Zombie Command

Despite having directed my favourite zombie film of all time (Dawn of the Dead) and featuring Simon Pegg in one of his films, George A. Romero has slowly been chipping away at any sort of goodwill I have for his films. Starting with making the zombies really able to learn/remember things in Day (though I appreciate they had limited motivations at least in Dawn) and then having weak characters/ story in Land and Diary I went into his latest film, Survival of the Dead, fully expecting it to finish off any desire to watch one of his films again.

Don’t believe me, check it out.

Survival of the Dead is set during the same time period as Diary of the Dead and brings back ‘Sarge’ aka ‘Colonel’ aka ‘Nicotine’ Crocket (Alan Van Sprang), as the soldier who robbed the Diary protagonists. It also features Devon Bostick as an unnamed character but who isn’t reprising the same role he had in Land of the Dead.

The story focuses on a feud between the O’Flynn and Muldoon families on Plum Island, off the coast of Delaware. As the dead come back to life the O’Flynns put them out of their misery one at a time, but the Muldoons want to keep them ‘alive’ to try and find the cure. Ultimately the O’Flynn’s lose and head back to the mainland where they trick refugees into heading over to the island claiming it’s safe.

Once Sarge and the rest of his unit hear O’Flynns call it’s not long before they go to the island to find that it’s not quite as peaceful as they’ve been led to believe. As the perils of trying to control zombies once again becomes apparent, will the stubborness of the family heads prevent anybody getting off the island alive and who was right?

Survival of the Dead was the second film shown at the London Frightfest all nighter and I was expecting it to be a mere time filler between Umbrage and Paranormal Activity but have to admit that, while not a return to his pre-Land days, Survival of the Dead does enough justice to his legacy to make it a perfectly acceptable addition and was much more enjoyable than I was expecting.

Perhaps it’s because I’m more used to some ultra low-budget films these days but Survival of the Dead looked and felt like a much bigger budget film than I suspect it was, the small-ish cast and tight locations no doubt helping to make what was there a much more acceptable quality. Where the film did let itself down though was with an overuse of CGI blood. Exploding heads and blood splatters added in post production are no match for doing it on the day.

Despite the characters being a little sterotyped and unchanging throughout (with so much happening you’d think they’d have some sort of development) the film works because of the tightness of the story in relation to the events that you know are happening off-screen around the world. This is another intimate view of life for a select group of people near the start of the zombocalypse, it worked for Night, it worked for Dawn and it works here.

That said, beware that Romero does move his zombie world forward and the zombies are smarter than they have been before. They are able to ride horses, post mail and are much less dangerous than previously; it’s almost as if Romero himself doesn’t take the genre seriously but forgets that without the backdrop of his films then parodies are much less likely to work.

Survival of the Dead is the first OTD film that Romero hasn’t specifically had a social or political reason for doing in his mind while filming and as such it plays out much more like a Western than his previous films (no bad thing considering where they were going). Despite this it’s hard not to draw parallels with the various resource crisis’ happening in today’s world, such as wars over oil or the genocide attempts in Darfur.

This film in no way deserves the low ratings being given to it by many critics and while it has it’s flaws Zombie Command can unreservedly recommend a George A. Romero film for the first time in 30 years!