The film is your basic survival film. Zombies are attacking and a bunch of people are in a small house to fight off the creatures until help comes.
Let's start with our group of survivors. First off our hero is an African American and to have an African American be the star of a film at the time was very rare and uncommon, especially in films like this. Our heroes name is Ben and boy does he kick some serious zombie ass. He's heroic, he's calm, he's brave, he takes no crap, he's just a plan cool badass. Then we have a hysterical female victim named Barbra who lost her brother Johnny from a zombie and while being powerfully acted and likable, all she does is scream and get scared. Then there's a teenage love couple, who are very likable, well acted but man did George have a plan for them! Finally there's the Cooper family lead by a grouchy father with an injured daughter. The father is the character you love to hate due to his attitude, only carrying for himself and his fate is just great. The acting is very powerful in this film and the interactions between all the characters is perfect and realistic.
Now lets talk about why the film is so great. First off the zombies, George really pushed the envelope with zombies in this film. Some looked gory, they eat peoples flesh, they looked scary, there was action with gore and even though it doesn't look much now, people were scared crapless at the time and even today I personally find it scary but mostly unsettling. In fact, I love that the film just starts out with zombies attacking then trying to explain to the audience on how they became zombies which most films wouldn't normally do. The film was also made when color films were big but George decided to go with the black & white and to be honest that's what makes the film so good and brings some great atmosphere along with the music and sound. The cinematography is really great and what I find scary about this film is it feels like that we're trapped with the survivors. The dialogue in this film well written, keeps you interested in what's going on and it's chilling. As for the ending, well it's really dark.
This film is thee important zombie film and without zombie films would look more like "White Zombie" or "The Last Man On Earth" then being gory looking flesh eaters. This is also what I call, George A. Romero's not only best film but very risky film as well.
RATING 5/5
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