Dissecting the New Green Band Trailer for Romero's Survival of the Dead

By Paige MacGregor

Ever wonder what happened after the events of George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead (2007)? Chances are you didn’t, but on the off-chance that you did, you’re in luck, because the master of zombie horror is releasing a follow-up to Diary of the Dead, aptly titled Survival of the Dead. The final green band trailer for Survival of the Dead was released by Magnet this week, and we have the only “in-depth” analysis of the trailer that you’ll find on the interwebs.



As you can see from the trailer, Survival of the Dead features a number of zombie movie stereotypes and clichés, including small groups of seemingly overconfident military personnel (first seen at the 0:12 mark), the zombie that comes back to life from under a sheet on the examining table (around the 0:21 mark), individuals attempting to “cure” zombies because they cannot bear to part with undead loved ones (1:07), heavily armed backwoods civilians (first seen at 0:34 and again throughout the trailer), the quintessential man crying as he shoots a gun (1:36), and, of course, the zombie hand poking through a doorway as the door is forced shut (somewhere between the 1:38 and 1:41 mark).

What Survival of the Dead appears to have that other zombie films haven’t featured (to my knowledge, at least) includes a zombie riding horseback (at the 1:31 mark), a “safe” island haven inhabited by feuding families (discussed at 0:48), some pretty serious Apple product placement (also at 0:48), and a zombie with an axe (0:38), among other things. The story is intriguing and the more I watch the trailer the more interested I am in seeing the film—maybe even enough to see it in theaters when it’s released the end of next month (May 28th).

The green band trailer for Survival of the Dead hints at the gore and mayhem that Romero fans have come to expect, but what intrigues me most about this film isn’t necessarily the violence or blood. Instead, it is the storyline—a rather unusual draw for a genre that has little variation (outside of films that take a tongue-in-cheek approach to the zombie genre, like Zombie Strippers). Obviously, the film revolves around a group of military personnel who find out about an island—Plum Island, to be exact—off the coast of Delaware that residents claim to be safe from the zombie hoards. Without any other options, our group of protagonists heads for Plum Island, only to find themselves in the middle of a seemingly endless feud between two families over the fate of the island and its inhabitants.

Whether Romero intended to parallel the ongoing religious feud in Ireland by plopping two heavily accented families—the O’Flynns and the Muldoons—on a small island and having them square off against one another is a mystery, but the parallel can be drawn just from the green band trailer. In my opinion, it will be interesting to see such a blood feud play out when zombies are thrown into the mix—I would imagine that the military outsiders would be floored, to say the least, by the emphasis placed on maintaining separation between the O’Flynn and Muldoon camps even in the face of the living dead.

Although it won’t be released in theaters until May 28, Survival of the Dead will be available on VOD, Xbox Live, Playstation and Amazon this Friday (April 30th). For more information on Survival of the Dead, head over to the film’s official website where you can also see the bloody red band trailer.