The Living Dead Series

ZOMBIES!!!!

George Romero

Who doesn't love a good zombie flick? In the last several years especially, the popularity of zombies has risen. Most big cities have a zombie walk event, and various zombie themed things and stuff. Yeah, I got lazy with that last sentence.

I was in the mood to enjoy a good zombie flick and I came to the realization that I have never seen Night of the Living Dead. Director George Romero created this horror classic. In fact, Romero is the godfather of modern day zombies. Before Night of the Living Dead, zombies showed up in movies about voodoo and they were just people under mind control. Romero took a much scarier approach by making the zombies the walking dead.

So I decided that if I'm going to watch NOTLD I might as well watch all of the Romero zombie series. So I did.

The first movie up is Night of the Living Dead of course. Fuck, this movie still holds up. What's great about George Romero's movies is he adds some social commentary. The movies are about the people in them and the zombie apocalypse is simply the backdrop. This is indie filmmaking at it's finest.

Next up is Dawn of the Dead. I saw the 2004 Zach Snyder remake before I ever saw the original and I think that made this hard. The remake is so very very good. After seeing that, this one just could not compare. I didn't like what they did with the makeup for the zombies in this one. They were all blue. What's up with that? Did all these people die of suffocation? I'd recommend that you pass over this one and go straight for the 2004 remake. I think it might be the best zombie film ever made.

Day of the Dead really surprised me. For some reason I didn't expect this one to be good, but it was great. Again Romero focuses on the struggle between the people in the story. This movie also shows us that the zombies do have little intelligence and a flicker of a memory.

The only movie from the Living Dead series that I saw in a theater is Land of the Dead. This one was the only big budget movie in the series. George Romero deserved this. He deserved the known actors and the amazing makeup effects. I didn't like this movie when I first saw it, but I have completely changed my mind on that. This movie is awesome on the effects alone. In a world of overdone CGI effects it's great to see a film make use of the extremely talented effects artists who make the gore look real and not like a video game.

Diary of the Dead is where things get, lets say cheap. I have to admit that I could not finish this movie. I know that it is in no way fair to comment on a movie that you didn't finish, but I just couldn't. The acting was pretty bad and the effects were all cheap CGI. I was really bummed out at what was happening to the series.

Finally, the most recent in the series is Survival of the Dead. This one is more of the same as the last one. Like the other films, this one deals with the struggle between people. In this case it's to feuding families. The problem is that I don't find any of the characters interesting. I don't feel invested enough to care if any of them live or die. I guess the idea was to side with one of the families, but I really felt like I was on the side of the zombies.

Make no mistake that George Romero is fucking king in the horror scene. I just really hope that Survival of the Dead is not the end of the series. I hope he goes out with a bang. There really isn't an ending to any of the movies and that's the idea. The zombies go on and on. Maybe one of these days Romero will write and ending and close the book. I hope it's good. I promise you I'll see it no mater what. Zombies are awesome!!!!