This is George Romero's sixth DEAD movie and his third in four years, reflective of the sub-genres resurgent popularity in the wake of a remake of his own DAWN OF THE DEAD. The new movie uses a secondary character (squad leader Alan Van Sprang, seen in both LAND OF THE DEAD and DIARY OF THE DEAD) to act as a bridge to a new story but otherwise offers an opposing visual and narrative aesthetic to that of its immediate predecessor. Replacing DIARY’s verite depiction of an undead apocalypse, this is a conventionally shot scope zombie take on THE BIG COUNTRY.

   SURVIVAL takes place six days after the beginnings of the end seen in DIARY. Its set on a Delaware island where two prominent families, the O'Flynns and the Muldoons, are at perpetual loggerheads as to how to deal with the zombie epidemic. The former, represented by patriarch Kenneth Welsh, takes a zero-tolerance toward the zombies and believes they should be exterminated. The Muldoons, however, (led by Richard Fitzpatrick) believe they should keep the undead in shackles until they find a cure. To get revenge on Muldoon after being exiled from the island, O'Flynn posts a video on You Tube hoping more people (read : zombies) will show up on the island to pester Muldoon and his good intentions. The soldiers seen briefly in DIARY also show up.

   SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD, despite the genre cross-pollination, unfolds in a familiar Romero-esque world, where (as in, for example, DAWN), the zombies are as much a nuisance as anything and sometimes even become irrelevant to the main narrative. As in DIARY, they have become bait for sports and cheap kicks, becoming at times the stuff of slapstick. As in DAY OF THE DEAD, the zombies carry on the menial tasks they performed when alive (love the zombie mailman). Momentarily, the movie becomes fresh : the zombies find new sources of food (a horse is ripped apart in arguably the only truly gut-churning sequence) and some of the splashy gore effects offer neat new ways to off the living dead.

   It’s a bloodier movie than DIARY OF THE DEAD, with a satisfying amount of exploding heads, zombie noggins on sticks, ripped apart torsos and juicy zom-gore. Too bad that, continuing a trend originally started by LAND OF THE DEAD, Romero has felt a need to up the number of CG-enhanced gore gags : some of the digitally-assisted gore sticks out like a sore zombie thumb, notably a death by flare gun and a very cartoonish eye popping gag of the kind that worked in the context of, say, DRAG ME TO HELL, but here just looks awkward.

   The premise allows Romero to stage his first bonafide western, complete with feuding families in a remote Pennsylvanian community (like its immediate predecessors, pic was actually shot in Toronto) and some effective widescreen compositions. The pacing is too leisurely for its own good (though again in keeping with the western feel) and, in spite of the bouts of bloodshed, the actual horror content seems weirdly thin on the ground, leaving the movie in a bit of a halfway house. The performances are stronger than DIARY, with Welsh offering an engaging slice of ham.

   At its best, SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD is witty and amusing ; at worst it feels a little redundant and lacking in the tasty subtexts that made its predecessors so memorable. If taken as Romero kicking back and having a bit of fun with his 40 year old monsters, it’s a perfectly decent, if modest, offering. Certainly, the punch line is wonderful, as undead versions of Welsh and Fitzpatrick continue their feud beyond the grave, impotently firing empty guns at each other for, one assumes what will be an eternity.