SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD

Rating: 4

With SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD, George Romero has finally answered the prayers that his fans didn’t know they were praying. The zombie-meister has produced a zombie western, and done so without missing a beat in picking up a thread from his last flick, DIARY OF THE DEAD. As with that most excellent flick, it’s not the zombies who are evil. They are shambling undead creatures of instinct, reacting to the stimulus of their favorite food, that would be we humans, in the only way nature has left to them. By attempting to chow down. As in this and all his previous zombie flicks, Romero has not made them top predators. They are easy to outrun, easy to kill, what with the immense hunger outstripping any other instincts, including the one for self-preservation. No, all they really have going for them is numbers, the bitten rise as one of them, and a dogged determination. Even their ghastly appearance loses its punch after a while, both for the audience and the protagonists fighting for their lives, that would be lives in an undead state.

The villains of the piece, as well as the heroes, are the humans who, when faced with impossible decisions, have some choice in the matter of what the nature of those decisions will be. Romero, while delivering a first-rate entertainment, never lets that theme slip to secondary status. That’s his genius.

This installment follows Sarge (Alan Van Sprang), the leader of AWOL military element from the last film. In a world where the prospect of an ugly death, and an even uglier un-death, is always imminent, Sarge has taken his squad and gone forth to avail themselves of easy pickings among the living while staving off the zombies. As the film begins, he runs across an armored car with a million and more dollars in it, a kid with killer technology, and a hunting party given to torturing the zombies. He takes charge of all three situations, showing a glint of the humanity that the turbulent times have not quite taken out of him. Hope for a haven from all the bloodshed leads him to Plum Island, a place where horses are the standard method o transport, electricity is being rationed in favor of kerosene lamps and candles, and a frontier-style feud that has simmered for years has been brought to a boil between two fractious immigrant Irish factions that have taken decidedly different stands on how to deal with their own zombie problem. There’s the Muldoon clan, that thinks there might be a cure one day and wants to preserve the zombies while awaiting that development, despite the risk, and there’s the O’Flynn faction, that believes in living in the moment, which means taking the head shot and will stop the zombie once and or all, thereby solving the problem in both the short- and long-term.

Philosophical discussions are brief, to the point, and rife with real-world applications as the zombies just keep on coming. Romero sticks to the traditional zombie shuffle, with herds of them approaching in slow but determined motion. In keeping with the puckish touch for which he is justly renowned, our motley band find a few new and ingenious ways to dispose of them when ammo runs low, including discovering a new way to light a cigar that is both visually lovely, viscerally disturbing, and thematically piquant.

The action moves crisply, the characters, while fulfilling their stock character status, are still interesting, from the lesbian commando carrying on a wicked flirtation with her fellow commando longing for a shot at expanding her horizons, to the tough-as-nails Sarge, who can rattle off a semi-automatic and an ironic retort with equal aplomb, to the Irish head men, Muldoon (Richard Fitzpatrick) sporting a spaghetti-western duster and black hat, O’Flynn (Kenneth Welsh) dressed as though he just left the Old Sod, each chewing scenery and Blarney with no apologies. Of course there is the spirited daughter, who spits fire, hangs tough, and despite clashing tempers, in the end, can’t bring herself to abandon her own blood.

Sly, yet solid, writing, which anticipates the audience being clever enough to expect a few twists, delivers them and then manages to inject a surprise or two, particularly with the evolution of the ethics dilemma at hand. SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD works on every level for which it aims and without shortchanging any of them. It’s fun, it’s smart, and fodder for hours of not necessarily comfortable discussion afterwards.