Product: Night of the Living Dead (1990)
Rating: 4.0
Enter another world.
Warning: Spoilers below.To start off with I should admit that I don't really like this genre, or even the scary movie, much. Perhaps there is something visceral or primal about zombies but there's only so far you can go with them. For me it's about the allegory. Romero's zombies have evolved a life of their own. In the rest of the horror world, ghosts, werewolves and vampires, there's only a shadow of the zombie mystique. One horror director proclaimed, all scary movies have to have at least 3 things: The innocent must suffer. The guilty must be punished. And the dead must walk.Somewhere around Dawn of the Dead, with the black guy and the white girl escaping the zombies at the end of the film, to begin their love affair, I began to realize the hidden context. Like the Omega man, they are both the beginning and the end. I'd never guess the original was about anything but zombies, no matter how many times I watched it. If you look closer at the original, the black character who survives (and he actually does everything wrong) is the hero. He's both the leader and he's the only one who survives. In a twist at the end he's mistakenly shot by a posse moping up the last of the zombies. He's both the victor and the victim. If I had to say anything I would say the original Night of the Living Dead was an 'anti-racism' movie. I really don't think it's that good a movie out of it's context.Critic Roger Ebert claimed there's really not much reason to watch this remake because it follows the original so closely. It was so long since I watched the original I didn't notice the action in the movie was so similar. At least the new movie is in a different house. The success of the movie is due to the surprise shocking twist. A very shocking and effective twist; one of the most shocking if not the most shocking experience I've ever had watching television. It's a shock that occurs, partly from a visual sense but also from a realization in the viewers mind. You think you know where it's going? You don't. When Barbara (who unnoticed has pretty much taken over the movie, become the hero) when she ruthlessly murders one of the final characters, and the remaining characters, both black and white, emerge as zombies, the event is both shocking and so is the realization.I should admit I'm somewhat of an anti-feminist, and though it was a very surprising and effective movie, this may have something to do with my enjoyment and approval.