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.
9 thoughts on “Night of the Living Dead”
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A moment that I found scary was how a lot of the dead looked alive. The music that was playing gave the film to me this eerie feeling of watching the movie. At some points the music scared me more than the film. The thought of the dead coming back to feast on the living and having to fight for survival is what made the movie scary. Seeing this movie as a kid frightened me to believe that the dead would actually come alive to get me. What also set the scary mood that I felt was so realistic was Johnny and Barbara visiting the cemetery and seeing a walking corpse there first instead of seeing one on the road. Them having to escape the cemetery a place where everyone is dead set the mood for the entire film to me.
I was most disturbed by the ending of the film. Where most other scenes were easily predicted, the final image of Ben being shot jarred me. I was expecting him to join the force of local gunslingers and police after being saved. This would have sent a message that would be agreeable in both the American north and south (I thought this film was made in Hollywood, not an indy film). Instead, the local militia came off as a bunch of hicks who were disturbingly happy killing the once-living people.
I remain confused about the messaging in the movie. There were no inherently ‘good’ characters and therefore no clear message about who should be given respect. Ben was the only rational character, but also uniquely selfish. He had no family to protect and showed little remorse when other characters died as a consequence of his actions. Similarly, the militia was introduced in a positive light, doing the work that the national guard was clearly unequipped to do. However, they turned out to be a bunch of idiots taking enjoyment in blasting their guns at whatever moved. Who are we meant to respect? Who is the target audience for this film? Was that target audience happy with the outcome or disturbed? I would love to discuss these questions in class.
I found the zombies in Night of the Living disturbing because of their lack of humanness, eager to eat the flesh of their victims. The montage of organs being eaten was the most frightening moment of the film for me because it is so grotesque. Some of the zombies are well-dressed, even mild-mannered, yet they are shown ripping organs and barbarically consuming them. However, the violence in the film is somewhat undermined by the sound design. Whenever someone is stabbed or shot, it is hardly shocking. The sounds are played down. There is little room for unsettling imagination when the stabbing sounds are akin to a block of wood being hit. The zombies, ultimately, were not the scariest part of the movie for me: they were a backdrop. The horror was how the dregs of humanity coped with this external force. It was how Barbara’s mind was scrambled for most of the movie. She has completely lost herself, tracing silently over the doily on the couch. It is disturbing how fast the self fades away.
Night of the Living Dead struggled to captivate my attention in a way that the other movies we had watched effectively had, and in turn I found it to be much less disturbing. Every aspect of the movie seemed slow. The zombies moved slowly, the protagonists reacted slowly, and I wasn’t quite able to suspend my disbelief because of how slow everything seemed to be moving. In addition, the audio often seemed to be added in after the scene causing moments that should have made a sound to be dead quiet, or for sounds to come out that didn’t match what was on screen, which was more confusing than anything. A scene that was meant to be horrifying that failed for me was when the zombies finally began to break into the house and they were grasping onto the woman who was holding the door closed. The audio never quite matched what was happening on screen, and while she apparently could not move, it looked like the hands were barely grabbing her. I felt as though not much effort was put into perfecting the details of each scene in the way that they were in a movie like Peeping Tom.
While I was aware that this was a low budget indy film, I had high expectations for the original zombie movie that overtook box offices everywhere. I was ready and anticipating being properly scared. I do not think my expectations were met, a few of the scenes meant to be frightening falling flat for me, notably the scene in which Helen was killed by her now-zombie daughter. The slow approach of a zombie-fied loved one, hell bent on killing and devouring you, is a harrowing thought. However the non-attempt of Helen to escape, the cheesy echo of her scream, the focus in on only Helen’s face as she was being stabbed, did not make for the most scary scene. I did find that the film did an excellent job in the first zombie scene of the film, in which Barbara was fleeing for her life. The play on sounds, from near silence to full blown unsettling music, really did its job at making me tense up. It was an effective way to up the anti on a low budget. In many ways I think the Night of the Living Dead surmounted its low budget challenges, the scenes that fell flat detracting from the scariness but not detracting from the enjoyment of the overall film to a significant degree.
The only moment that got me remotely unsettled or “scared” was the jump scare of the mutilated face at the top of the stairs, primarily due to the sudden image and jarring music played at the same time, but it was a quick recovery afterwards. It was unexpected, Other than that, the awkward transitions, the cheesy voice/sound effects, the “theater” script, and the not-very-convincing acting were constant reminders that we were just watching a movie, rather than being able to feel fully immersed and terrified, as we were perhaps supposed to be. One scene that I believe was meant to be one of the more disturbing but didn’t quite succeed for me was the murder of Mrs. Cooper. Being stabbed to death by her own zombified daughter is sickening, fair enough, but the fact that we didn’t see anything but Mrs. Cooper’s face and the overdone reverb effect on her screams made it a significantly less terrifying scene. The film was definitely doing a decent job considering its very low budget, but I think this restriction prevented it from really selling the fear factor as much as it could have.
