empatmk Started with Land of The Dead, and now with this film, Survival of The Dead, George A. Romero tried to make zombies humanized. Perhaps, it began from Day of The Dead with Bub the Zombie character. But in my opinion, it is better to make a zombie film as it used to be. The flesh eater creatures that cannot think anymore only follow the instinct to chew the human meat and infected the victims. Overall, Survival of the Dead still a good zombie movie, though. Typical Romero's gore and the story also simple but not tacky at all.

DamianThorn With Diary being in my mind the worst entry into the Living Dead series, this film outshines that one by leaps and bounds. Survival plays off the same concept as the original Day of the a Dead from 1985. By that I mean, the utterly insane argument over whether or not the dead come back to life could somehow be trained or taught to be useful to the living rather than trying to kill us or us trying to kill them.For anyone whose a fan of this series, they will recall the repeated sentiment from each film that "we must stop the killing, every living person we kill gets up and kills". The idea behind that is that the living must unite to eradicate the dead or in the end there won't be anyone left alive to argue about how to survive. However another sentiment is expressed in the series. That is the idea presented by a scientist to domesticate the dead and teach them to eat something other than human flesh. Of course, there's no common sense in it but there's little doubt that even in the real world someone somewhere would try. Humans have an inability to let go of the past and where Day of the Dead looked at that from a scientific aspect, Survival of the Dead looks at it from an emotional one. Not to mention the seemingly endless human need to feud and fight and argue over whose wrong and whose right.All moralizing aside, in a zombie outbreak I'd personally shoot first and ponder the moral conundrums later. I would rather survive than risk being eaten by zombies...but then that's just me. As for the movie itself, technically it's very well done. There's a solid story beneath what might seem like a silly plot. The acting is quite good, the writing and directing is solid and the special effects are overall very well done. Romero tried very hard to distance himself from the politics of Land of the Dead (2005) and even harder to distance himself from the mess that was Diary of the Dead. He did that and in the end achieved a very well put together and enjoyable zombie movie.Tom Savini returned to help out as much as possible with the special effects after his absence from Diary of the Dead so there's a minimum of CGI here. In fact the last half of the film has some fantastic traditional Savini gore and his hand can really be seen in the final zombie attacks.If you can look past what might seem a silly opening and remember the concepts from Day of the Dead 1985, you will really enjoy this movie in the end. If you can't, or you've never seen the earlier Romero films you may not get this movie at all. However as I said, it is well shot and well put together so either way why not give it a try? You just might find a lot more here than you expect.

mic90 Survival of the Dead is one of the weakest zombie films. On nowadays there are few good films in this genre. Where's the story is good with typical horror elements. Well back in this film. It seems that George A. Romero has lost his touch. Or even "master of horror" can't fight against Hollywood trends and "rules." In good old days zombie were zombie films but on nowadays directors make movies for "everybody" style. The movie started exactly same way like many others. Some unknown virus starts change humans to zombies and apocalypse things are ready. Of course there are some humor and guns singing like in action films.The story try to be smart and the crew desperately tried made some plot in this movie. Unfortunately the script is very poor and the characters are too uninteresting that none care that who will die or who will survive. Zombies make-up was disappointment and overall special effects were also disappointment. Not good zombie film at all.

Foxbarking 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.