Survival Of The Dead

Survival Of The Dead by Nick Schwab

In Survival Of the Dead, zombie-maestro George Romero smirkingly turns his franchise topsy-turvy in a parody of the ...Of The Dead series, proving that you don't always have to teach old dogs new tricks, you can rather just reinterpret the old.

While the last entry, the cinema-verite Diary Of The Dead, used a new perspective, Survival's comedic tone is apparent from the first scene with its half-jar headed/ half comic book-style humor showing a tongue-in-cheek manner to Romero's flesh-chewing, head-shot tradition.

The story's foundation is with a band of AWOL National Guardsmen start making arrangements to travel to Plum Island, a place where they are told is free from the zombie outbreak, yet instead they find two families are at war with one another in a dispute over what to do with their dead kin.

It is with this concept that George Romero's sixth entry in his ... Of The Dead series is initiated. While one may expect a nihilistic and bleak outlook by Romero like his last film, Diary Of The Dead, instead Survival Of the Dead is undoubtedly his most humorous entry as well as his most laidback

While featuring a chow of comedy, gore, and action along with its zombie quota, Survival is a entertaining romp of a merry, undead time . There may be a social commentary (this time on tribalism) but it is not a prevalent as Diary Of The Dead, instead it is more in line with Day Of The Dead, the third ..Of The Dead film that was straight-faced and bleak with its social critiques more held in the background to the enshrouding dire ominous of being holed up in a bunker during an apocalyptic outbreak.

Although this new entry (like the last two) already has plenty of detractors, it seems they mostly just want Romero to remake Dawn of The Dead each time. However, one has to understand that change is actually not a bad thing. Rather, it is just something completely different, much like how Diary Of The Dead put his series in a new perspective, this film gives it a new context. Actually, if you take the style of humor from the Amish character in Diary, and elongated it to a full movie, you would get Survival of the Dead.

While anyone will admit Romero's present output is not exactly classic or transcending anymore, the burning question remains---- Would you want Romero to keep miming his past or reinventing it? While anyone wants the man to do a film again that is as good as the first three films of the series, realize that they already exist, and sometimes you just have to leave it on the floor and start over.

Romero has lately been doing that and wholeheartedly commend him for it.

-Read the full story at UnRatedMagazine.com