the audience applauded

Sadly Over-hyped

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

It's possible resetting his whole game by picking up and moving to Canadian -- with one exception, all the actors are Canadian, as the funding came from there -- cause Romero to do a "reboot" with different, or more *precise*, sort of narrative lines than (I've seen him) use before.Why include a clan-squabbling story line? Because it's an effective backstory, a human life-detail that other characters could run into whether they like it or not, is why. It's like why have a lesbian soldier or a commanding officer who's smoking habit, for once and oddly at that, seems to be a defining characteristic rather than a simple way to kill screen time.I don't know why this movie's so effective, but ... I do. Really, I do, in fact. What happens is this: every scene -- and I mean pretty much *every* scene -- is an "update" on what's been brewing with these characters; what's been going on since you've seen them last, what's new about their "character" or personality that hadn't been revealed before, etc. All this while the world's fallen and there's (almost) nothing left but zombies.Cute touches: the attachment to internet devices and pride therein, to be defended against nay-saying disparagers; kids who forget something vital but are too late and well on their way to go back for it and feel like an idiot to no real purpose; the fact that the mostly-male survivor contingent is (wait for it) gun-carriers.This last might *seem* obvious, but then it doesn't dawn on one until well after the movies over. Yes, the hunters they run into (so casually racist there's no need to belabor it in the dialogue of the characters -- "We FELT LIKE IT, that's why!") are one-note hillbillies, but then again, being a good marksman is but a single virtue. Huh. Lacking that, you'd have no chance. Would you want to leave humanity *only* in the hands of gun-carriers? It's an interesting question the film asks: already, it's too late, it's over. ("Six days after ... " the intertitle announces, which is either/or a cute joke for fans or the series -- or, "no really" -- Romero's specifically and carefully marking time as his narrative unfolds. After all this time, since 1968.)Good show! Watch the trailer, and decide for yourself. If you think you won't be disappointed, trust me, you won't be: it's only if you can't even get through those 2 minutes 'cause this ain't your cup of tea (not to be taken as contemptuous, snark-attable "grindhouse" inept crap, but a movie to be watched with characters you can care about), there's your answer!

With this entry in the living dead series, George Romero has absolutely hit the bottom. The best thing I can say about this movie is that it made me realize "Day of the Dead" wasn't so bad. The first evident problem of "Survival of the Dead" is that it comes across as being really cheap, from the low rent cinematography to the laziness of using CGI for gore effects. I could almost swear I was watching a TV show, not a feature film. The next evident problem is with the screenplay. There was promise with the idea of two armed groups at odds with how to handle the zombie problem. But not much is done with it, and the movie is mostly people talking with occasional shooting of zombies in the head. The direction is also pretty clumsy, such as the fact that while civilization has fallen apart, there is still electricity and TV broadcasts. If Romero decides to continue this series from this low point, I would strongly suggest he looks for some fresh talent to join him and construct a strong script. It would probably result in investors giving him more money to work with.

All I have heard about from everyone is how bad "Survival of the Dead" was and because of this I put off watching it for a very long time. Personally, when Romero came back to making zombie films, I did not expect him to go any further than "Land of the Dead." My thought has always been that one man cannot just continue making zombie films because it's not a genre that is easy to keep fresh. However, it appears to me that stale zombie horror is exactly what people want and is exactly why "Survival of the Dead" was so unfairly maligned.It is very odd to me to hear someone criticize the plot of a zombie movie, because generally every zombie movie has the same plot. The dead are coming back to life for some unknown reasons, no one ever refers to them as zombies, they attack and eat people in as gore filled scenes as possible and a few people survive. You name your characters a few different names, find a setting that hasn't been used before and add in criticism of the government and voilà... you have a zombie movie."Survival of the Dead" does not have a plot that is any more bizarre than any other zombie film every made. Everyone criticizes it for being shallow and silly. I guess it would seem silly to have an island where half the people want to keep zombies alive and the other half want to kill them. But no one is looking at this movie the way it needs to be viewed.Contrary to what people claim, "Survival of the Dead" is not lacking in social commentary. In fact, it has more social commentary than either "Land of the Dead" or "Diary of the Dead." This movie is not about people who want to kill zombies or people who want to rehabilitate them. This movie is about the inane reasons that governments in this country go to war. We fight over the most idiotic things in this world and not because we believe in them. We do it because we want to fight.An ex boyfriend of mine who is very against religion likes to assume that religion is the cause of conflict in this world. It's not. If religion did not exist, conflict wouldn't go away. Conflict exists in this world simply because we hold onto it and we thrive off conflict. If religion wasn't there, it would be land, or money. In Star Trek it would be the people with the white side of their body on the left side. O'Flynn and Muldoon are not feuding over zombies. They are feuding because that is what they feel the need to do. Muldoon claims all he wants is for O'Flynn to say he is right, but that's not what he wants. In fact, it is the last thing he wants because it robs him of a reason to fight. And these two morons continue to fight even after they're dead because it's not about the issue, it's only about the fight.So anyone who tells you that "Survival of the Dead" is a bad film with no depth needs to actually watch this movie. It makes a point that rings true, especially after a decade of pointless war mongering. This film has the truest message of any of Romero's films and it saddens me that people do not have the depth or understanding of humanities own vulnerabilities to see this.

Dawn of the Dead (1979) is on my top 3 movies of all times. I also love Day of the dead. Both of those movies has zombie-logic. You would pretty much do the same thing if you were in that situation. I would definitely land my chopper on the roof of a super mall and clean it out from zombies and live there. If I was one of few surviving military guys I would definitely stick around in the bunker until we felt safe to resurface the world.But Survival of the Dead biggest problem is the lack of reasonable logic which makes the movie crumble because you just can't put that aside for the gore effects, they're not that cool.Let me just give you one example of the logic in this film.Alright so the man got banned from the island, he then go about making a YouTube promo for anyone to come live on his island. Someone finds it and they head straight over to any harbor mere minutes away from their current location. Stoke of luck because there the banned man stands waiting for them but he wont take them to the island he promised, he wants to rob them of all the money they have (you need lots of money when 99% of humanity is gone) so the banned man and his band of bandits start shooting at the people, I think they also kill one guy. So the people shoots back and after a while the banned man is the only survivor of the band of robbers so he jumps on the boat the other people got over. Not mention a word about the recent shoot out but they are all super friends now. So off to the island they go, just outside Delaware where everyone speaks Irish for some reason.What?Of course you should set logic aside watching movies but there's a limit to how much your brain can take before it gets very confusing and you can't enjoy the story because the illogical stuff gets in the way.