Survival vs Diary

[Christopher Jon]

Survival was simply awful. I honestly can't think of a single redeeming quality to Survival. How Shooteminthehead feels about WWZ, that's how I feel about Survival of the Dead. Diary, I don't remember how bad it was since I've only seen it once and that was years ago. Romero has a great track record of each movie being worse than the one before it.

[Shawn Wilcox]

"Romero has a great track record of each movie being worse than the one before it." I don't know about that, the first 3 dead films are masterpieces in my honest opinion and even though its kinda a 50/50 split on here I think Land of the Dead is quite enjoyable. Like I said on my original initial post I think survival is god aweful and I haven't seen diary yet so I can't form an opinion one way or the other.

[Christopher Jon]

"Romero has a great track record of each movie being worse than the one before it." I don't know about that, the first 3 dead films are masterpieces in my honest opinion and even though its kinda a 50/50 split on here I think Land of the Dead is quite enjoyable. Like I said on my original initial post I think survival is god aweful and I haven't seen diary yet so I can't form an opinion one way or the other. Night of the Living Dead > Dawn of the Dead > Day of the Dead > Land of the Dead > Diary of the Dead > Survival of the Dead Some may argue Dawn over Night, whatever, after that, it's a steady decline. Day is the weakest of the original trilogy. Land had its moments and having a studio sized budget didn't hurt but it's not even comparable to the Dawn of the Dead remake, which came out the same year. I think I'm gonna rewatch Diary tonight.

[ProfessorChaos]

i saw diary in theaters and thought it was decent. a bit over-the-top with the message, but still a somewhat enjoyable flick, save for a few eye-rolling bits here and there. survival was fucking painful to watch. i had to shut it off after the ghoul was behind the wheel of a car and the lesbian soldier cracked a joke about it never being able to pass its driver's exam. i had been suffering through it for the duration, almost literally from the first scene, but that was the straw that broke the camel's back. i honestly could not care less if i ever get the chance to finish it.

[rongravy]

Yeah, when I saw Diary in the theater, twice in one week actually, I didn't think it was all that bad. Not nearly as great as Land, but none too shabby. Survival is pretty bad, glad I didn't see it in the theaters. I would've been pissed. I can understand any and all hate for it. I do not like bad special effects, and those were cringe worthy and unforgivable. I love George, but somebody check those meds.

[Andy]

I would rather pluck out my own eyeballs with a spoon than watch any of romeros new trilogy again. The man has destroyed all credibility he had with me.

[Neil]

I would rather pluck out my own eyeballs with a spoon than watch any of romeros new trilogy again. The man has destroyed all credibility he had with me. Half agree! Land is sort of OK'ish. But I've only watch his latest two offerings once, and have never felt the need to revisit them!

[Andy]

Half agree! Land is sort of OK'ish. But I've only watch his latest two offerings once, and have never felt the need to revisit them! I am particularly tough on land i know, mainly because its the only romero movie i got to see in a cinema and i was expecting great things, and i got..... well i got land.

[Rottedfreak]

Diary at least had the right idea with the characters on the road and you'd think Road of the Dead would do somehting like that but NooooooOOOOOOOooooooo it has to be zombies driving cars.

[shootemindehead]

I'd happily watch 'Land of the Dead' again and despite a few WTF's, it fits as a chapter in the first series. However, Romero's attempted reboot is absolutely dreadful. I made a lot of excuses for 'Diary of the Dead' when it came out, hoping that the new series would eventually redeem itself, but with 'Survival of the Dead', all the bets were off really. From the moment it started, I knew that it was going to be like some SyFy special and when those "Oirish" accents puked themselves all over the screen, I nearly soiled myself. For the life of me, I just cannot think what was going on in George's head. truly staggering. I've always admired Romero's "I'll make the kind of film I want and feck the lot of ye" type of approach, even if a lot of his films are meh, to say the least. But, if he doesn't give a shite about the film himself, well, that's a whole different kettle of fish.

