Night of the Animated Dead (2021)
George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead is a true genre milestone that is praised not only by horror film fans but mainstream critics alike. If you are interested in watching an intelligent, well researched and entertaining documentary about the film’s provenance and cultural impact then I thoroughly recommend Birth of the Living Dead (2013) by Rob Kuhn. It tells you pretty much all you need to know about why this classic film is so important. As for Night of the Living Dead itself, it still holds up well after 53 years. It is the immediacy and relatability of the premise and overall story that still makes the film relevant. The zombies are purely a “MacGuffin” and the real focus of the plot is how people behave under pressure in life threatening situations. It’s a film about how we can react to the same situation differently and how cultural baggage and the need for people to be “right”, hinders co-operation and thwarts progress.
Birth of the Living Dead (2013)
These day’s zombies are a somewhat ubiquitous plot device and enjoy an entire literary, artistic and cinematic sub-genre. The Walking Dead is one of the most popular TV shows internationally and hundreds of thousands of gamers fight the undead, online every day. Yet there was a time when zombies were just a minor subset of the horror genre and far from a popular one. That all changed in 1968, when a low-budget, independent film called Night of the Living Dead was released upon an unsuspecting public. The movie’s impact upon the film industry and popular culture was extraordinary. Rob Kuhns’ appropriately titled documentary Birth of the Living Dead analyses the creation of George A. Romero’s seminal classic and strives to determine how a single movie could have such impact.