I managed to handle the "available on-line only" by myself. But I was disappointed in this movie.
If this hadn't been a Romero movie, I would have shut it down (despite the $10 rental fee) and gone to bed. And I would have missed some great moments in a mediocre film.
The first scenes link this neatly to "Diary" as a minor character from that movie becomes the center of this one. Things quickly go terribly wrong as we learn that an island off Delaware is populated by people with Irish names and uncertain accents who depend on horses like Amish farmers. This is a distracting conceit and the movie never entirely recovers.
A long standing family feud creates warring factions in the zombie apocalypse. The island is divided between the "shoot 'em now" and "we are family" factions. Neither side seems too secure in their plans for the uncertain future. The reservists wander around and suffer without much purpose. The pretty countryside looks like Canada.
Some very interesting themes emerge in this mess. As we saw in "Land of the Dead", zombies (at least some zombies) are learning and evolving. Some of the living are hoping and helping.
I wonder about this trend, which is now significant in so many of the zombie arts. Is this connected to the fact that the US is the only country in the world where most citizens don't believe in evolution and the teaching of basic science is suppressed? Is the very concept of evolution so transgressive that it has worked its way into the zombie narratives?
Way to go Zombies!
And (spoiler alert) the most shocking moments of this movie are zombies devouring non-human species.
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