Review of Night of the Living Dead (1968) by Grant M — 14 Jul 2017

Night of the Living Dead does a marvelous job of creating tension despite how non-intimidating the zombies seem. It uses a combination of music and clever staging in order to make the danger palpable. I also liked how the movie kept going back to the tense score so that I never knew when something was really coming to get them, and other times the score would drop out and I'd be surprised by a jump scare.

So the tone of the film worked for me, but it did indulge a bit in the kind of horror I'm less thrilled with, which is gruesome imagery. It wasn't a long sequence and I've seen worse, but watching the zombies actually consuming flesh was a bit rough for me. It works though, because any thoughts viewers like me might have had about the zombies being less than scary were washed away after seeing that.

The interaction of the living characters was what really drove this movie. I appreciated how each person seemed to react to the apocalypse differently. It came to the point where the zombies weren't even an issue because the people were all so worked up in their own ideas of what to do. The women were a tad underwritten, but I guess that's just a sign of the times, because a lot of movies from that era used the damsel-in-distress angle.

The fights with the zombies (and between the humans) were terrible. The pulled punches were all obvious, and the awkward pushing and shoving looked fake. It lessened the zombies in my eyes, particularly in the first half, because they were so awful at showing the danger in those early struggles. I loved when they introduced Ben because he seemed like such a level-headed and intelligent guy, but his early scenes of fighting the zombies were so clumsy I almost laughed out loud.

Despite that fact, I think the most surprising thing about Night of the Living Dead is that I didn't hate it. In fact, there was quite a bit I liked about it. I can see in this movie some of the groundwork that was laid for hundreds of other zombie movies after it. It might have worked better if they didn't feel the need to explain why it was all happening, but I think that tapped into the fear people had in the 60s of radiation. This isn't the type of movie I'm likely to watch again, but it is one I'm glad I've seen.