Night of the Living Dead: A Retrospect

"They're coming to get you, Barbara...."

I absolutely love "Night of the Living Dead." I love that George A. Romero's directorial debut became his most famous work. I love the unpolished, unglamorous, matter-of-fact look of the film. I love its narrative simplicity. I love that it spawned countless movies and games trying to imitate its style. I love the way the plot twists and turns. I love the mystery. I love the scares. I love almost everything about this film. Night of the Living Dead is, no question, one of my favorite classic movies, and I wanted to dedicate an article to talking about why. Now, I hope I'm not coming across as one of those artsy-fartsy, high-brow critics who dismisses any movie made after the year 1990, so I want to state that I am well aware that the saying "no one makes good movies anymore" is pretentious and dismissive stupidity. Far be it from me to automatically give a movie a few extra stars because it's old or ignore a movie simply because it was released in recent years. There are many, many old movies that almost everyone has never heard of because they were relegated to the dustbin of history for the crime of being bad. However, I do believe that there are many valuable lessons to be learned from classic films that have stood the test of time and breached the boundaries of generational audiences, and I think we would be prudent to heed their lessons. This is why I have dedicated a series of articles to talking about classic movies that have inspired filmmakers over the ages. I want to talk about why they have become so influential and hopefully learn some things myself and how I view movies along the way. Our next destination? Pennsylvania, 1968.

For those of you who haven't seen the film, Night of the Living Dead follows a ragtag group of people in rural Pennsylvania as they take shelter from the reanimated dead inside a farmhouse. However, as tends to happen in zombie movies, it's only a matter of time until things start to go horribly wrong...

First off, I want to remind all of you that color in films first became a mainstream commodity in the late 1950's. That means that George Romero could have shot the film in color. And yet, in 1968 of all years, he opted to shoot Night of the Living Dead in black and white. It's an interesting choice, but I would argue that it adds a very timeless feel to this film and even makes it feel a little older than it actually is. In addition, Night of the Living Dead just feels like a nightmare. I don't really have any other way to describe it. The black and white coloring of the film is surreal and combined with the very grounded nature of the film, it almost feels like watching a documentary in all the right ways. It feels very real, and this paradoxically makes the film feel surreal. I don't really know how to describe it other than that, but if you watch the film, the instant you hear the radio, you'll immediately catch on to what I'm trying to say here. This movie is ugly, and the crude visuals of the film just look visceral, believable, and right.

If you've read my blog, you have probably picked up by now that I'm big on well-executed and simple movies containing interesting and complex ideas. This specific dynamic, when done properly, ensures that a movie sticks with its viewers for a long time while also avoiding the trap of becoming overly convoluted and bloated. Night of the Living Dead is about as simple a story as you can possibly write, but there's a beauty to its simplicity, which enhances the interpersonal conflicts of the characters as well as the general atmosphere of the film, the latter of which became a major player in the success of Night of the Living Dead. The entire film is, more or less, set inside a small farmhouse and largely ignores the wider world, except through very limited radio broadcasts that offer us small glimpses of what's happening outside. It's an interesting technique that adds to the mystery of the film, and this mystery is, in all honesty, the most interesting thing about this film because the spectacle-delivering action sequences in this film are few and far between. And I know that probably sounds shallow for me to bring up action, but let's be honest here. We watch zombie movies to watch undead heads get blown up, and if that's not really happening, intrigue and mystery are next up on our list of priorities and a little bit more artistically sound than blood and brains flying all over the place. This is a big reason as to why I love Night of the Living Dead. It more or less perfects the latter technique.

As far as the idea of "more bang for your buck" goes, Night of the Living Dead took this memo to heart. Adjusted for inflation, the budget of this film sat at less than one million dollars, which is a shoestring budget for a big Hollywood production. However, one reason original films tend to be remembered so fondly while sequels often have more of a bad reputation is exactly because of those budgetary restraints. These limits forced the filmmakers to forgo explaining, fleshing out, and showing the entire situation these characters are going through. We are just as in the dark about this outbreak as these characters are, and as I mentioned earlier, this creates an air of mystery that would likely have been severely lacking in a more expensive movie. This film is instead forced to focus on what matters: these characters and their interpersonal relationships. To take this line of thought a step further, this film uses its grounded and limited perspective to explore some racially charged ideas, whether intentionally or unintentionally, through the character of Ben, and while I admit that a lot of themes surrounding race have grown tiresome in recent years, at the time, these ideas were pretty much unheard of in movies at the time, and are presented in a much more nuanced manner that's more up to interpretation than obvious, and I think that this movie's restraint has led to more meaningful discussions about this issue than any forced, unimaginative, and underdone virtue-signaling ever will. I guess what I'm saying here is that the thematic resonance of the film has everything to do with its characters, and its characters have everything to do with these lingering ideas.

If nothing else, never forget that Night of the Living Dead spawned countless imitators for a reason. It's a raw film, especially considering the time period in which it was released, and it's simply quite good as well. Now, of course, it struggles with some issues, namely a rather abrupt and matter-of-fact finale that felt very jarring, considering the slow burn that the film had previously seemed to commit to, but overall, Night of the Living Dead is a fantastic film, and I absolutely had to dedicate a retrospective article to it. As for the young ones and any concerns you might have about a zombie film, it's really tame compared to modern romps featuring the undead, but it can still be somewhat frightening, contains a light spattering of swear words, and has one scene where some random female zombie is briefly shown buck naked from the rear, which honestly isn't as bad as I make it sound here. If you have middle or high schoolers who are into film history, I would immediately recommend this piece of it. And for your information, unless the YouTube totalitarians removed it, I am aware of at least one free copy of the film that is on the platform. But I'm not checking. I'm on Wix instead of YouTube for a reason. But that's my piece on Night of the Living Dead. I hope you liked it.

Night of the Living Dead - 8/10

Romans 12:18