Day of the Dead (1985)

Director: George A. Romero

Cast: Lori Cardille, Terry Alexander, Joe Pilato, Richard Liberty

Have I Seen It Before: Never*.

Did I Like It: I wonder sometimes where I developed my social allergy to the zombie genre. I’m not entirely sure why it’s been such a mystery. Zack Snyder (there he is again) tried to make the genre something palatable to the widest audience possible, and The Walking Dead tried (and, one supposes, is still trying) to make prestige drama out of the material.

At it’s best, it’s neither of those things. Romero understood this. That’s why his movies (still) work. There’s an unflinching, and yet somehow still savagely entertaining quality about Romero’s undead. They may have been fairly tame ghouls in Night of the Living Dead (1968), but by the time he really got cooking with Dawn of the Dead (1978), there’s an equal measure of social commentary on display, and the zombies are truly dead bodies come to life. Organs are sliding out of them. They are wet, and slimy. I don’t want to be around them, and yet I cannot look away. Today’s zombies are just rot moving around. Less interesting.

But what’s more, rot can’t be avoided. We are all headed into the dirt in one form or another, so watching Rick** and company perpetually lose the battle to not rot is just a stone cold bummer. The people in Romero’s films are in an intractable situation, to be sure. But even then, there might be hope. There’s hope of escape by helicopter. There’s somewhere to go on a beachhead. There’s even a solid attempt at living like a human underground while the zombies rule above.

I guess it took this film for me to realize I don’t hate Zombies, I just hate nihilism. Who knew?

*While this does prove to be the 1,001st on the site, since I asked Lora to pinch-hit for me for Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2017), this winds up being my 1,000th review. Technically.

**The only character on The Walking Dead whose name I can 100% remember and pick out of a lineup.

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

Director: George A. Romero

Cast: David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott Reiniger, Gaylen Ross

Have I Seen it Before: Somewhere in the deeper corners of my mind is a half-remembered lazy weekend afternoon in college where I watched it. I thought it was sort of fine, back then. This, of course was before The Walking Dead managed to beat out of me any possible enjoyment I could have for the zombie genre.

Did I Like It: But, against all odds, I liked it even better this time. Maybe I’m mellowing as Walking Dead no longer has its cultural ubiquity that it once did, and I can just sit back and enjoy such a story without having to roll my eyes at the army of people out there who fancy themselves Daryl Dixon.

First of all, the film is legitimately funny, while still maintaining the tension of the threat that surrounds them. The echo of the emptiness of contemporary American life in the 1970s—spoiler: it’s only gotten worse in the 2020s—permeates every moment of the film, even the ones you wouldn’t necessarily think about. This leaves one—and it might be cliché to even mention this—with a zombie story that is not only immensely entertaining, but with something to say.

Even if the message somehow got lost over time or by the medium, one still can’t help but marvel at the singular focus of Romero. Some filmmakers got stuck in a particular genre due to commercial constraints. Maybe this happened to Romero a little bit, but I also tend to think he kept making zombie films—and didn’t terribly stray terribly far from the zombie path when he did branch out—because he truly loved them and wanted to try and do new things with the form. This is the masterpiece of a true artist at work.

Just please don’t make me watch the Zack Snyder version. There’s only so much I can take.