Review of Night of the Living Dead

*** Major Spoilers ***

This movie is by no means horrible. Seen outside of the context of the NOTLD series, it wouldn't be a bad popcorn muncher. Arguably, it even improves on the original in some ways, but in most ways it pales in comparison.

• On the positive side, the acting is better than the original, and the production values are improved. This is not a major shock given the tiny budget of the original (only $114,000) and the unknown cast and crew culled from the Pittsburgh area theater and local commercial circuit.

• Some might feel that the Barbara character is an upgrade. I feel neutral on that. In the original, Barbara was nearly a vegetable, but this is in line with the shock we might expect from her trauma, and in the end she does try her best to help out, and we appreciate her effort to overcome the shock. Yet I did enjoy the new Barbara's role as an interesting twist.

• Some might argue that this version is better because it is in color, though I would disagree strongly. I feel that the black & white original, along with its wooden performances and choppy editing, actually added to the creepiness of the movie.

The original was groundbreaking in many ways. The remake, however, is merely conventional. That doesn't make it bad, but it does make it irrelevant.

Here are some ways where the remake fails to deliver:

• When Barbara first enters the house, she leaves the door standing fully open. This is despite the fact that she is being chased by a couple of zombies who had killed her brother and tried to kill her. She never tries the phone, which is inexplicable. Even the vegetable Barbara from the original movie had that much sense.

• The people in the house wait waaaayyyy too long before beginning to board up the house. There is no logic or explanation for why it takes the zombies so long to cross the lawn (seemingly hours, from daylight to darkness) and start attacking a house full of juicy meat.

• Often in the midst of zombie attacks, some people in the house manage to allow themselves to focus on other matters. This seems implausible.

• The lonely, shocked aspect of Barbara wandering around the creepy house looking for wood amidst the animal heads and jewelry box is completely gone, yet those scenes set much of the critical tone in the original.

• We never see the dead really devouring the living. I guess it's just assumed that the audience understands what is going on.

• The radio and TV broadcasts were an essential component of the original, not only for expository purposes (what is happening? why is it happening? what do we do about it?) but again for setting the tone for showing the widespread nature of the attacks and defining this house and its inhabitants as being truly on their own. One could really place themselves in a similar position, and watching the world kind of falling apart through local emergency TV broadcasts was riveting.

• The fact that zombies catch fire easily is not exploited at all as in the original. The scenes with the flaming chair and the Molotov cocktails were effective in the original, but gone in the remake.

• The remake added a strong female character, but at the same time the Mrs. Cooper character became weaker and less effective.

• The scene in the original that really sent audiences into shock and really made this movie famous was the basement scene with the child killing her mommy with a garden trowel. It was extremely graphic although mostly done in shadow, and as I recall there were reports of people fainting in theaters. This is just totally gone in the remake. The subsequent scenes of the girl eating her parents are also gone. Wow, so much for shock value.

• The death of Ben was a major shock moment in the original that is completely lost. The new ending is interesting enough but somewhat predictable and trite. The original ending was truly... original. It was definitely not a conventional happy or even moderately hopeful ending, resulting in people walking out of theaters quiet with their thoughts - a real win for a director.

• The musical score in the remake is just awful. It's distracting and inappropriate. By comparison, the spartan soundtrack of the original was extremely effective and creepy in a Hitchcock sense, varying from screeches to soundlessness, to heartbeat sounds.

In summary, it's an OK movie worth watching, but if you're a fan of the series don't expect it to be a suitable replacement for the original.