Night of the Living Dead
August 04, 2006
"Night of the Living Dead," directed by George A. Romero
1968
This is the film that changed the way people think about horror movies. Before this, horror films were rarely actually horrifying. Often they were creepy, more often they were campy, but few since the silent era had managed to be disturbing. "NOTLD" is a disturbing movie. Opening with a brother and sister visiting a grave, the film quickly moves on to a violent apocalypse, as the dead rise and try to devour the living. The sister escapes to a farmhouse and is soon joined by a group of other survivors. They board up the house, argue and try to make it through the night as the dead bang on the walls and try to smash their way through. The film is practically a blank slate for reading the social troubles of the time into it (everything from racism to the Vietnam war), but it hardly requires a subtext to work. Everything about the movie is oppressive, from the claustrophobia inducing set to the off-kilter camera angles. No release is ever given, even in the film's nihilistic ending. Causing controversy yet spreading untold influence, the film changed how horror films are made, how independent movies are thought of, and also brought the idea of zombies to the popular consciousness. One of the most important films in American cinema history, and one thats brutality and horror wouldn't be matched until six years later with the release of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre."
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