these kinds of movies in the first place?

George A Romero's name is on the top of the title so right there you know the film is being made by someone who knows his undead. I wonder what bee got in his bonnet to make him so obsessed with these creatures.


A number of fine character actors like Canadian Kenneth Walsh are in this one and I suspect most of the film was shot in Ontario to take advantage of tax benefits.

The story revolves around two families who share different views about how the zombies on Plum Island should be dealt with. One family wants to kill them all and the other wants to keep them alive after affliction until a cure is found. Personally I would definitely be in the first group. Grease 'em all I say.

Between both groups is a quartet of soldiers and a lone teen. It's interesting to see how Romero showcases zombies that we haven't seen before. For example. What happens to zombies who fall into water? Do they just sit on the bottom waiting for someone uninfected to swim by?

Combine that with some nicely gruesome scenes of zombie killing and some high production values, you got yourself a neat little distraction. I didn't mind it at all.