Survival of the Dead (2009)
★½ — Survival of the Dead (2009)
George A. Romero had been reviving his own "Dead" franchise since 2005's Land of the Dead, and Survival of the Dead was the sixth instalment in that cycle, arriving four years later as a modest Canadian co-production shot largely in Ontario. It sits in an odd place in his filmography, following Diary of the Dead (2007), which itself had been a back-to-basics found-footage reset made for around three million dollars. Survival carried a similarly low budget of four million, though it recouped barely a fraction of that theatrically, taking under four hundred thousand dollars at the box office. Romero, by this point in his late sixties, was working with a stripped-back crew and relative unknowns, with Alan van Sprang reprising a minor character from Diary as his lead.
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.
Rating: ★½ | Year: 2009 | Watched: 2025-07-10
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from George A. Romero: Creepshow (1982) · Jacaranda Joe (2022) · BIOHAZARD 2 TV-CM (1997) · The Crazies (1973)
More from Canada: History of the World in Three Minutes Flat (1980) · Resident Evil: Retribution (2012) · Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016) · Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)
More from the 2000s: Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) · Daredevil (2003) · Apocalypto (2006)
More horror: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Viy (1967) · Nightmare City (1980) · Angst (1983)
More comedy: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · Americana (2023) · The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)