[MagicMoonMonkey]

If you watch the new trilogy in the order of Dairy, Survival & Land, then they do get progressively better than the last. Survival could have been a treat if Romero had just gone tonto with the gore during the final act. I felt absolutely robbed watching this movie. Scenes ending with cattle hands hanging upside down with some zombies shambling towards the easy meal without so much as a bite are quite a removal from what we are used to seeing during the final act of a Romero movie. We had the bikers in Dawn; the soldiers in Day; everyone in Land. Survival was like getting a wank from the bird and her stopping before I blow my load. It was a complete WTF let-down. I originally thought the movie had been cut and a special gore filled edition would be presented after its delayed US release. The final act promised so much and delivered very little. Poor show George.

[shootemindehead]

Why do people keep putting 'Land of the Dead' in with the other two reboot abortions? Doesn't make any sense. It's clearly part of the original series. In fact Romero had planned it to be part of his original series, long before he'd even thought of 'Diary of the Dead'.

[Wyldwraith]

Diary, bad as it is, takes it over Survival hands down. Reason? Diary actually has two scenes that have some lvl of tension if not horror. The scene where the girl returns home in search of her family, and the scene at the VERY end, where the girl and Ye Olde Drunkard English Archer are forced to retreat into the panic room and you see the shots on the various security cameras of zombies ALL over the mansion and its grounds. That had at least a mild dose of Romero's grim, zombies overcome through failings of human nature and due to them being an inexorable tide. Survival? Nothing but cheap cartoonish, shoots-flare-in-zombie's-mouth, causing its head to light up like a jack-o`-lantern, and cheap action hero sequences. Ie: Swimming to the boat with zombies standing on the bottom. Both movies are crap, but Diary escapes the total of TOTAL CRAP, because a couple of scenes actually remind you what Romero used to be about. It's a fleeting feeling, especially since both scenes come late in the film so there are NO good, or even decently watchable, scenes in Diary's first 60 minutes. Now if you wanted a truly bleak, horrifying ending. Diary should've continued following the fate of the blonde chick from Texas who took off from the mansion in an RV with next to no gas. Wouldn't by any means have salvaged the film, but it would have improved the ending...which needed all the help it could get after Camera Guy was such a detached retard he let a walking corpse stagger right up to him and do as much damage as 4-5 zombies usually do to solo victims, and the girl was crying over him and promising to finish his movie. While planning to retreat into a panic room that was going to either become a tomb when the diesel in the generator conked out, or a buffet-server by an emergency mechanism opening the door and feeding them to the waiting zombies once its small emergency battery was depleted. That's one of the things George has forgotten. Futility simply being inferred in the doom of characters, as opposed to being filmed has far less "punch" when the majority of a zombie movie has been negligently light on meaningful/frightening zombie activity. I mean c'mon, how much of the damned movie is just the emotionally STERILE interior of the RV? Anyways, Diary better than Survival, in that I can at least bring myself to rip on Diary while acknowledging its 2 faint glimmers of promise, whereas Survival is so awful I wouldn't even know where to begin cataloging its failures.

[Christopher Jon]

Why do people keep putting 'Land of the Dead' in with the other two reboot abortions? Doesn't make any sense. It's clearly part of the original series. In fact Romero had planned it to be part of his original series, long before he'd even thought of 'Diary of the Dead'. Agreed. I'm sure somebody has worked out a timeline but I always felt that Land and Day were happening at about the same time. Day was what was happening down in Florida while Land was what was happening up in Pittsburgh. Diary was a bad attempt at a reboot of the franchise. btw, I tried rewatching Diary and I didn't make it more than 20 minutes before I lost interest.

[ProfessorChaos]

survival (along with day and night) was on the chiller channel this weekend. since i had tons of dvr space, i recorded it and may give it a 2nd chance soon....not expecting a major change of opinion, but maybe this time i'll actually sit through the whole thing.