Night Of The Living Dead Details

[Highly rated reviewer]

They're coming for you, Barbara...

This is an essential piece of Cinema. The film that coined the expression 'Video Nasty'. Ok, so it looks a bit dated now, the acting's a bit hammy, but it was made in 196bloody8! Check out other horror films of this era and you'll see how graphic and controversal this film was. This film is as influential to modern horror films as the beatles are to modern pop music. And it's sequels only got better..

Seminal horror

This film, the first of George A. Romero's 'Trilogy of the Dead', was the inspiration for almost countless zombie movies made in the 35-plus years since it was made.

The premise is simple and one we are probably all well acquainted with; the dead are coming back to life, attacking the living. Survivors in a remote part of America find refuge in an 'abandoned' house and must do their best to defend themselves until help arrives, hopefully in the form of some gun-happy yokels.

The claustrophobic camerawork, teamed with the general absence of a score (this is a very quiet film) and sporadic attacks from the zombies lend themselves brilliantly to the build up of tension.

The undead evoke an initial 'stupid-therefore-harmless' feeling. They are slow and seem easily escapable, but are relentless, stopping at nothing to get their fill of fresh human flesh, their lumbering becoming a taunting panic-inducing gesture -'I'm going to eat you! But I'll make you wait for it! Hahaha!' (not a quote, unfortunately).

This primary reaction to the idea of the dead being resurrected is unsettlingly joined by that of how we would deal with our loved ones becoming the exactly what we are trying to escape/defeat, our ability to empathise being called into question regularly.

Distracting at times, Night of the Living Dead can seem rather amateurish, the acting sometimes wooden, sometimes conversely hyperbolic, and occasionally in the same performance. In terms of production there is some form of a disclaimer in the opening credits, the fledgling talents of (if my memory serves me well) a college film team being utilised.

If you watch thinking that everything will be alright in the end; think again. The constituent films of this trilogy famously have very bleak endings, leading us to think, as Romero (although he more in social and moral terms) did; 'what will become of the human race?'.