What, if anything, did you find scary or disturbing about the zombies in Night of the Living Dead? What was a particularly frightening or unsettling moment? If you didn’t find any moment got to you this way, why do you think the film failed? Pick a moment that you thought was supposed to be upsetting that fell flat for you.
8 thoughts on “Night of the Living Dead”
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The film Night of the Living Dead disturbed me most by its portrayal of human nature and reactions during a crisis. It reveals how, in desperate situations, people can become hysterical, unable to think clearly as they focus solely on their own and their families’ survival. For example, Barbara spends much of the film in a state of shock, partly because she was unaware of the unfolding events. After fleeing and leaving her brother behind, she is consumed with regret and hysteria upon realizing she left him outside with the strange creatures. While the violent reactions of the characters might initially seem exaggerated and excessive, they are reasonable within the context of the situation, where no one has any information or survival plan. This hysteria can lead to individuals sacrificing others, either by indirectly contributing to their deaths or intentionally causing harm.
Having seen numerous zombie films, the elements of this movie didn’t particularly frighten me. However, I appreciate its groundbreaking nature and how it established the basic “rules” for the zombie genre, like a shot in the head kills zombie, the virus/radiation is contagious etc. , including plot devices like internal strife when main characters are trapped in a safe house. Nevertheless, there were two scenes that I found genuinely frightening-one visual and one psychological. The first was the graphic depiction of zombies eating human flesh and bowels, which was shockingly explicit for me expecting more psychological horror than gore. I’m really interested to learn more about the cencorship this movie went through at the time. The second moment came at the film’s end when Ben was shot by the police. Although I had read that the film carries political undertones and critiques the system of its time, the stark portrayal of hopeless, systemic violence, more brutal than the zombies themselves, was shocking.
The film uses this running away and chasing dynamic to create fear in the audience. One of the scenes that I found particularly scary was during the movie’s opening. It was a scene where the zombie was chasing the women, and the women got into a car. While the woman is inside the vehicle, the zombie persists in getting into the car by slamming aggressively against the window. The zombie, unsuccessful in breaking the window with his hand, eventually grabs a brick and breaks down the window. I found this scene scary because of the way the camera captured the scene; I felt like I was also trapped inside the car with the woman. Also, the idea of being confined in a space where you are helpless to protect yourself heightens the fear of watching this scene.
I think a particular moment in which I felt frightened was when we actually see the zombies eating human flesh. Even though the picture is obviously very fake and the special effects are uncanny, to put it plainly, the actual thought of cannibalism taking place I found to be unsettling and even somewhat nauseating at some points. Coupled with the sound effects and the makeup, even though campy, I would imagine that audiences at the time would have been shocked upon seeing the film. As some other students have pointed out, though we are now accustomed to the idea of zombies and now have a very clear cut image of what a zombie is, audiences at the time didn’t. This newfound monster that comes from one of their own and actually devours them would have been not only disgusting but would’ve had to come from the mind of someone deeply disturbed or who at least had a twisted idea for a horror film. Not to say the concept isn’t extremely strong, but that it’s impact would’ve been far greater than any horror movie today.
I think there were two things that scared me the most about the zombies in this film, and the first was in the way they were presented. Because we have had years of zombie movies following this one, I am acutely aware of all of the “rules” surrounding zombies and how they operate. However, this film presents them as a mystery, and the audience as well as the characters are left in the dark for most of the film of how the zombies work. Even though I may “know” how to deal with zombies, watching characters figure this out in real time, make mistakes, and struggle to understand what they are facing made me even more scared for them, and added to the fear.
The other thing that scared me was simply their numbers. These days we have zombies that can run, jump, and have supernatural strength, but I think that the shambling masses in this film are almost even more scary. While the zombies are slow, their strength is in their numbers, and the images of characters being swallowed by the throngs of zombies were the most striking to me.
I’ve become familiarized with zombies in media over the years, especially the more “canon” renditions of them that are taken more seriously such as the Walkers in the Walking Dead. One of the aspects of zombies that make them less intimidating is that they’re slow moving. So, a moment that I found to be particularty unsettling was when the first zombie that was shown wasn’t slow at all once he found his target. He ran very fast, like a drunken man falling forwards. However, this contrast with the slower subsequent zombies made them appear much weaker individually. To me, it was more a point of confusion than a plot hole that made the movie fall flat. A scene that did damper the movie to me was when the teen couple, Thomas and Judy drove the truck away after it was set on fire with gasoline. The flaming vehicle was meant to add more distress to the situation, but frankly it annoyed me that it wasn’t abandoned outright.
My favorite horror moments in horror movies are when you have a nagging feeling something specifically terrible will happen, and then it does. Like that sounds utterly obvious, but I think to me, horror is taking tragedy and really expanding it past normalcy. and this movie does that really well a few times. The first one is the moment johnny dies, you know he’s going to come back as a zombie. But then the film goes on and you’re like “oh maybe that’s not what they’re gonna do” and then nope they do just that. And it’s pretty sad, and kind of horrifying. And then the same feeling with the little girl in the cellar becoming a zombie. And then the same feeling with Ben’s death. I know some people think stuff like that’s predictable, but I just don’t agree. it’s the same reason there are eighty five remakes of romeo and juliet, you know they’re gonna die its so obvious from the moment it begins, and then you’re still shocked and upset that they do. What makes horror so tense and so scary is when you know something bad is going to happen, you just don’t know when.
I also found many of the deaths to be shocking. Sometimes I feel, even in horror movies, that we as viewer’s feel as though we deserve a happy ending. Almost as a sort of reward for sticking around, even if the movie is “terrible”. Even though it was foreshadowed that something bad was going to happen to Ben, we place it somewhere moderate as we watch the movie. But instead, the plot decides to make the worst possible thing happen, after all it is a horror movie, or at least that was the justification I had for having the accept the ending.