Night of the Living Dead, Directed by George A. Romero

The first five minutes of the film features the famous line, “They’re coming to get your, Barbra!”

They didn’t come fast enough.

I really, really wanted to like the movie. I took deep breaths and told myself that even though the movie is nearly 50 years old, it’s a classic for a reason. Even if it’s because it’s so bad it’s good. I also told myself not be a snob about it being in black and white. Plenty of great films are in black and white. Miracle on 34^th Street. Clerks. The first fifteen minutes of The Wizard of Oz. B movies rarely take advantage of the latest in film-making technology, and the same holds true in Romero’s Living Dead.

I know I’m going against the grain, but there are multiple reasons it took me nearly a week to get through, in 15 minute increments.

1.)    Awful acting. The best actor in the movie died in the first ten minutes. He issued his warning (albeit, it was in regards to something altogether different) and then got into the lamest fight ever with a zombie, er, ghoul. We are then subjected to a litany of bad actors who yell for no reason.

2.)    Bad script. The concept was good. No, great. You take Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend and swap out vampires with zombies, er, ghouls and you get Night of the Living Dead. Romero admitted it was a direct rip-off of the book in an interview with Cinemablend in 2008. The dialogue, on the other hand, was just terrible. From Ben’s over-the-top berating of everybody in his immediate area (and he’s the hero?), to Barbra’s catatonic presence throughout. And things escalate quickly. A disagreement over where to hole up quickly devolves into a gun grab. There’s no opportunity to develop the characters. None. There are no arcs, no moments of redemption. No heroics. We literally sit down and just watch people die for 95 minutes.

3.)    Abhorrent cinematography. I’ve seen B movies that understand its budgetary limitations and attempts to compensate with creative camera angles or increased thematics. That doesn’t happen here. The filmmakers do little more than show up with a camera. Yes, there are a couple of attempts to get “artistic,” but they feel forced. They were using B&W film, yes, but instead of using it for effective contrast like what we see in Psycho, we just get a swirling mass of grey, dark grey, and black.

4.)    Where are the scares? I didn’t feel any build-up. There was one attempt at a jump scare. We are given gore for gore’s sake, and I guess that was what passed as scary in the late 60s. No, that’s not the case. Rosemary’s Baby came out the same year and had all the elements Living Dead lacked.

5.)    “They’re coming to get you, Ben.” The last five minutes of the movie is a search party under no threat as it systematically dispatches remaining zombies, er, ghouls. One might think, “well that’s just fine!” Well it wasn’t fine. Ask Ben.

It was just such an abrupt end. It didn’t leave anything to the imagination of the viewer. It didn’t hint at a world-ending apocalypse. It was really just a single night of living dead.

So what would I have done differently? I think I would have made the Barbra character stronger. Even for the era this was made she was too weak. It was the sixties! Women’s lib and such! And the best we could get from Barbra was a half-hearted attempt to hold one end of a board in place for Ben as he nailed it over it a door.

I would have beefed up the dialogue a bit, too. Over the course of the entire movie there were really only two dialogues going on, and one was a monologue due to Barb’s silence. The other was whether to go to the basement or stay upstairs. Sure, there were moments that took us away from those two conversations, but the film always went back to them.

Overall, I didn’t find this movie as enjoyable as I should have. It makes me wonder if there’s something wrong with me as a horror writer. Were my expectations too high? Or do I just not know a good film when I see it?