I see dead people (in these trailers)

Today brings us a pairing of things that are either uneasily dead or undead. We have the first trailer for George A Romero’s Survival of the Dead and the first trailer for After.Life, a psychological horror film starring Liam Neeson and Christina Ricci.

The trailer for Survival of the Dead has clawed its way online. This is the sixth George A Romero film that takes place in a world where zombies rule and humans run and hide. Following directly on from the events of Diary of the Dead, Survival of the Dead is set off the coast of Delaware on Plum Island, where the long-term residents find their relatives rising from the dead. The leaders of two families locked in a power struggle that has lasted generations, the shoot-to-kill O’Flynns versus the keep-zombies-alive-but-quarantined Muldoons. The Muldoons hope to find a cure (for dying? Or for coming back to life again?) and vastly outnumber the O’Flynns, forcing patriarch Patrick O’Flynn off the island. Fortunately for him, that’s where he bumps into the troop of soldiers from Diary of the Dead and heads back to the island in their company.

The trailer looks very old-school and sadly, not in an especially good way. Not only does the zombie theme seem a little out-of-date but the production values look grim. But, in its defence, the actual film may look better. Fingers crossed.

Starring Alan Van Sprang as Col “Nicotine” Crockett, Kenneth Welsh as Patrick O’Flynn, Kathleen Munroe as Janet O’Flynn, Richard Fitzpatrick as Seamus Muldoon and Stefano Colacitti as Francisco.

Survival of the Dead has a multi-platform release (something we’re finding more common with indie films right now), premiering on VOD, XBOX live, Playstation and Amazon on April 30, then heading to cinemas on May 28.

Next on our list of dead people movies is After.Life. Anna (Christina Ricci) wakes up in a funeral home after a horrific car accident with funeral director Eliot Deacon (Liam Neeson) preparing her body for the service. Confused and terrified, Anna doesn’t believe she’s dead – understandably – and won’t listen to Eliot’s reassurances that she is merely in transition to the afterlife and that he is the only one who can communicate with her and therefore help her. Anna’s grief-stricken boyfriend Paul can’t shake the suspicion that Eliot isn’t who he claims to be – could he be planning to bury the girl (half) alive?

Directed by Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo from her original screenplay, After.Life stars Christina Ricci as Anna, Liam Neeson as Eliot and Justin Long as Paul. It’s set for release on April 9.

If that whets your appetite for people dealing with a sudden bout of undeadness, we’ve got some films free to watch here on Indie you might enjoy.

If you’re in the US, you can watch Control, in which Ray Liotta’s Lee Ray wakes to find himself in a morgue after what he believed was a lethal injection, Willem Dafoe’s Dr Michael Copeland wants him to be a part of his secret chemical behaviour modification programme.

Or for those of you in the UK, The Addiction follows Kathleen, an innocent and bookish student who gets bitten by a vampire and drawn into a brutal world of addiction and bloodshed. Starring Christopher Walken and Lily Taylor.