THE DEAD TIMES
DEAD ARE COMING...
Why I love Survival of the Dead
One of the cornerstones of the Zombie culture is the legendary Of the Dead series of six films - all directed and written by, godfather of the dead, George A. Romero (excluding Night of the Living Dead which he co-wrote, alongside John Russo). The last film in the series, Survival of the Dead, often gets a lot of flak and I think that is wrong. Even Romero himself made worrying noises about its worth in interviews after the film's release in 2009. I love this movie - really love it - and, quite honestly, believe it is an example of his best work. Hopefully at the end of this article, you'll think this too, or at the very least, will give this much-maligned Zombie film another shot.
A summary of the movie
First off, if for some reason you have never seen this movie, stop reading now as there are going to be spoilers. Still here? Great, let's start with a summary.
Survival of the Dead is a direct follow-on to Diary of the Dead; the band of National Guard turned mercenary we see hijack supplies from the travelling students in Diary are the central protagonists this time around. Basically, they are, quite naturally, sick to death of the walking dead and want to get away from the hordes of reanimated cadavers before the inevitable happens. While on their journey to 'anywhere but here', the band of miscreants come across an armoured car loaded with money - the money is useless of course but the armoured car is mobile protection too good to pass up. Then they hear about Plum.
Plum is a small island off the coast of Delaware, as is reported by the dodgy-yet-likeable island-inhabitant, Patrick O'Flynn. However, Patrick has been ostracised from the island by his arch-enemy Seamus Muldoon, another island inhabitant. You see, there are only, and only ever has been, two families on the island; the O'Flynns and the Muldoons, neither party liking the other, creating a blood feud that has raged for decades. The source of the current ruckus is a disagreement on how the island should be managed now that the dead don't stay dead. The O'Flynns want to open the island up to travellers looking for a safe place to live out this nightmare, and to do so, all the Zombies on Plum must be killed - Plum is quite small so the task is perfectly obtainable. The Muldoons have other ideas; they need the island to stay closed to troublesome outsiders and prefer to keep the dead 'alive', so to speak, held captive on the island in some bizarre belief that humans can learn to live side-by-side with the flesh-hungry, animated corpses.
Essentially that's the entire plot, right there; a battle between two sides with radically different ideas. In the end, nobody wins. Both sides kill each other off in their stubborn inability to come to terms. The dead get out and actually increase in number due to all the shooting and killing. The National Guard rogues that fled to Plum for safety are forced to retreat, no better off than when they started (worse off actually, considering two of their party were killed and at least one is wounded).
War
"In an us-versus-them world, someone puts up a flag, another person tears it down and puts up his own. Pretty soon no one remembers what started the war in the first place and the fighting becomes all about those stupid flags."
- Sarge 'Nicotine' Crocket
People said that this movie had none of George Romero's iconic public-culture tongue-in-cheek sub-plots such as the nod to mass-consumerism seen in Dawn of the Dead. I think that's wrong and, I think, the above statement makes it abundantly clear that war is the theme. I believe Romero is referencing all those wars in the middle-east, countries like Iran, Syria and Istanbul fighting over who controls Bethlehem, the city many think of as the most holy place in all the world, and murdering huge numbers of people for reasons that are never clearly stated. Someone conquers a place, the former holders take that place back and the cycle continues, on and on. Then we have America's disastrous Vietnam war; a war remembered for its name but little else - I very much doubt anyone living today actually knows why it was fought. There's the current war in Afghanistan too which falls into the same boat; we knew why our troops were there at the start but what are we still fighting for exactly? What are we achieving other than defending a plot of land that we captured from an enemy force, a force which fights to get it back?
The less obvious sub-plot
The quote above makes it abundantly clear that war and its whole pointless nature is the main sub-plot to this Zombie film. However, I think there is also a hidden under current where Romero makes slight "fun" of the very thing that made him so famous; Zombie movies. At the start of the film another quote references how the dead have risen and feast upon the living, "we should be scared of them, but we aren't". Romero created the modern Zombie to inspire horror, true fear in the cinema goer (Night of the Living Dead is not really that scary anymore but back in 1968, audiences were stunned by this new breed of walking, stumbling death). Zombie movies increasingly becoming comedies or action; Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland, 28 Days Later and World War Z show that Zombies, while they can still bring in the punters, are far from the slow, shuffling nightmare creatures that Romero envisioned.
Another quote that gives me the idea of this sub-plot is when Seamus Muldoon talks about why he wants to keep the dead 'alive', mentioning that they might have some kind of disease that can be cured. This mirrors more or less all modern Zombie films; they all involve a virus, that's the de facto cause of Zombies. In fact, it's so clear now that as soon as someone mentions Zombies, anyone who has not already lost interest immediately thinks of a Zombie virus. The reply to this statement in the movie is harsh and abrupt, almost an interruption, marking just what Romero thinks of this idea; "You can't cure what's already dead.". To Romero, yes, Zombies might be caused by a virus but there are a host of other reasons too such as supernatural forces or radiation from space - it's all pretty wishy-washy but the point being made is abundantly clear; 'they're dead people brought back to life', end of - the 'why' of it all that everyone is so fixated upon in this modern age of science and understanding is simply not important.
