Ignatiy Vishnevetsky’s review of Survival of the Dead

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky’s review of George Romero’s Survival of the Dead. The first paragraph is beautiful:

Romero’s horror set-ups are never about the terrifying situation and always about the trouble the characters get into by trying to solve it or escape it; if Carpenter’s horror is based on inevitability / powerlessness in the face of true horror (meaning: the value of horror in defining human limitations), Romero’s is based on how easily complications could have been averted by someone with a different personality or with fewer prejudices (meaning: the value of horror in defining human shortcomings). Therefore, it is impossible to separate Romero’s situations from his characters (see also: Season of the WitchKnightriders), and so it wouldn’t really be right to call Survival of the Dead a movie about an island full of zombies; it is, in Romero tradition, a movie about a group of hard-headed individuals and how this island of zombies they come upon is organized, ruled and dealt with.