I think the most unsettling moment in the movie was when the zombies were eating the bones and flesh of the people that died. It was unsettling because how up close the camera was to their faces and their mouths. Also, it was disturbing because the zombies seemed so ravenous and like they were starved and waiting for this human flesh. The scene kept getting more gruesome as the camera kept showing parts of human bodies being devoured. Another really unsettling moment in the movie was in the very first scene. The scene where Johnny is making fun of Barbara for being scared of the cemetery actually becomes a reality. This, to me, was one of the scariest scenes because something playful and real turned into something so horrible. I can also relate to the joking aspect of the scene because my friends or brothers do that to me when they know that I am scared of something. They try to make me more scared by joking about it. If the ‘scary’ jokes actually became a reality like it did for Barbara, I would be so horrified. I think a scene that was supposed to be unsettling that felt flat was when the daughter ate and killed her parents. It was gruesome, for sure, but it also didn’t make me that upset in the long run. In theory it is very gruesome and gross, but I felt it coming for a while and felt a foreshadowing throughout much of the film that I didn’t feel so shocked when it actually happened. One last thing I will mention is the ending scene. I thought it was really frustrating that Ben died the way he did, in a mistaken way. He was so brave and smart during the film trying to save himself and others all to die in such an anticlimactic way.
The movie was captivating until the primary character, in my perspective, was suddenly killed by the local authorities due to a mistaken belief that he was a zombie. While I initially aimed to avoid delving into a political critique of this aspect of the film, I found it exceedingly difficult to ignore the blatant injustice of the situation. It was interesting to have a black man in one of our screenings for the first time, who ultimately became an essential element of the storyline. Ben, the central black protagonist, embodies a protective figure against human annihilation. Despite encountering resistance to his methods, he leads people towards an effective survival strategy, guiding them away from the bizarre cannibals. It’s only natural for any viewer to align with Ben as he endeavors to triumph over these macabre creatures. His practical and resourceful behavior kindles the hope that the hero will ultimately survive. However, the local authorities display ignorance and a lack of proper discernment, as they hastily assume everyone is a zombie and administer a fatal shot without thorough examination. This distressing aspect can be seen as an allegory, illustrating the inherent flaws within governmental judicial institutions. The movie’s ending left me with several lingering questions. I wondered if the outcome would have been different if the main character, Ben, was white. There is also some curiosity about the underlying political message within that ending, especially given the prevalent racial inequalities of the time. One might consider whether the ending might symbolize a historical event like the Civil War. It’s evident that there’s much to unpack here, and finding definitive answers to these questions proves to be a complex task.
Having had the preface before screening that this movie would be “as indy as indy films get,” I adjusted my expectations. I wasn’t expecting exceptional special effects or starpower, so instead I shifted my focus to the logical progressions of the characters, their developments, the tensions present (especially in 1968) and the feasibility of the solution to the apocalypse. The first thing that I didn’t understand was the cause of the outbreak. I understand there was an explosion which released radiation, but I didn’t understand how the radiation only affected dead people and why its effect was bringing the dead back to life. After dismissing that, I thought the behavior of the outbreak was pretty satisfying. The zombies seemed to be perfectly congruent with the previous notions of zombies I had- slow, cannibalistic, stupid. I didn’t find anything particularly scary about the zombies. I think the only really scary thing about them is the numbers they move in. That said, if all the dead people were re-invigorated, and you assume that each zombie kills multiple people, there should be an exponential curve to zombie population growth that would quickly outnumber the authorities and the national guard. Every dead person ever and the ones that are currently dying should totally overwhelm even just the number of bullets. However, the spirit of my reflection is not to knock this movie. For the living characters, I actually found them very interesting, and the way their anxieties and actions played with each other made for a very tense environment within the house. The way the news team was spliced into the story with updates, and the repeating tracks of the radio acted as a score was a cool way to keep an audience informed without the updates seeming too didactic to an audience member. As for the resolution, or lack thereof, I think it was shocking and unsatisfying, but also made the movie a lot more interesting than a successful rescue. The guard and police on the search and destroy mission were determined, above all else, to keep themselves safe, and they certainly did. Sadly, it was at the tragic expense of our protagonist, for whom we have some cognitive dissonance, but aligned ourselves with as living audience members.