A few National Guard soldiers charged with keeping what’s left of humanity safe from the zombie horde desert their unit, hook up with a teenaged loner, and head for a small island off the coast of Delaware. There they get caught in an ongoing feud between two Irish families with wildly different ideas on how best to control the undead.

CRITIQUE

Here’s the good news: Survival of the Dead isn’t quite as awful as George Romero’s previous movie, the monumentally boring Diary of the Dead.

Here’s the bad news: Survival of the Dead--which is a direct sequel to Diary, although it only features one returning character--is further proof Romero needs to leave the damn zombies behind and move on (if not simply retire altogether).

Long credited with revolutionizing the genre, Romero is now simply doing the same bloody thing the lesser of his imitators have been doing for the past four decades, and his movies don’t hold a candle to the truly unique zombie flicks (a couple of which Romero filches from here) that come along every so often (which isn’t often enough). I’ve never thought much of Romero as a filmmaker (although I sort of dig Knightriders and have a soft spot for Creepshow, which was the first R-rated flick I saw in a theater) but even I can see he’s just a pale shadow of his former self. I doubt even the most hardcore Romero fans will find much--if anything--to enjoy here.

It should be obvious from the above plot summary that Romero (who raised the money for this movie pretty much on his own) has run out of ideas. Two prideful Irish families feuding on an island off the coast of Delaware? What is this, a zombie movie by the way of a John Jakes novel? Or perhaps it’s Romero’s half-baked way of cashing in on the unexpected popularity of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, his means of taking the undead and shoehorning them into a plot that’s older than most of the trees in Redwood Grove. Whatever the case, it’s lazy and uninspired. (For the record, Romero says he was inspired by the plot of William Wyler’s The Big Country, but apparently not in the same way John Carpenter was inspired by Rio Bravo or George Lucas by The Hidden Fortress.)

Not that the plot matters, mind you. After years of lacing his movies with social satire (or at least that’s what I’m told), Romero has finally tossed that and is simply making movies for the sake of loading them with as many different ways of killing zombies as he possibly can (sequences brought to life via a mix of okay practical effects and often laughable CGI). The most lovingly framed shots involve zombies being set afire with flare guns, having their heads flooded with fire extinguisher expellant, and blown apart by every sort of firearm imaginable.

But it’s all ho-frickin’-hum, like something slapped together by a hack/wannabe who caught a late-night airing of Dawn of the Dead and suddenly decidedly he wanted to make zombie movies, too. And let’s face it--once you’ve seen a zombie smacked in the face with a Sade record or a copy of the Batman soundtrack, seeing one get shot isn’t all that special. (To be fair, I suppose you could dig and find some social satire in the movie, but why bother? And I also suppose you could argue that what’s intended to be social satire is so unbelievably stupid it’s best to just ignore it.)

Diary was overstuffed with laughable characterizations, bad dialogue, absurd situations, and lackluster performances; so is Survival. The Irish characters are so stereotypical you almost expect one to be named Paddy O’Furniture. The lone female soldier is a bull-dyke, constantly complaining about the lack of another female to perform cunnilingus on her. (In her introductory scene, this character is shown masturbating. As to why, your guess is as good as mine.)

In a moment that had me shaking my head in bewilderment, this woman shoots a zombie vainly attempting to start a car (the logic being the person was turned while driving the car and is constantly stuck in a loop of repeating its final action) and then quips, “I don’t think she’ll be passing her driving test.” Wow. Not even the Ah-nuld who signed up for Red Heat or Raw Deal would be caught dead uttering such a lame one-liner. And while the acting isn’t quite as dire as that of Diary (I feel nauseous just thinking about it), it’s true that sometimes you get what you pay for, and Romero paid for a bunch of Canadian nonprofessionals.

THE VIDEO

The 2.35:1/1080p transfer--encoded with AVC onto a 50GB disc--offers a very nice approximation of what is undoubtedly the visually slickest of Romero’s output (strictly in terms of the “look,” that is; Romero’s compositions are just as flat as ever). The movie was photographed using Red One digital cameras, and the dark visuals are represented very nicely, with very good color reproduction (lots of browns, blacks, and grays) and an image that’s nicely detailed. There is some heavy digital noise in some shots, not only the darker ones--which is to be expected--but also some brightly lit ones.

THE AUDIO

Likely falling victim to the movie’s tiny budget, the DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio track isn’t very active or expansive. Most of the action is channeled to the front, with only the occasional discrete effect or ambient sound tossed to the rear. Dialogue sounds fine, but effects are a little hollow and flat, due in no small part to the fact that the low end doesn’t add much weight to them; in fact, the only thing the low end does beef up is the score, and when it pushes it has a tendency to get a little murky. No other audio options are included; English SDH and Spanish subtitles are available.

THE EXTRAS

With one exception (which has been noted), the extras here are presented in high-def.

You have the option of watching the movie with an intro by George Romero (2 minutes), which is essentially a string of obvious jokes.

A commentary by George Romero and members of the crew isn’t bad, but those who actually enjoy the movie will undoubtedly enjoy it far more than I did.

Walking After Midnight (75 minutes) is an in-depth documentary covering the movie’s physical production.

Sarge (4 minutes) is a brief coda to the movie.

A Minute of Your Time (20 minutes total) is a collection of a baker’s dozen very short behind-the-scenes featurettes.

Time with George (8 minutes) is an interview with Romero.

A storyboard comparison (2 minutes) contrasts the original ‘boards with the final sequence for a sequence in which one of the soldiers plays “shoot the can” with a few zombie heads.

How to Create Your Own Zombie Bite (10 minutes) chronicles how a DIY filmmaker created some zombie-chomp prosthetics for less than twenty bucks.

There’s also another interview with Romero (22 minutes, standard definition), this one conducted for Fangoria magazine’s website.

HDNet: A Look at Survival of the Dead (5 minutes) is another of the cable channel’s ubiquitous promo pieces.

The disc also allows access to BD-Live content. At the moment, the only movie-specific material is another commentary from Romero.

(By the way, the disc also contains an upfront ad for AMC’s upcoming series based on Robert Kirkman’s Walking Dead comic, which has the potential to be everything this movie isn’t.)

FINAL THOUGHTS