Night of the Living Dead
Director: George A. Romero
Writer: George A. Romero, John A. Russo
Cast: Duane Jones, Judith O’Dea, Karl Hardman, Marilyn Eastman, Keith Wayne, Judith Ridley
Part of: The Living Dead series

Plot:
Barbra (Judith O’Dea) and her brother Johnny (Russell Streiner) travel to their father’s grave for their annual visit. While there, they are attacked by a strange and relentless man. Johnny is killed, but Barbra manages to flee to a nearby house. There she’s joined by Ben (Duane Jones) who is also on the run from the sudden mass murderers everywhere. While Barbra retreats more into her shock, Ben tries to figure out a plan to get away from what turns out to be the living dead.

I know that Night of the Living Dead is an important film for (horror) movie history and all, but I couldn’t help but be a little bored by it. It just works so much better on paper than when you actually watch it.

It’s really cool that the hero of the story is a black guy. It’s also amazing that they already had a child zombie in it that got to kill. And the ending is really shocking, in theory. But everything is so old and slow (and I’m aware that it probably means I’ve been ruined by modern cinema but that’s how I felt). It’s all just faintly ridiculous and just not scary to my contemporary and already pretty abused sensibilities.

Add to that that the acting was really, really bad. With the exception of Duane Jones – who was responsible that the strongest scene in the film is when he talks about how he fled the zombies first – the people in this film (I hesitate to call them actors) could barely string a sentence together.

If you put all of that togehter, it just meant that I stayed too distant from the film to really enjoy it. I didn’t find my point of entry, my connection to it. Maybe because it’s such a classic that I went straight into analyzing mode, but I’m afraid that it has more to do with my boredom.

What I did find interesting though, was the way the zombies worked in this film. For example, they were able to use tools, which you don’t really get anymore in the more modern zombie films. They were also rather fast and looked much more human. But these ruminations weren’t really enough to make the film totally engaging.

Summarising: Uhm, yeah. If you’re very interested in classic horror, watch it. Otherwise… nah.