‘Dead’ on Arrival

When you’re dealing with a movie that has a title like “Survival of the Dead,” you can tell from the start that you’re in for either a paradoxical nightmare or a silly play on words. It’s probably a little closer to the second one, but even though this movie has plenty of jokes that are more rewarding than that, there are so many of them that the laughs start to get old after a while.

Sure, director George A. Romero is known for occasional notes of sarcasm in his “Living Dead” series, but this new film’s got a symphony of them. Since this is the same series that spawned “Night of the Living Dead” and “Dawn of the Dead,” (not to mention a handful of remakes and a myriad of imitators) “Survival of the Dead” is a strange anomaly–although this is scarcely the best of the bunch, it’s certainly the most bizarre.

You’d think an island would be the best place to hide from zombies who can’t swim too well, but zombies aren’t the only thing the people of Plum Island have on their minds. Its two most powerful clans, the Muldoons and the O’Flynns, are at odds over whose approach to the plague works best – while Shamus Muldoon (Richard Fitzpatrick) tries to convince everyone that their undead family members and friends can be reprogrammed to feast on something other than the flesh of the living, Patrick O’Flynn (Kenneth Walsh) insists on a slash-and-burn approach, showing up unannounced at random houses to kill off any zombies inside.

The thought of seeing their loved ones well again leads the island’s people to go with Shamus, who forces Patrick into exile. Patrick eventually crosses paths with a few soldiers headed by Sarge “Nicotine” Crocket (Alan Van Sprang), who agrees to help him get revenge on Shamus. Given the increase of the zombie population on Plum Island since Patrick left, you have to wonder if getting even with Shamus is worth the risk of being eaten alive.

Romero has always been praised for creating sympathetic characters, but here, he spends so much time admiring them that the tension can’t build like it should. Giving them romantic subplots and Irish and Latino accents is one thing, but Romero insists on taking them to extremes – after one wholly unnecessary scene where a soldier is shown masturbating, there’s a sense that being this intimate with these characters isn’t worth it.

Even if this film had more focus in the right places, “Survival of the Dead” would still be the low point of the “Living Dead” series merely because it lacks the same ambition that the earlier movies had. The only other entry that didn’t work all that well was “Land of the Dead,” but even a movie as mediocre as that one had enough faith in itself to at least aim high. Romero still has major skills as a filmmaker (his “Diary of the Dead” was a great film that only came out a few years ago), but “Survival of the Dead” is no place to squander them.

This article originally appeared on AllMediaNY.com