In the interest of not getting too vicious here, I'll keep this review short. What I can say is that George A. Romero's Survival of the Dead (which seems to be the title, as it was with Diary of the Dead) is better than its immediate predecessor, but nevertheless not a very good movie. Because I want to be fair, the Cap'n will first present a few positives:
I appreciate that Romero made Survival of the Dead a semi-sequel to Diary of the Dead by spinning off the "Colonel" character that robs the filmmakers into his own story. Yes, the name changes to Sarge "Nicotine" Crocket (Alan Van Sprang*), a name I really can't remember hearing in the movie, but okay. For a series that always relied on telling different stories within a zombified universe, I thought it was an interesting direction to head in following a minor character from the previous film.
The approach to Survival of the Dead is also very different from any of the other Romero zombie films: the film might be best described as a western, and if nothing else, there are some moments that are strange enough to have merited watching the film. For example, the zombie half of twin sisters that rides around Plum Island (where our protagonists escape to) on a horse for most of the movie. Now I'm not that up to speed on the dozens of zombie DTV movies out there, but I've never seen that one before.
Survival of the Dead also slowly expands the "can zombies evolve" story by posing the question (and kind of answering it) "will zombies eat something other than humans?" I'm not going to spoil it too much, but the answer (and best gore scene in the movie, bar none) is "Yes." There are also little touches, like underwater zombies and a guy that goes fishing for them, that are semi-inspired.
I say semi-inspired because this takes me to the "negative" side of this review. The "zombie fishing" scene should have been funnier than it was, or more suspenseful based on the way it ends. Instead, it just doesn't make any sense. Survival of the Dead suffers from have no character that is in any way interesting. I didn't really care who lived or died because not a single one of the "stock" types make an impact, which is a shame because it kills any interest in what's happening on Plum island.
After killing some redneck hunters for no good reason, Sarge (Van Sprang), Tomboy (Athena Karkanis), Francisco (Stefano Di Matteo), and Chuck (Joris Jarsky) pick up Boy (Devon Bostick) and ride off in an armored van with 1.33 Million dollars. Based on a Youtube video (yes, for some reason the internet is still functioning, and apparently made Sarge quite infamous for his role in Diary of the Dead) of "Captain Courageous" aka Patrick O'Flynn (Kenneth Welsh), they steal a ferry and travel to Plum Island.
O'Flynn was cast out from the Island over a Hatfield / McCoy-type feud with the Muldoons over what to do with the living dead. O'Flynn wanted to kill them, but Muldoon wants to rehabilitate them and teach them to eat something other than people for religious reasons. O'Flynn's daughter Janet (Kathleen Munroe, who also plays the zombie twin Jane, or vice versa, I really can't recall) talks Muldoon into banishing her father, until he sneaks back with the AWOL soldiers to claim revenge.
Now, everything I've told you is pretty much rendered moot by the fact that Muldoon has already taken to killing zombies by the time we meet him again. There's no really good reason for this, and by the end of the movie it's clear that the feud between these arbitrarily Irish families has nothing to do with the living dead anyway, it's just about one admitting that the other is wrong. So thanks for ruining our investment in that aspect of the story, Mr. Romero.
The military group is pretty one dimensional, and they tell you so repeatedly by reiterating their "type"s: Sarge is the "tough loner who trusts nobody", Chuck (at least I think it's Chuck that's one of Sarge's guys and not O'Flynn's) is the "follower who talks sense into Sarge only to get killed", Tomboy is the "lesbian who hates Francisco but secretly likes him or something like that", and Francisco is the "religious Latino type who tries to be mysterious and sexy but Tomboy always calls him out on it". Boy doesn't even have a character, and Sarge keeps referring to the fact that he's too young when Devin Bostick looks older than most of the characters in Diary of the Dead. Not such great casting.
For such a short movie, I was bored pretty quickly. All of the characters avoid being in serious danger for most of the film, only to die arbitrarily when the cast needs thinning out. I think I was supposed to care that Fransisco was slowly turning after biting a zombie's finger off (the closest thing to danger he comes to in swimming through zombie-infested docks) but it never registers. It doesn't help that Tomboy also swims through those waters off-screen for no apparent reason and is also unharmed.
The Muldoon / O'Flynn posses are so ill-defined that during a third act shootout the only way to tell who's who is by the direction they're shooting. There's almost no point in the Jane / Janet subplot other than to trick audiences into thinking that O'Flynn's daughter is dead when he returns to the island. The payoff for the twins, if you can call it that, only really exists to set up one good practical gore effect.
The zombies die increasingly in spotty looking cgi splatter, and at this point pose no threat whatsoever. When someone can swim through the living dead and only gets infected because he bites a zombie, their purpose is effectively moot. They're no longer dangerous, or scary, or much of anything. Now, I understand that many of you will say that the humans have always been more dangerous, especially in Night, Dawn, and Day, but in Survival of the Dead none of the humans behave in a way that makes sense.
Accordingly, the final voice-over (something that's mercifully cut back from Diary of the Dead's heavy handed narration), about how wars are over silly things that neither side can remember is also pointless. I'm not even really sure what Romero wants us to take away from the film, since Sarge, Tomboy, and Boy leave on the ferry with their stolen loot and everyone on Plum Island is not undead. The final shot, of zombie Muldoon and zombie O'Flynn meeting on a hill to fire empty pistols at each other, is laughably bad. If that's the social commentary this time, consider me nonplussed.
Next time, it's going to take a lot of convincing to bring me back to a Romero zombie film. Look, I respect his body of work, and the first three are among my favorite horror films, but like Dario Argento, I can appreciate what Romero's done without feeling compelled to suffer through his recent output.
* Addendum: I was just watching Land of the Dead, when a character named Brubaker looked awfully familiar. Turns out that's because it's Alan Van Sprang, appearing in yet another Romero zombie movie. Since Diary was a reboot of sorts and Survival is an indirect sequel, you can debate whether Colonel / Sarge / Brubaker are the same person, since Land of the Dead takes place "some time later."
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