Ahoy, squirts! Quint here to give you my thoughts on George A. Romero’s SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD.
I want to state up front that my expectations going into this movie were pretty low. I hated DIARY OF THE DEAD. And that’s not a word I use lightly. I felt it was a horrible film that made me embarrassed for Romero as a fan of his work. It’s possible that I walked away from his new movie impressed simply because he made a real movie again, but I don’t think so. I think he really stepped up to the plate this time out and delivered a fun movie.
But that’s kind of Romero’s M.O. The dude’s career is a rollercoaster. I’m a big fan of some of his non-Dead work like THE CRAZIES and MARTIN, but he’s had some horrible misfires in his heyday as well.
SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD moves back to straightforward filmmaking from that failed experiment POV documentary gimmick of DIARY. Don’t get me wrong, that style can work. CLOVERFIELD is flawed, but makes good use of it, REC is awesome, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY is pretty damn good. I don’t hate the idea of Romero making a movie like that, but coupled with the most uninteresting annoying and horribly acted characters in any Romero film since SEASON OF THE WITCH it made me want to claw my eyes out.
Romero shot this new film on a budget as well, but what a difference a good director of photography and some good old fashioned filmmaking can make.
The social commentary this time out is war. Romero boils it down, simplifies it, making it about two men on an Island that have a family feud going back centuries. I wouldn’t be surprised if Romero intended the O’Flynns and the Muldoons to have been at war all the way back to their roots in Ireland.
While that’s where the political message lies, the actual plot follows the national guard guys who rob the film school assclowns in DIARY led by Alan Van Sprang. As you’d expect with Romero we get a diverse group, multicultural and multisexual. Athena Karkanis plays a hot woman soldier nicknamed Tomboy who is unfortunately trapped with a squad of men. It wouldn’t be so bad except she’s a lesbian in a world where only men seem to be surviving. We also have the joker of the group, a charming Latin dude and, eventually, a civilian teenager who is good with a gun.
There was surprisingly little shown of this group looting, but I’m fine with that. The story’s on the island, not on how many people this traveling band of soldiers rob. In fact, it helps make the team a lot more likable than I was expecting.
The top O’Flynn is banished from his island and leaves his him and family behind. So he puts a video on the internet, which apparently can survive the zombie apocalypse, advertising this great island refuge that is safe. Of course, when people show up he’s like a profiteer during WW2 who steals all the money and gold from the Jews in exchange for safe harbor.
And it’s not even safe harbor. He sells them boats to go to this island for the double purpose of getting rich and pissing off his arch rival who believes the island only belongs to the Muldoons’.
Naturally he gets more than he bargained for when the national guard guys show up in their armored Brinks truck. But that turns out to be a blessing in disguise as he recruits the team to help him retake the island.
There’s been lots of talk about how Romero employs a sort of Western filmmaking style this time out and that’s partly true. The scenes between O’Flynn (Kenneth Welsh) and Muldoon (Richard Fitzpatrick) definitely play out that way. Long homestead establishing shots, Mexican stand-offs, etc, but the rest of the movie plays out in a fairly standard army vs. zombies way.
As expected the gore is very well done. Even in Diary there’s gore moments to like courtesy of Romero knocking his head together with the brilliant dudes at KNB. The gore in this movie is pretty small until the shit really hits the fan at the end, but we do get a Romero trademarked complete disembowelment and some other surprises I won’t spoil.
All that said, it’s not a flawless movie. Some of the acting is limited, especially with the lead bad guy, but there’s nothing in this movie as laughably bad as the overly dramatic teacher from the last movie. The ending is a bit muddled and over complicated, but it has a solid foundation that supports the shenanigans at the end.
And some people might have a problem with a couple of the more Looney Tunes moments (there’s literally a scene with a giant bundle of dynamite that might as well have ACME stamped on it), but then again this is the man who ended his masterpiece with a damn pie fight.
Above all else it felt to me like Romero had a solid vision that was extremely well executed. According to the director’s pre-screening Q&A they shot the movie on the Red Camera and it looked very sharp, sharper than a lot of Red work I’ve seen courtesy of Adam Swica. Much better than his work on Diary, but he was hobbled from the get go by the premise of that movie.
I wouldn’t call it a return to form, but this is definitely Romero on an upswing. It’s not his best movie, but it’s very far away from his worst.
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
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