Night of the Living Dead
d. George A. Romero, 1968
To keep it short, George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead is the most effective horror film I have ever seen, period. I am usually not very scared by movies, and even Romero's Dawn of the Dead (which I saw a long time ago) didn't frighten me. Some people have called Night of the Living Dead a political allegory for what America was going through in 1968, but I think that only understimates what Romero is actually trying to do, which is disturb the audience in a way that had never been done before. The story is quite simple, a brother and sister are visiting a cemetery to bring flowers to their father's grave. They see a man walking in a strange way around the cemetery - which is otherwise empty - without realizing that he is, indeed, the living dead. Barbara manages to get away and ends up in a farm house nearby, while the creatures gather outside the house. Romero introduces a couple more characters, and most of the film takes place inside the farm house. Not only was this an effective way for him to reduce the budget of the film, but it places it amongst the great claustrophic films (The Exterminating Angel and The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant), even if Romero is using this field in a much different way. The use of news reports was quite brilliant, as is most of everything else in the film, except for maybe the acting, but in a case like this I hardly think it matters. It all comes down to this: if you are looking for a horror movie, you won't do much better than Night of the Living Dead.
