The dead barely survive in this sixth in George A. Romero’s zombie series — except for a few instances of intestine chewing, they seem more of an afterthought than an epidemic.
Romero instead sidles into Western trappings, with a tale about feuding families on an island off New Jersey who, for some reason, ride horses, wear Stetsons, brandish six-shooters, and speak with Irish accents. The zombie plague raging on the mainland has largely spared them, but not entirely, and the occasions when members of their inbred families come down with dead-headism have instigated a philosophical dispute about whether the dead should be rekilled or rehabilitated. Into this fray enters a renegade band of National Guardsmen left over from Diary of the Dead.
Maybe Romero is pursuing a Marxist project by analyzing feudal modes of production, but his real problem is coming up with new ways of shooting people in the head.
