During the torture-porn heyday, zombie maestro George A. Romero issued a curt but cutting assessment of the trend: “I don’t get [them]. They’re lacking metaphor.” Coming from the father of a micro-genre he has successfully tweaked to suit the times for more than 40 years, that had to hurt. The cyclical resurgence of zombie films — of which Romero’s 2008 Diary of the Dead and now Survival of the Dead are only a part — suggests that the metaphor is key to its endurance; the market for graphic internal anatomy lessons seems more finite. But while Survival of the Dead does its best to work up a decent allegorical bent — this time involving territorial pissing matches within a country under siege — its power is diffused (and frankly, confused) by its execution. Instead of closing in for the metaphorical kill, the film frequently wanders off in a new, noncommital direction.
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REVIEW: Survival of the Dead Devoured by Too Many Unanswered Questions
