Survival of the Dead

Survival of the Dead is the fifth zombie film that George A. Romero has made. It begins badly, as we see a group of AWOL marines who are forced to kill one of their own on the sixth day of the zombipocalypse. The gore that we get here makes us believe that this is just going to be an overly gory horror flick. And yet, Survival of the Dead never works as a zombie movie, comedy, action film, drama, or any other genre that a zombie film could fall into. It's quite strange how it actually becomes like a western in it's tone. And that's damn entertaining for a good twenty minutes as we get tough-as-nails sons of bitches on an island where there's a huge debate going on. The debate these men are having is: 'should we kill the deadheads (zombies)? For, if we could get them to eat something other than humans, we could coexist with them until a cure could be found.' This is an interesting and novel idea for the zombie genre, and it almost makes the film work. However, like most zombie films, it undermines itself in the obligatory last scene where one or two people survive and the rest are dead. And after trying to be so serious for so long, we get some pretty nauseating scenes of ribcages being gnawed at in close up. It's a disappointment.
Survival of the Dead: ✰✰1/2