Then there's the actual walking dead themselves; they are painfully slow and ultra-pathetic - the only way you are really going to die to them is if you are not paying attention. In the wonderful scene where Sarge kicks a Zombie of a ferry after lighting its head on fire with a flare gun (and using that flaming head to light a cigarette), it shows that Zombies are more of an annoyance than an actual threat. In fact, throughout most of the film, it is the constantly bickering humans that do the killing; the Zombies are merely trying to survive (it's in the title after all). It's true that the Zombies are responsible for the majority of loss of life at the end of the movie but the Zombies are only there because the living have kept them locked away, only getting out because the in-fighting humans let them out.
They're dead Jim
Survival of the Dead is an obvious successor to Diary of the Dead; it's got some of the same people in and the story follows from where Diary left off. However - and this is going against what is explicitly stated in the film - I think Survival is more of a sequel to, Romero's final cinema movie, Land of the Dead. Land is all about Zombies gradually gaining intelligence with the notable example of 'Big Daddy'; the uncharacteristically clever Zombie that led the Zombie's assault on Fiddler's Green - the home of rich. The movie ends with 'Big Daddy' leading the remaining Zombies away, the surviving humans opting to let them go as they are just "looking for a place to go"; a clear indication that the Zombies are not a fully hostile force, they are not simply driven by the desire to feed anymore, their new-found intelligence has given them a new goal, now they just want to continue to be, to survive.
If that is not enough though, low and behold, the Zombies in Survival are much smarter than the average ghoul; alright, they are just repeating actions they made in life so it is far from real intelligence but they are not the mindless killing machines that most other Zombie movies portray. I'm not saying these are the same deadheads who shuffled off with 'Big Daddy' at the end of Land though who is to say that some other Zombie didn't get smart in some other part of the world, unknowingly educating the more dim-witted dead nearby?
Joe Redneck
What I love about all Romero's Zombie movies is that there are never any world-renowned, big-budget actors taking the major acting roles. Everyone from Peter (played by Ken Foree) in Dawn of the Dead to Riley (played by Simon Baker) in Land are either minor, upcoming film-stars or complete unknowns. Of course, this has the drawback of the acting not always being on point but, in the Zombie genre, it adds a layer of authenticity to man's struggle to survive in a world where they are no longer at the top of the food-chain.
It's amusing, and initially a bit confusing, why Sarge and his band of rogues place so much value on the armoured car they find, along with the money it contains. Ok, the armoured car is a pretty sane choice in a world where death lurks around every corner but why make such a fuss about the money - its not like any banks are going to remain open after the dead rise? It is explained in the movie as the crew believing that one day the world will get better and money will be worth something again. This is a very naive hope to cling to in my view as it's really hard to see a way out of this mess when everyone who dies, gets back up, kills someone else, they get back up, kill someone else and the cycle continues until there is no one left to kill. Even if the world does somehow return to 'normal', or anything resembling how life was before the Zombie outbreak, I don't think civilization could go back to using the same system of currency after such a long time without it. So, I suppose it's Romero making a comment about the world today and perhaps the film industry in general; people love money and, when they have it, they think they have won some invisible victory, achieving life's goals - a sentiment carried over to Romero's later comic book work, Empire of the Dead.
The question no one asks
By far my stand-out favourite reason for applauding this film, and the reason I state whenever asked about it, is breathtakingly simple; the question it asks. Will the dead survive the living? Will the living simply kill off all the Zombies that they are no longer really afraid of and know that they can be quite easily put down with a headshot once isolated? Or will humanity learn to live alongside the Zombies, maybe not side-by-side but at least as tolerable neighbours? To me, it is a fascinating question that no one has bothered to ask before or since - all other Zombie movies being concerned with the immediate survival of the living, either a small group or the entire human race. Yes, I think Patrick O'Flynn's idea of killing all the Zombies on Plum is the right approach because, after all, once you're dead, you're dead, there is no coming back. On top of that, any existing dead are just going to wander around and bite the living, making more dead, which make more dead, and so on, and so on. I think Romero really capitalises on this by introducing O'Flynn first; it's the obvious methodology and one that all previous Zombie films, and most of real-life history, has trained us for; to make an area safe from hostiles, you have to eliminate the hostiles. However, thinking about it more, Muldoon, blind and bigoted as he may be - opting to allow the dead to 'live' - does have a point. There are billions of people on the planet and hundreds of those people die every day, a number that will no doubt increase into the thousands when the recently dead rise up and attack the living. Pretty soon there is going to be more dead than living, no way for the living to isolate the hungry dead into small groups that can be easily dispatched. There is not going to be enough ammunition to simply shoot every walking dead in the head anyway and, even if there were people willing to make more bullets, the necessary factories will likely be overrun. This is of course ignoring all geographic and political issues; some countries may fare well while others may not, the fallen countries keeping the threat alive but making it difficult for soldiers from better off countries to reach that threat and completely eradicate it (assuming, somehow, soldiers of one country could be made to care about what happens to another country after they have just fought a biblical battle against the dead on their own soil). No, eventually humanity is going to have to face facts and follow Seamus Muldoon's lead; we will have to learn with the dead, the dead will have to survive.
DESCRIPTION:
In this article I take an in depth look at Zombie film Survival of the Dead and attempt to justify why I believe it to be one of George Romero's best works.
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DATE UPLOADED:
04/11/2018