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Survival of the Dead marks another notch in George A. Romero’s belt – adding another zombie addition to
his semi-impressive film catalog. Is Survival of the Dead worth surviving? Or would
you be better off feeding yourself to the zombies?
The zombie genre has been around for many years now, but only
in the past decade has it been as popular as it is now, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. It
seems as if zombie movies are reproducing at an unhealthy rate these days, very much like in the films themselves, each one
watered down with generic characters or plotlines that seem to steal their ideas from a cheesy cartoon episode.
So, that being said… I didn’t have high hopes for Survival of the Dead in the beginning. In
my eyes, the genre has been dead for years… there hasn’t been a good zombie movie since Shaun of the Dead, 28
Days Later or Planet Terror.
Unlike recent zombie movies, immediately I found myself drawn to the characters in the movie; I found myself attached
to each character, which really made this movie worth watching because that’s a rare thing for movies in this genre.
And not only the zombie genre, it’s even rare in the horror genre altogether. Each actor was
believable in the role they played, and the acting was executed extremely well for the most part. Each
of these positive aspects of the movie are extremely important to keep in mind when viewing it, mainly because this is a character
driven film in which zombies take a backseat throughout most of the movie. In fact, I felt there weren’t
enough zombies in the movie. I don’t feel this is a big setback for the movie itself, in fact it
was a little refreshing to have a zombie movie that was based more upon its characters than the situations they find themselves
in surrounded by zombies. But, it was slightly disappointing in some scenes where you would expect more
horror or scary sequences.
The story was ok, nothing huge, but still believable and entertaining enough to keep me interested. But
in my eyes, the movie goes from being a very strong release to being a mediocre zombie flick near the end of the movie.
And this is mainly due to the final fight scene in which it unleashes two groups of humans against a zombie horde.
I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but this scene really reminded me of a chase sequence from the old
Scooby-Doo cartoon.
All in all, I
feel this was a strong release and definitely worth at least renting before handing over your money to buy. I
only had a few negative things to say about it, I feel the positive aspects of the movie overweigh the negative, and it was
really nice to see a movie in this genre focus more on its characters and actors than the “shock value” of a typical
zombie movie.
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