In Survival of the Dead, the war-weary Sarge Crockett (Alan Van Sprang) confides to us that he’s tired of running from the undead horde and scraping supplies off civilians to survive. He is a man ashamed of the lengths he has gone to stay one step ahead of the flesh eaters. Exhaustion seems to be an overarching theme in George Romero’s latest zombie film which is tired just like its creator.
George Romero, the genius behind Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, writes and directs this movie just like the others in his …of the Dead series. All the energy and originality seems to have evaporated from this once mighty franchise however. Romero used to wow us with gruesome special effects and gritty drama about people slowly losing their sanity in the fight for their lives; neither of which are present in this film. There are only a couple of entertaining zombie kills, and the drama between the characters is weak at best.
Sarge Crockett and his men have been drifting without a destination since the dead started walking. They find hope though when they hear about an island off the coast of Maryland that is supposed to be a peaceful place, free from the mainland madness. Him and his soldiers join forces with the exiled Patrick O’Flynn, who guides them back to the island. What Crockett and his squad do not realize however, they have stepped into an age-old feud between the two warring families on the island: the O’Flynns and the Muldoons.
Patrick O’Flynn and Seamus Muldoon have been after each other since the schoolyard for ambiguous reasons, although the major source of their current disagreement is what each man thinks that they should do with their loved ones that have become members of the undead. O’Flynn and his clan think that those who are undead deserve to be put down, while Muldoon’s crew believes that these creatures should be kept alive and domesticated.
Neither of these points of view is very interesting or even very unique. Romero seems to be re-posing the same questions to audiences with each of his films: Is it in the best interest for humans to try to eradicate the zombies entirely? Or is it easier for them to try to co-exist than to conquer the ever-growing army of flesh eaters? As usual, the answer is inconclusive at best. Those who are truly selfish end up victims to the horde, while the rest ride off into the sunset, hoping to live for as long as they can. A world without hope for a future free of zombies is more realistic because it is not a storybook happy ending, but it’s a depressing formula that leaves you just as weary as Sarge Crockett.