I’ve been a fan of the work of George A. Romero for just about as long as I can remember being aware of cinema. Let’s face it, the man is a genre legend who revolutionized and reinvented horror cinema when Night of the Living Dead came roaring into theaters back in 1968. It was a blistering debut that attacked issues of race, government and apathy and ended on a sobering down note that left every character dead. The power of the film is that it doesn't assign blame. It leaves the reason for the dead rising veiled in ambiguity and actively complicates the relationships of the heroes so that it’s difficult, if you’re honest, to determine just who is in the right. It’s a deceptively simple setup that yields complex results. Certainly, 1979’s Dawn of the Dead was a worthy follow up, though it was also the beginning of his penchant for more pointed commentary – switching gears, he aimed his ire at rampant consumerism. 1985’s Day of the Dead attacks the military industrial complex, 2005’s Land of the Dead takes aim at the moneyed elite, and 2007’s Diary of the Dead paints a stark picture of the youthful, disaffected YouTube culture.

Still, each successive film after Dawn has yielded proof of the law of diminishing returns. Romero has always been a man interested in themes and ideas, but he’s been both helped and hindered by the fact that many viewers are only interested in the more kinetic, gut-munching aspects of his cinematic oeuvre.

With Survival of the Dead, Romero’s idea well seems to have finally run dry. Staged as a spinoff from Diary, the new film follows a group of rogue national guardsmen led by Alan Van Sprang as they traverse a post-apocalyptic world that is peopled with shambling zombies and hobbled by Romero’s lowest budget yet. Soon, they come across a YouTube-ish video advertising a hidden oasis called Plum Island – a bucolic getaway off the coast of Delaware that seems to exist far away from the menacing cannibalistic ghouls that have overrun the country. At least, we think they’ve overrun it - we scarcely see any real zombie threat as our “heroes” make their way to a ferry manned by Kenneth Welsh. And the zombies themselves are so reduced as a threat that several characters merely roll their eyes during their intermittent encounters with them.

Upon reaching Plum Island, this motley crew finds themselves in the middle of a turf war between two families, clearly borrowed from the American legend of the Hatfields and the McCoys. Turns out that the promised sanctuary was built on a lie and that, yep, there are zombies aplenty on Plum Island. One family patriarch wants to rehabilitate them, while another wants to exterminate them.

And that’s pretty much it. While Romero has shown plenty of ingenuity with cut-rate budgets in the past, he is here just marking time with one-note characters trapped in the flimsiest of plots. Van Sprang’s guardsman leader is disturbingly one-note – he’s a barely sketched badass with no character arc or throughline that just wanders through the story before heading on to his next poorly defined adventure. His crew of fellow guardsmen are defined by single character traits (one’s a lesbian, one’s religious, one’s a smartass) and become zombie fodder before any empathy is built for them. The two dueling families (who for some inane reason speak in heavy Irish accents despite living off the coast of Delaware) offer little to the plot aside from the same tired “humanity is its own worst enemy” shtick that Romero has covered countless times in the past.

Worse yet, the once marvelous practical gore effects that helped ease viewers’ scorn, engendered by creaky performances and odd plotting, have now been replaced by slapdash CGI so unconvincing that it renders the bulk of the film suspenseless. Romero’s zombies here seem incidental to an already beleaguered story, and their dispatches have all the gravity of a first generation Xbox cutscene.

There’s a general sense of boredom and laziness that hangs over the proceedings, and it’s clear that Romero’s heart is no longer in it. The enthusiasm and anger that once informed even his lesser efforts is entirely lacking here, and his notorious subtext is all but absent. In a recent interview, Romero states that he plans to do two more films that also spin off from Diary, but if Survival of the Dead is any indication of what’s on the horizon, then I think it might be best for him to pack it in and let the dead stay buried once and for all.

-- David Rosiak