One thing I like about George Romero's 'Living Dead' series (this is his sixth), is that he doesn't shy away from writing what you don't expect, and instigating new angles with which to approach fashioning his zombie world. One thing remains true, though: firearms – you can achieve a lot if you carry a gun. If not, you 'don't got no chance.' That's not to say things here are entirely successful. But they are original. Actual tension is lacking, due to the fact that – as established a few films back – zombies are just part and parcel of society. Dark humour partly makes up for that (the character Crockett lights his cigarette from a burning zombie before tipping him into the sea, etc).Two feuding Irish families eject poor old Patrick O'Flynn after he rejects their notion of keeping the living dead from permanent death in the hope of one day finding a cure. With a group of mercenaries, O'Flynn returns to the island to find zombies chained up in environments of an approximation of their past lives. Kenneth Welsh plays O'Flynn as a mischievous rogue who is difficult to dislike.O'Flynn vows revenge on Seamus Muldoon (Richard Fitzpatrick), and it is this distraction that provides the main thrust for the story, although other interesting things are going on with other characters too. The 'hero', Sergeant Crockett (Alan van Sprang) is a good shot, but slightly less interesting than the others. And yet none of the characters are written with a huge amount of depth – possibly the living dead themselves have more pathos as we see them going about the business of their former lives (a postman endlessly posting and removing a handful of letters, for example) whilst manacled.Instead, typically with Romero's later films, the main spectacle is a world ravaged by living dead, and still adapting to a new way of life. This is achieved very successfully, the endless realm of death and destruction made to feel depressingly normal.'Survival of the Dead' has received mixed reviews, mainly it seems, from Romero fans. I really enjoyed it. The zombie holocaust acting as a backdrop of sorts to other stories is a brave and original thing to do, flying in the face of those who perhaps wish to see more traditional guts and gore – two things 'Survival' also possesses, by the way. It seems when anything acquires a 'fandom', it leads to unnecessary negativity from those who are irritated if they don't see their own ideas and preferences worked into the mythos. Romero plans at least two more 'Living Dead' films – I really hope these happen.

And so these times of zombie movies everywhere you look, the grand master of the genre returns with his latest offering. Depending on what sort of (zombie) movies you like will determine which of George's original saga you like - if you like your horror 'pure' then Night of the Living Dead will be for you, if you like action - see Dawn of the Dead, a darker take on the zombie genre goes with Day of the Dead and finally a more modern 'Resident Evil' touch with Land of the Dead.Then George decided to 'reboot' the franchise set in modern times with Diary of the Dead. Whatever you think of it - it bombed. Neither fans of George or new cinema-goers liked it. So... where does he go from there? Does he learn from his mistake and go back to something more successful, i.e. perhaps a combination of Night/Dawn of the Dead?The answer, sadly, is no.Survival of the Dead is probably the most disappointing film of recent times. Not because it was bad. It's okay. Simply because it could have been so much better. It doesn't have much of a budget, but George is good at working round such limitations. After over thirty years spent making horror movies, this instalment comes across as if it was written by a horror-freshman.If you've ever gone onto the Internet Movie Database (IMDb.com) and looked up movies, sometimes people post in the forums sarcastic topics like '100 things I learned from xxx.' Then they go on to list all the plot holes and things that don't make sense. Unfortunately, Survival of the Dead is one long list of things that don't make sense. Its ultimate downfall is the characters. Not only are they pretty wafer-thin, but they do the most stupid and random things. To start one such list off I'd begin...1. When most of the world has been killed by zombies, the remaining humans think it's a really good idea to keep them alive 2. Stroking a hungry zombie, no matter how lovingly, will get you bitten 3. If you have six bullets in your gun and there are twenty zombies coming towards you, just use up all your ammunition - the undead will surely give up and not eat you 4. Finally, when the world is going to hell and the dead are coming back to life and attacking the living, it's far more important to kill the remaining humans while dragging up old grievancesYou probably get where I'm going with this.The whole film is just a mess. Characters go from being good to bad to who knows what in a matter of scenes. No one makes any sane decision throughout the whole ninety minutes, therefore leaving you not that bothered when they either turn to zombie chow or shoot each other because they suddenly feel like it.Is Survival of the Dead the last of George A Romero's films? He probably thought not. I daresay it is. Pity. It could have been so good.

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.

After finding shelter on a supposedly-abandoned island, a group of soldiers and an exile find it overrun by zombies helped along by a group of deranged farmers trying to tame the creatures and must stop them in order to survive.This isn't all that bad of a zombie film, especially a Romero one. What works best here is that this one decides to go back to the original series idea of introducing a decidedly-original tactic for the continuation of the zombie plague, as this brings about the idea of a community sympathizing with the zombies' previous condition as people and training them to not devour human flesh and attempt to eat something else. It's a new concept that works pretty well by offering a realistic continuation of the story where the people want to live on in peace like usual, and the fact that there's an attempt to do that here in the placing of the zombies back in their old professions or teaching their old habits in order to keep a semblance of modern way of life. The concept of keeping them around while trying to teach them is such a fantastic idea it's curious why this wasn't attempted more often here, though the fact that it makes the film follow along a more action-packed route here with this getting in some really great encounters in the squad running down their equipment from the hicks in the woods, an incredibly fun encounter at the docks with the zombies derailing the attempt at crossing the water along into the boat and their ensuing dispatching of the zombies left on the ship. The island scenes aren't much better with the majority of this reduced to single gunshots due to the story requirements, but the finale make up for that greatly with a fantastic series of gunfights along with the zombies swarming the fallen in a stand-out series of gory kills the way the others the series have done and is certainly enough to stay interesting. Likewise, the zombies aren't that bad-looking either as these elements all features enough to hold this one up over the flaws. The biggest factor against here is that despite the religion-based logic it uses to attempt its main storyline being quite original, this is the film's single-biggest flaw as listening to those faulty and pig-headed speeches just make the characters sound more brain-dead than the zombies and get old after a while. There's numerous moments throughout the course of these speeches that picking apart the logic and reasoning would be rather easy as it really lacks the kind of definitive logic to hold these up. Likewise, the lack of originality or execution with its kills one way or another since there's just the usual head-shots and flesh-ripping found here. Overall, it's mostly enough to forget the religion introduction that really hurts this one.Rated R: Extreme Graphic Violence, Extreme Graphic Language and violence-against-animals.