Movie Review: Survival of the Dead (2009)

The movie stars Alan van Sprang, Kenneth Welsh, Kathleen Munroe, Richard Fitzpatrick, Athena Karkanis and Eric Woolfe.

After recently watching and being seriously disappointed by the movie “Deadgirl,” I was a little hesitant to watch another zombie film. However, I had never seen this George Romero-directed film before and it sounded somewhat interesting so I ended up picking it out to watch with my wife. As it turns out, the movie wasn’t anywhere near as good as I expected it to be.

To be fair, the first half of this film actually isn’t all that bad. The various ex-National Guardsmen are pretty interesting characters and are fun to watch during the numerous fights. And, the addition of Devin Bostick as “Boy,” to their group added a little bit of comedic conflict. In fact, had this movie simply been about them driving to the ocean in their armored truck, I think it would have been very watchable.

Unfortunately, once they do end up on the island, things kind of go downhill. The feud between O’Flynn (Welsh) and Muldoon (Fitzpatrick) seems a bit forced at times, confusing at others and really didn’t do much to add to the movie. In fact, in many ways, it weakened the film because it became about human conflict and personal beefs rather than surviving a zombie apocalypse.

Another thing that really ended up bugging me when watching this movie was the way everyone went out of their way to shoot guns. Not only were they wasting ammunition (which I would assume isn’t exactly unlimited), they seem to have no issue firing their weapons when they are trying to be quiet. This especially includes O’Flynn, who, at one point, gave a speech about being able to move much more quietly if he went by himself, only to randomly shoot zombies that posed no threat to him. I would think that would draw much more attention to you than walking with a few other people.

As I said, the first half of this movie isn’t too terrible. Unfortunately, the part with the island is just too complicated and forced to be entertaining. I was very disappointed by this movie as a result and would not recommend it.

My Grade: D