Face-Off: Night of the Living Dead vs. Dawn of the Dead

The characters in this film are a group of strangers who would have never crossed paths if not for the rise of the living dead, and some of them are not very happy that they have been stuck with each other. The strongest personalities are two men in conflict – Ben, the noble and likeable leader type, and Harry Cooper, a hot-headed coward with a wife, Helen, who isn’t too fond of him. Young Tom tries to find a middle ground between the two men. His girlfriend Judy is just a teenybopper. Our way into the film is a young woman named Barbra, but we sort of lose her along the way because her mind has been cracked by her experience with zombies. Don’t forget the sick girl in the basement. One of those things bit her… They’re an interesting mix of people, and what makes them so fascinating to watch is how different each one of them is and how differently they all react to the situation.

Cinema’s original flesh-eating ghouls first emerge on the screen as if they’re lumbering straight out of Barbra’s worst cemetery-set nightmares, and they never lose that nightmarish quality as the film goes on. Even though they’re incredibly slow, scared of fire, and easy to take on in small numbers, they are terrifying en masse. They relentlessly pursue victims, are insatiably hungry for human flesh, and there’s a grotesqueness to them that comes through more strongly in black & white than in color.

For a small town viewer like me, NIGHT has a very relatable setting – a farmhouse nestled in the open countryside. If a zombie outbreak were to happen, chances are good I’d be in a setting like this myself when the dead began to walk. There’s nothing special about this farmhouse, which helps the movie feel like it’s hitting close to home, as does the fact that the characters tune in to every newscast they can to try to get information on what’s happening beyond these walls.

There’s a feeling of dread that hangs over the entirety of NIGHT – you feel like something awful is going to happen. If you’ve seen the movie before, you know something awful is going to happen. There are a lot of scares in here, both in the way of jumps delivered by moments like the hands of the dead reaching through a boarded window, and by images that induce fear and unease: the sight of dead people shambling across a dark yard, busting their way into a house, surrounding characters. Dead loved ones show no sign of the love that had been there. A brother will devour a sister, a young girl will devour the flesh of her father and mercilessly stab her mother to death. It’s very creepy.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD is an intense, tragic film that doesn’t offer much in the way of intentional humor or lighthearted excitement. What makes this movie fun to watch is the fact that it’s a masterpiece of horror, an amazing achievement for an indie filmmaker, and it has great, memorable characters brought to life by a captivating cast. The ending may leave you feeling terrible, but there’s fun in watching something of such high quality even when it’s a downer.