Survival of the Dead

Fans of director George Romero don’t need much of an excuse to go see whatever the man makes; if it has “Dead” in the title, so much the better. They know that they will get plenty of action, plenty of gore and plenty of laughs. His latest film, Survival of the Dead, continues the zombie resurgence Romero kicked off with his 2005 film, Land of the Dead. This time, the action takes place on a remote island off the coast of Maryland where two warring families are battling each other over the best thing to do with all the undead people stumbling around the place. The head of the O’Flynn family (Kenneth Walsh) wants to kill them all. The head of the Muldoon family (Richard Fitzpatrick) thinks the living dead can be trained to perform simple tasks, like zombie servants, and eventually made to lose their hunger for living human flesh and learn to survive on horses and other farm animals. When a team of professional zombie killers (a rogue band of army deserters last seen in Diary of the Dead) gets stranded on the island, the battle over who has the best plan heats up and it isn’t too long before the living are up to their ankles in zombie bodies.