Review #124: Survival of the Dead (2009)


This review was originally written in October 2021.

October 2021 Horror Movie Review #10- Survival of the Dead (2009)

Remember a couple days ago when I complained that Land of the Dead was boring? Hoo boy, what a sweet summer child I was. Land was boring, Survival is boooooooring. I went through this entire movie without caring AT ALL about ANY of the characters. The closest I came to caring whatsoever was for the "main character" (if he can even be called that) of Sarge, simply because he was the least caught up in his own nonsense. I'm a little bit confused as to why they thought it important to tie him in to the previous movie (maybe they just happened to cast him in this movie after he played the super-duper important role of "army guy who shows up for ten seconds and tells them to turn off the camera" in Diary, but the idea that they took that nothing-character and spun him off into his own film about a bunch of rednecks arguing over who-knows-what is just too hilarious to ignore) but whatever the case, he was the least boring of the boring characters and I wished him no particular harm compared to the rest.

I complained about this last time, I'm gonna complain about it again today (and probably more in the future, as long as people keep putting this in their movies)- STOP MAKING ZOMBIES JUST POP UP OUT OF NOWHERE. There's few constant traits for zombies in these films, but it's pretty easy to glean that some of those rules are as follows: 1. Zombies are slow, 2. Zombies are loud, 3. Zombies are dumb, and 4. Zombies are noticeable (once you know they exist). So when your trained group of zombie-hunting special forces army dudes are just standing around doing whatever, AND THEN SUDDENLY A ZOMBIE IS RIGHT THERE NEXT TO THEM, I'm going to call BS, and I'm going to do it even moreso when it happens MULTIPLE TIMES IN THE FILM. No, a zombie did not just sneak up on you in the middle of a well-lit room while multiple people were looking in different directions. It did not happen. I know that's what appeared on the screen, but the screen is wrong. It didn't happen.

I really wish I had more to say about this one, but I just. Didn't. Care. About. Anyone. I didn't care about the family dynamic of these rednecks on this backwoods island, I didn't care about the soldiers who apparently are just sooooooo horny they don't care who or what sees them touching themselves, I didn't care about a bunch of captive zombies that are both smart enough to operate a car but stupid enough to be completely stymied by a three-foot fence. Also, please either put more budget into your CGI, or use less CGI. And don't start your movie off with a stupid zombie pop-up AND really bad CGI in the first minute. Unless your intention was to get me to turn it off before the opening credits (which I almost did) you messed up.

Overall Rating: 2/10 Late-Night Talk Shows That Are Still On The Air And Have A Live Audience Despite The Breakdown Of Society

Best Actor Slumming It In This Role: Julian Richings, aka Death from Supernatural. I know you were probably hard up for money, but you're better than this!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review #181: The Evil Dead (1981)

Image
This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #36: The Evil Dead (1981) As much as I'm trying to make these reviews as standalone as possible, I feel the need to tie this one (at least a little bit) into the last one (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre) and the next one (Evil Dead II). So, bear with me I guess. I'm a huge fan of the Evil Dead series as a whole. Evil Dead II was one of the first horror films I ever saw, and for many years was my favorite movie of all time. However, I was never a very big fan of the first movie; I only saw The Evil Dead a couple times and when I did, it felt "lesser" than Evil Dead II in every way. I'll save most of my comments about EDII until the next review, but I just want to say that in this particular rewatch, I came out liking The Evil Dead WAY more than I used to, and liking Evil Dead II a little bit less (though I still love it). If you aren't familiar with the series at all, The E
Read more

Review #153: The Endless (2018)

Image
This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #8 - The Endless (2018) A disclaimer: Most of this review is going to be me complaining about the logistics and mechanics of this movie, and it's going to be full of spoilers. I'll try to summarize my non-mechanical thoughts as concisely as possible. The Endless is an interesting film created by writing/directing duo Benson and Moorhead. Apart from Spring (which to my knowledge doesn't fit into this film's universe, though I could be mistaken) this was the first Benson & Moorhead joint I'd seen, and I was instantly intrigued by the premise: two brothers escaped a cult ten years ago, and after hearing that the cult was seemingly getting ready to kill themselves, they go back for one last visit to get some closure. When they get there, they realize that the cult's supernatural beliefs seem to be true, and they get caught up in a strange web of timey-wimeyness under the u
Read more

Review #179: It (2017)

Image
This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #34: It (2017) I read It about twenty years ago; it's probably the longest book I've read in full. I think the book is very, very good (though also very, very Stephen King, which means there's a lot in its pages that makes it quantitatively worse than it could be) and for the most part this movie is a faithful adaptation... of half of it. I'll save most of my book vs. movie complaints for later on, but I'll just say that the book itself is two very important and very intertwined halves of a story, and while I understand the reasoning to cut it in half (doing the whole book justice would take well over four hours' worth of screentime), I really do think it does the whole story a disservice when this entire film starts and ends with the characters as kids. The book is constantly jumping back and forth between the child half of the story and the adult half, to the point where
Read more