I completely understand your point. Except the part where you don't like "Diary of the Dead". I think it's rather funny.Sadly, I haven't seen anything related to Survival of the Dead, yet.
Of course, the Zack Snyder remake lacks a lot of the subliminal, " subcutaneous" social and political criticism of the original, but it is vastly superior when it comes to cinematography, special and visual effects and sound. The directing is a matter of taste, as you couldn't put a hair between both directors in my opinion. Snyder has sometimes a little faster pace, whereas Romero manages to deliver a sense of the epic even to low budget movies. (By the way, have you seen his son's movie, "Staunton Hill"? That one was, with the exception of one scene, pretty bad.)
Well, I loved Snyder's remake. Perhaps I rank it so high because I was just surprised by the heart that was put into it and the crushing realism. This movie has no slapstick, no fun gore or anything like that. It's just straigh up, as if someone took a movie camera to the zombie apocalypse. I think that makes it superior to most of the zombie flicks that just repeat themselves or just want to be funny and gory and bloody but nothing else.
But as you said, that's a matter of taste. We don't need a freudian-nietzsche-like discussion about it.
But you seem to like movies with (un)dead people in them... does that mean you like me to... as I'm dead now and all...
I'll give you that, the overall look of the movie is a lot more stylistic and better on the eye than the original which can at times be a little bland. But, a lot of what Snyder removed from the remake was what I loved about it, the slower build, the social commentary, the sense of hope in finding such a safe haven, which then lead to complacency, then boredom (you get that slightly in the remake but not to this level). Removing that to create a pretty decent actioner was probably a good move on Syner's part given that modern audiences for the most part like a certain pace to the movies they watch, especially movies of this genre.
I have not seen his sons movie and having just looked it up I don't think I want to.
I'm sure you've seen some of the Italian zombie movies of the 70s and 80s, Fulci's Zombi 2 and The Beyond are probably the best of this period. If you haven't definitely check them out. Yes, they pretty much follow the old zombie routine you've mentioned in you post, but they're always a fun watch and if you're a fan of the Zombie sub genre of horror then they're a must see.
