2010 FAIL: "SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD"

I usually do my top 10/bottom 10 in film at the end of the year. As I looked through the movies I saw this year, I noticed I did a pretty good job of avoiding the garbage. Obviously there were endless amounts of bad romantic comedies and generic action movies out there, but I somehow avoided the majority of them. This left me with a little problem. I saw a lot of movies I liked and I lot I thought were OK. Not much swayed me into hate territory, at the same time a lot didn't blow me away. I don't even have enough for a bottom 10 that could be justified as the worst of the year so I'm just going to review the movies that I thought had potential and were a letdown for me. This specific film was the biggest blow, not because it's a terrible movie, but because of the history behind the series.

I'm not even going to go into "Night/Dawn/Day", etc. Everyone knows those are amazing movies and not just standards in zombie film, but horror. Romero in his later years has produced 3 other "Living Dead" films. "Land of the Dead", while far less superior than the original 3, is not as bad as critics and fans have made it out to be. Especially after viewing the next 2 films. "Diary of the Dead" was a huge disappointment. The docu-drama style that horror has adopted in these days can work effectively at times, but "Diary" just wasn't that good. In the end, at least I wasn't bored though. In comes "Survival of the Dead". I thought Romero might be able to redeem himself here. I was hugely mistaken. Not only is this film an embarrassment to the series, it is an embarrassment to Romero's horror legacy. Why this film was even made, and why he thought it was a product worth putting out, I'll never know. I never thought "Diary" wouldn't be the worst film in the franchise, but "Survival" proves my theory wrong and makes "Diary" look like "Terminator 3" in that franchise.

"Survival" is low budget. It has no famous actors. It has cheesy special effects. I am OK with all of this. The problem lies in what Romero tried to do with this film. Not only does the bad comedic acting take away from the film, the social commentary is gone, and the zombies aren't even threatening. We have a black comedy that isn't funny and doesn't show any of the hopelessness of the films before it. This is no "Shaun of the Dead". Zombies have made a comeback in recent years, almost to the point of annoyance. Zombies are in. Movies like "Zombieland" have added a comedic look to zombies for the masses. The Walking Dead has provided a dramatic look at human nature and surviving the zombie apocalypse. Even literature and art have jumped aboard the zombie bandwagon. It's a shame that the creator of the genre has put together something so sub par. Romero may have some film making left in him, but hopefully he stays away from the zombies.

*1 Lance Approval*