Time for the dead to stay dead?

This year George A Romero brings us the latest in his 'Dead' series with 'Survival Of The Dead' taking up events sometime after the period of Day Of The Dead it sees the efforts of a group of survivors to develop a cure for the epidemic.

Romero first found the limelight over forty years ago with Night Of The Living Dead (1968), the film was micro budgeted, starred and crewed mostly by friends of the director, was efficiently effective with it's thrills and arrived on the scene to take full advantage of the growing youthful audience that was on the look for more visceral entertainment.

What appeared to set the film apart from many of it's contemporaries was the subtext that appeared to be at work in the film. Ben, the male lead played by Duane Jones clashes with the other men trapped in the house with the survivors as to the best course of action, eventually coming out on top only to be cruelly and coldly shot day in the final moments of the film by a posse that assume him to be a zombie. His body is carried to a pyre as the film closes.

To put it bluntly the fact that Jones (as Ben) was a man of colour appears to open up the film to a whole line of questions and position of racial tension in the United State, those final scenes in particular would seem to agitate at underlying prejudices.

However when asked about Romero says that Jones was simply the best actor available to him at the time and he did not think about the racial angle when casting him. Now this doesn't necessarily undercut the themes at play here in and of itself, it would stay be fair to suggest Romero tailored the film to take advantage of what he had.

However Romero has gone on to say that even when people talk to him about the film to hims in terms of addressing racism he can't see it. That is to see the director of the film does not understand and indeed can not even perceive the reason why his film is still discussed at length to day and has not simply joined the massed ranks of similar efforts as Living Dead was by far from the first zombie film.

Romero's apparent lack of knowledge of the message seen by so many in his own film of course then calls into questions the sub-texts raised in his other following films, but has his career moved it appears he has clued into the fact that this is what gives his films strength and openly now discusses what he is trying to say with each one.

Failing to carve out a career away from the genre he'd done so much to popularise Romero returned to his apocalyptic world ten years later with Dawn Of The Day. Dawn sees a disparate group of survivors bunkered up within a shopping mall, at first he seems they have found the perfect environment to live out the horrors outside but as time goes on it becomes increasingly apparent that they have simply trapped themselves inside the beacon of consumerism.

Dawn is undoubtedly my favourite of the series. It is smartly written as it looks at the effects of (what is basically) imprisonment on a small cast of characters and does offer a critique of consumer culture and the mall life as we see the undead drawn to the mall as if by nature and watch as they shamble onto escalators as Muzak plays gently in the background. Significantly despite the desperation of the situation the film does end on a note of hope.

Day Of The Dead seven years later saw the series again return. This time things are bleaker than ever and this time we have the clash of science (in this case playing the role of diplomacy) versus the military situation. Once again the holocaust is used as a background onto which a human drama is hung as survivors clash over the best course of action and again the effects of long term isolation takes it's toll. A lot of the themes raised in Dawn are repeated in Day and the only significant difference between the two (aside the sub textual deliberations) is the addition of 'Bub' the zombie who is slowly learning to be a thinking person again.

The fact that Bub is on longer a straight forward unthinking monster helps the series to open some interesting moral questions and thoughts on how quickly a enemy can become less than human in times of conflict.

The next twenty years saw Romero struggle to make an impact away from his well known Dead series and so in returned to it 2005 with Land Of The Dead. The film is unremarkable and Romero's lack of progress in the intervening years is only highlighted by both the energetic verve and impact of Zack Synder's Dawn of the Dead reboot, the breathless unrelenting 28 Days Later and the witty eye for relateable detail of Shaun Of The Dead.

If not for Romero's name is highly likely that Land Of The Dead would have bypassed cinemas altogether. Romero again offers a critique of modern society identifying a rich and poor divide with a 'Bush' like corrupt figure in charge, this time it is clumsily handled as a theme, not the subtly of Dawn here, but a point hammered home.

Elsewhere the film feels more like a entry in the Resident Evil series rather than the shambling inevitable horror of the earlier entries. More action thriller than anything else. And don't get me started on how or why a apparently professional armed force is overrun by unarmed zombies that can't even run within seconds towards the end of the film.

Fair enough things can get out of control when you are totally surrounded by them but when the zombies advance slowly on your fortified positions I'm not quite sure how that supposed goes so wrong so quickly.

So,thus far I'd saw Dawn is my favourite of Romero's series followed by Night (which is still effective despite the lack of insight) then Day (which recover much of Dawn's ground) and lastly Land (which is basically the same as every other forgettable action horror for gore generation).

Having decide to not even try making anything else anymore Romero's quickly returned with Diary Of The Dead. Picking up events near the start of the fall of mankind it follows a group of media students and it attempts to say something about the influence of the media and our interactions with it. However it seems the film doesn't know what it exactly it wants to say (Is the media good or bad? Is the web a useful tool for the masses or an instrument of control?) nor how to really say it (the film flirts with a 'Cloverfield'/'Blair Witch' style but fails to commit). Nor does it help that Romero seems to be getting left behind by the society he's trying to comment on with ham fisted voice overs from one of the characters implying that Romero does not really understand the Internet and how it works (there is definite confusion between downloading and uploading) let alone what it means to the world at large.

Sadly there is nothing in the film itself to save it from the mishandled and heavy handed message, much like Kevin Smith Romero is a film maker when relies on what he has to say rather than on the ability on being able to present what he has to say in an interesting or imaginative way. In other words he's a competent filmmaker that no longer has anything interesting or relevant to say.

Just to make it clear I thought Diary Of The Dead was terrible and I really thing it's time for 'ol George to put down the megaphone and let the kids get on with it. I will not be surprised if Survival of the Dead does goes straight to DVD as Romero becomes increasingly irrelevant.

His Dawn of the Dead will remain a classic and Night will be remembered for so effectively laying down so many of the modern zombie film rules even if it's more interesting aspects appears to have been a happy accident. But it has to be said the George Romero has been recovering old ground since Day of the Dead and the journey is getting less effective and less interesting everytime.