Night Of The Living Dead Film Analysis

What would you do if you were put in an extreme life or death situation in an area that you did not know with only complete strangers to trust? In George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, that nightmare becomes reality. Seven people are trapped inside a secluded house with no means of escaping the zombies attempting to break in (Romero). It is a simple plotline; however, Romero’s film is revolutionary in how it reveals the disparity between races during the time and how it shatters the picture the audience has in mind of how a film should end. Night of the Living Dead takes place in 1968 in a town near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The movie begins with what the audience would typically expect from a film of the time. A brother and sister

After all, everyone loves a happy ending where the main character survives and goes on to lead a happy, healthy life. Positive endings make us feel better about having just watched a horror movie where zombies attack and eat people for an hour and a half, because at least the person you were hopeful for managed to escape. However, in Night of the Living Dead, Romero gives the audience no such closure. Instead, after surviving the night by barricading himself in the cellar, Ben emerges and is shot by an army of men sent to kill any remaining zombies and then burned with the creatures (Romero). It is an extremely abrupt ending as just as it reaches what the audience assumes to be the resolution where Ben is saved, he is instead killed by the very people sent to protect him. The audience derives no comfort from the ending of the film. This approach is not one taken very often by filmmakers, but Romero was not afraid to break the mold and leave the audience in shock of what they just witnessed in the film. Furthermore, Romero’s ending provides further commentary on race of the time. Night of the Living Dead was released when the lynching and murder of African Americans was blatant due to the Civil Rights movement. Similar to this treatment, Ben is killed after he seemed to handle the worst of what life could throw at him. There is a certain kind of cruel irony in Ben’s death and how it relates to race relations of the