That means it's time to revisit "Survival of the Dead," his last zombie film.
Well- "Survival of the Dead" is the zombie film he made that you didn't see.2
Romero has claimed in interviews that the humor in "Survival" is intentional.
Sure, some of it. All of his "Dead" films, no matter how grim they got, always had clever lines, tension-breaking jokes, and great dark humor. But this time...I don't believe he meant this film to be as absurd as it is. 3
The premise is ridiculous on its face. It's about a pair of old Irish men who have been feuding on an island for decades. And the undead invasion brings their feud to a breakpoint. One of them believes in shooting them in the head, one of them believes we should keep them around permanently, tied up with rope.
We've all seen five billion zombie films and shows by this point. The argument that we shouldn't immediately dispose of the undead has been permanently settled. Decades ago. Keeping hungry undead corpses around your house is the most ridiculous, insane, and dangerous bad idea in the history of bad ideas.4
So the central conflict is just dumb. Also every character is just dumb.
This includes a ragtag group of ex-military folk who land on the island and are caught in the middle of this alleged drama. The main ex-military guy is a walking temper tantrum who constantly storms around and screams and throws objects around at the slightest provocation.
The old Irish guy who believes in zombie disposal is cool, but he's also kind of a stereotype in motion. He's so far over the top, I kept waiting for him to talk about Guinness or his Lucky Charms.5
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| His performance is dynamite! |
Oh, and there's a surprise twin. And there's no reason for the surprise twin to exist. Seriously- there's a girl. We later see this girl as a zombie. We later see this girl alive. Guy says "I thought you were a zombie." Girl says "I have a twin. She's a zombie"
Um. Okay.
There was no buildup, no comedy of errors, no motivation, no distinction made between the two sisters, no foreshadowing that there are two of them, nothing. Just- boom, here's a new character, oh, and she has a twin.6
And beyond the plot problems, the theme is also problematic.
Romero always stood apart from the zombie herd on the strength of his themes. Unlike the meaningless walkers in most zombie TV and movies, Romero's zombies always symbolized something and there was always an intellectual idea being argued, the most famous being the anti-consumerism in "Dawn of the Dead."
But this time, he blows it.
The film's central thesis is that if we can get the zombies to start eating animals that aren't human, then we'll be okay.
This is even dumber than the idea of keeping zombies as pets.
Romero seemed to be going a bit batty with his "Land of the Dead" ending a few years before this, where he implied zombies are people like us and they just wanna be left alone.7
Romero takes that bad idea ten steps further here. If "Survival of the Dead" is right and we can in fact train zombies to eat other animals, guess what that accomplishes? A diminished food supply for the dwindling human population!8
If Romero had meant all this to be ridiculous- cartoon caricature characters, goofy CGI gore, ridiculous central conflict, nonsensical action scenes, random behavior, absurd thematic ideas, heavy-handed cheeseball political commentary voice-over at the end- then this would be a brilliant bit of cinematic trolling.
But I really think he meant all of it.
Much like Tommy Wiseau, legendary star and creator of the greatest awful movie ever, "The Room," Romero probably meant his work to be taken seriously and only backpedaled and called it humor after audiences howled at its idiocy.9
Romero hasn't made a "Dead" film since this one and that might be because the economy crashed or because it bombed10 or because he really hit a creative wall here. I don't know.
The market got saturated, too- "Zombieland" came out around the same time as this one,11 a new "Resident Evil" was coming out about once a year,12 and "Walking Dead" hit the airwaves a year later. No one was clamoring for more half-baked zombie action from their original creator.
Which was a cosmic injustice. Yeah, his movies were sucking for the last decade or two, but "Walking Dead" owes EVERYTHING to Romero. They're raking in crazy cash by taking a piggyback ride on the shoulders of that giant.
Romero's had some recent success with writing the comics "Toe Tags" and the vampire-vs.-zombie epic "Empire of the Dead," which he's now adapting to television. These comics are entertaining enough, but I forgot what happened in them a few minutes after I finished reading them. Disposable thrills, at best.13
But you know what? I don't care if the "Empire of the Dead" TV show sucks or gets cancelled after one season. I support it and I'm happy Romero is finally gonna get a paycheck for his original ideas, rather than watch everyone else make bank by playing in his sandbox.
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| This photo is 30 years old. And he was already an old zombie pro at the time. |
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1. He also almost directed the "Resident Evil" movie and his perfectly fine unfilmed script is available online. Google around. You can also find his original script for "Day of the Dead" before they cut his budget in half. It's stupendous. I'd like to read the original "Dead Reckoning" script, which later evolved into "Land of the Dead." If you have access, holla at yo boy.
2. I'm guessing you skipped "Diary of the Dead," too. Good for you. If you saw "Land of the Dead"- fine. Love it or hate it, I won't fight you on that one.
3. Maybe it was rushed and that bungled the tone. After "Land" and "Diary," this is the third "Dead" film he made in Canada pretty much in a row. Burnout happens, even to the best.
4. Worse than getting Uwe Boll to direct "House of the Dead," even!
5. I can't help thinking he'd offend me even more if I knew more about my Irish heritage.
6. All I can figure is they wanted to save a few bucks on casting an additional actress. No other reason makes sense and I've been puzzling over this since I first saw this film at its American world premiere in Durham, North Carolina in 2009!
7. FYI- if you want to make such a zombie-sympathetic point, you should probably do it before, not after, you show us a stampeding zombie herd devour and tear apart dozens of innocent humans. Better yet- maybe don't show zombies tearing people apart AT ALL if you want us to sympathize with them?
8. Do you really want to compete for wild game with an army of the undead that outnumbers you 5,000 to 1?
9. Now granted, Romero's intentional humor in the film is fine. I'm sure the guy lighting his cigarette off the flaming zombie head was meant to be funny, and it is. I'm not saying everything in the movie misfires:
10. This thing cost $4 million and made less than half a million. I never saw it come to any theaters in the D.C. area, either. Heck, the one before this, "Diary of the Dead," only came to ONE theater in the entire D.C. area and it was on the smallest screen in the building and it only played for a week.
11. And "Zombieland" was a much better film, warts and all.
12. My artistic Achilles heel is the "Resident Evil" films. I like all of them except for the second one, which I hated more than Hitler.
13. Plus- SORRY TO SAY, but another gentleman who owes everything to Romero- guy named Max Brooks who wrote "World War Z" and "Zombie Survival Guide"- ALSO wrote a zombies-versus-vampires comic titled "The Extinction Parade" and it handles the idea MUCH better. And it beat Romero to the punch with the idea.
-Phony McFakename
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