Director George Romero is becoming much like his classic zombie antagonists, for he has risen up, yet again, from apparent ashes to write and direct yet another zombie flick. Don’t get me wrong now, for I love me some Romero zombies, but damn, dude. It’s almost as if Romero himself is doomed to constantly repeat this everlasting cinematic cycle, in manner of those flesh-eating undead that he essentially created and with which he has become inexplicably intertwined. This particular film remains untitled but, according to Variety (for those at the magazine, that’s called a citation), Romero has already begun production:

Plot involves inhabitants of an isolated island off the North American coast who find their relatives rising from the dead to eat their kin. The leaders of the island feud over whether or not to kill their reanimated relatives or preserve them in hopes of finding a cure.

Hmm. Doesn’t George Romero ever wake up and just wanna, you know, make the ultimate buddy film or maybe try his hand at some big-budget, flashy action film? Nahhh, that’s what we have Brett Ratner for. The thing is, Romero pretty much set up the zombie genre as we know it, but he’s never really exceeded the standards of Night of the Living Dead. Further, the social messages of his earlier films don’t carry nearly the same bite in his newer works, and Diary of the Dead, as undeniably cool as it was, ended up being a totally self-referential clusterfuck. At this point, Romero is sorta like a hyperactive hamster in his wheel, albeit a superior hamster who is, nevertheless, stuck in a cycle of his own making.

Part of me still thinks Romero should shake things up a bit, surprise us, and maybe come out with something completely unlike his other flicks. However, if we’re talking about some sort of an Island of the Dead, then Romero’s take on, say, Roanoke Island might actually kick some of the existing alternative history theories into a decent tailspin. Yeah, screw it, I’m in.