Genre Horror

Survival of the Dead (2009)

Item: Survival of the Dead
Rating: 1.5
Author: Ross McLaren

★½ — Survival of the Dead (2009)

George A. Romero is, by any reasonable measure, the architect of the modern zombie film. From Night of the Living Dead in 1968 onwards, he spent four decades using the walking dead as a lens through which to examine society, consumerism, military hubris and plain human stubbornness. Survival of the Dead, released in 2009 and co-produced between Canada and the United States, is the sixth and final entry in his ...of the Dead series, arriving a full six years after Land of the Dead reignited interest in the franchise. The premise plants its characters on a small island off the North American coast, where two Irish-American families are locked in a generational dispute that has acquired a grimly practical dimension: what, exactly, do you do with the dead when the dead keep getting up? One side favours the practical approach. The other holds out hope that their undead relatives can somehow be preserved until a cure is found. It is a setup that carries the bones of classic Romero, rooting the horror in recognisably human conflict rather than pure gore. Whether those bones are fleshed out is another matter entirely, and one best left to the review below.

Romero wrote and directed the film himself, as he had every entry in the series. By this point he was in his late sixties, and Survival of the Dead was produced through a cluster of smaller outfits rather than any major studio backing, shot largely in Ontario. Anyone who has read the site's piece on Creepshow, another Romero-directed feature, will have a sense of his fondness for genre work laced with dark humour and moral point-scoring. His earlier output, covered here in the review of The Crazies, another of his films, showed a director willing to be genuinely unpleasant in service of a larger idea. Survival connects to that same tradition in ambition, even if the execution is a rather different story. The principal cast is led by Alan van Sprang, returning from Diary of the Dead as the mercenary Sarge "Nicotine" Crockett, alongside Kenneth Welsh and Kathleen Munroe as the patriarchs and key players of the island's warring clans. Devon Bostick and Athena Karkanis round out a cast that, on paper at least, offers some variety in age and register. The film runs a trim ninety minutes, which given the ambitions on display is perhaps a mercy.

The tagline, "Death isn't what it used to be," is polished but unremarkable, the kind of line that promises wry commentary and carries just enough Romero DNA to raise expectations. Whether the film lives up to even that modest promise is something the review tackles head-on.

Ah, Survival of the Dead. It’s a real shame this is how George A. Romero’s zombie legacy ended. Because make no mistake: this isn’t just a bad zombie film, it’s a mess, full stop. Forget the social satire of Night, the corporate horror of Dawn, or even the bleak nihilism of Day. This one feels like someone scribbled “zombies + family feud” on a napkin and called it a script. We’re on an island. There are two feuding families. One thinks zombies should be shot. The other thinks they should be fed pasta and treated like relatives. Yes, really. And from there? It spirals into incoherence like a zombie with vertigo. The acting is stiff enough to use as scaffolding. The dialogue is worse than most TikTok skits. The cinematography looks like it was shot through a VHS filter that forgot to charge its battery. Romero clearly still had things to say, there’s a flicker of his old fire in some scenes, especially when poking at denial and tribalism. But here, those ideas are buried under endless arguments about ethics, awkwardly staged shootouts, and a bizarre subplot around a zombie riding a horse instead of eating it? It’s sad because Romero deserved better. He invented the modern zombie genre. He used rot and ruin to reflect society’s worst instincts. But Survival of the Dead doesn’t feel like a final statement, it feels like an afterthought. A film that never should’ve made it out of the editing room.

And honestly, that disappointment sits with me more than a straightforwardly bad film would. I can enjoy a schlocky horror picture for what it is, and if you want an example of a Canadian genre film from around the same era that at least commits to its own lunacy, the site's write-up of Resident Evil: Retribution, another Canadian production, makes for an interesting comparison. But Survival of the Dead asks to be taken seriously as a Romero film, as a closer to a legacy, and that is where it falls hardest. For me, the saddest part is that the idea is genuinely there, buried under the noise. Feuding families refusing to accept reality, clinging to dead things out of love or stubbornness, is classic Romero territory. It just never finds its feet. If you want to see what that territory looks like when it works, the The Crazies review is worth a revisit. Sometimes a filmmaker's greatest tribute is the work that came before. This one is best remembered as a footnote.

Rating: ★½ | Year: 2009 | Watched: 2025-07-10

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Trailer

▶ Watch the official trailer for Survival of the Dead (2009) on YouTube

Where to watch

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Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi

Watch in the US
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Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US

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