George A. Romero's Survival of the Dead

Lifeless, by any measure
By Michael O'Sullivan
Friday, May 28, 2010

It has been six days since the dead began to walk, and a powerful emotion is gripping the land.

Boredom.

As the sun rises on the heroes of "Survival of the Dead" -- the sixth installment in the zombie franchise begun by filmmaker George A. Romero in 1968 -- it is not terror but tedium that is felt by Sarge (Alan Van Sprang) and his military cleanup crew. By now, everybody knows that a bullet to the head is the only way to stop a zombie. So Sarge and his squad of three crack marksmen (Athena Karkanis, Eric Woolfe and Stefano Di Matteo) spend their time dispatching those who have been inadequately killed with a series of carefully aimed shots. Splat, splat, splat.

It's about as exciting as watching a shooting gallery.

Every once in a while, someone comes up with a creative alternative: a hot dog skewer through the eye, a fire extinguisher in the mouth. That last one, which sends eyeballs and other bits of cranial matter flying like a burst party balloon, is a triumph of special effects.

But it's getting old, so Sarge and company decide to retire to an island that they've heard about on the Internet, whose patriarchal ruler, Patrick O'Flynn, a.k.a. Captain Courageous (Kenneth Welsh), has a zero-tolerance policy toward undead immigrants.

The problem is that not everyone on the island agrees with the good captain. A rival clan, led by Seamus Muldoon (Richard Fitzpatrick), still holds out hope for a solution that doesn't involve violence. The Muldoons keep their zombies penned up -- like livestock, only dead -- in an effort to teach them to eat something other than people, until a cure can be found.

It's kind of sweet, really. Naive, but sweet. It's also not why people go to zombie movies.

We go for the cannibalism and the carnage. Also the occasional comedy, as when a fisherman reels in an underwater zombie from his perch on a dock, and then shoots him in the face. Good stuff.

But 42 years after "Night of the Living Dead," Romero seems as bored with zombies as Sarge is. It's hard to know which is more monotonous: killing zombies or keeping them alive. Maybe the entire "Dead" series is overdue for a bullet to the brain.

Contains obscenity, smoking, brief sensuality and lots of blood and gore.