The zombie apocalypse is upon us. In fact, it has been for over 40 years now, thanks in large part to the efforts of George Romero, godfather of the modern zombie movie. As a presence on the big screen, Romero didn’t invent the zombie — those lurching, animated corpses with a hunger for human flesh (or braaaaiiinnnns) — but he did perfect their use as the vehicle for a seemingly endless stream of metaphors about humanity’s fears and failings, starting with the seminal Night of the Living Dead in 1968.

When zombie cinema experienced a renaissance in the ’00s, Romero went back to that well for the first time in 20 years with Land of the Dead. It was a revival, not just of the …of the Dead series, but also of Romero’s own career. He’d made only one film in the 10 years prior to Land, and the return to the genre — and with a not half-bad entry in the series — spurred him on to make the low budget social media commentary Diary of the Dead just two years later. Survival of the Dead, which opens in D.C. today, marks the sixth film in the series, and the first to serve as a direct sequel to a preceding film, following a common character on a continuing adventure.

Romero takes the character of a National Guardsman (Alan van Sprang) who appeared in Diary, and makes him the central figure of his new movie, leader of a band of mercenary guardsman roaming the country and stealing to survive. When they arrive at a possible island refuge off the Delaware coast, they discover a feud has broken out among the two families that inhabit the island, one that wants to eradicate the zombies, and another that, due to their Christian faith, wants to keep them alive and attempt to cure their hunger for human flesh and make them useful. Romero uses this Hatfield/McCoy scenario to examine the roots and folly of violent ideological conflict.

The director took a few questions from DCist prior to today’s opening: