Survival of the Dead is the latest in George A. Romero's long-running series and definitely a completely unnecessary entry to it. The zombies are already running loose as the 90 minutes begin and the army have been drafted in to sort things out, led by Sarge 'Nicotine' Crocket (Alan Van Sprang, right), not that anyone actually uses his name, but you can tell it's him because he smoke. He's also joined by others including Kenny (Eric Woolfe), Francisco (Stefano Di Matteo) and Tomboy (Athena Karkanis), the latter two having a love/hate relationship but you have a feeling that they'll end up shagging in the end, despite her being a lesbian. Also tagging along is a lad with no name (Devon Bostick). Other than them there's Patrick O'Flynn (Kenneth Welsh, below-right), an old guy with a lawless posse, going round cleaning places up where they believe the undead are about. He has a daughter, Janet (Kathleen Munroe), and they're up against a rival posse led by Seamus Muldoon (Richard Fitzpatrick), both of whom come from the tranquil island of Plum, in Delaware. Well, it would be tranquil if they weren't at each other's throats all the time. The basis is that Patrick and his men get banished from the island, meet up with the army guys and then return, along with the lad who they rescued from a gang of rednecks. As for the film itself, it's very slow and the CGI is far from great. There's far too many cases of zombies turning up by chance, like one of those Eastenders moments when a character just happens to be overhearing a comment about themselves, and so, unlike that soap, a bullet to the head is quickly dispensed with alarming accuracy, and this soon gets tiresome, even if some of them are quite cool. The 1/10 I gave it goes to those few cases. As for the cast, well, Land of the Dead had Dennis Hopper and John Leguizamo, and I haven't seen 2007's Diary of the Dead, nor the 2008 remake of Day of the Dead< which featured Mena Suvari, although in both cases the IMDB ratings show that I haven't missed much. This has no-one. Not even an unknown who can act particularly well or stand out from the rest. So, who will win - happy-go-lucky Patrick O'Flynn and the army or evil-looking Seamus Muldoon? You won't really care by the end. Or after the first 30 minutes, to be honest.

Presented in the original 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen ratio, the picture is nicely detailed where it counts, but the backdrop is mostly farmland so nothing to shout about. It'll do the job, if you really care about the film. For the record, I'm watching on a Panasonic 37" Plasma screen via a Samsung BD-P1500 Blu-ray player. As for the sound, this is in DTS 5.1 HD Master Audio, or DTS 5.1 for those, like me, without the full technical dohickey. Like the picture, this does the job when required whether it's gunfire or a musical score attempting to drum up tension. When it comes to the extras... there are none. The menu mixes clips from the film with a short piece of the incidental music. There are NO subtitles, which is completely ridiculous - especially given all the strong Irish accents in the film - and the Chaptering is, again for Optimum, a typical embarrassment with just 12 over the 90-minute running time. How can the same company keep making the same mistakes over and over? Do the bigwigs actually read the reviews? The previous title I reviewed in the series, Land of the Dead, was released by Universal and contained 21 chapters, English subtitles and a nice selection of extras, running for just  over an hour barring the audio commentary. Not heaps and heaps like some directors would put on their releases but just enough to give you a flavour of how the film was made. Optimum - you are not!

FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS	0
OVERALL

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2010.