Dawn of the Dead

The dead now out-number the living. Two Philly S.W.A.T. team members, a traffic reporter, and his television executive girlfriend flee in a traffic helicopter, and eventually seek refuge in a secluded suburban shopping mall. Secluded, but not deserted…

George A. Romero’s follow-up to his landmark 1968 film Night of the Living Dead has a bigger budget and a wider scope. The setting opens up a delicious line in consumer satire, but Romero is also careful to orchestrate the mortal combat between the living and the undead with scrupulous attention to logic, to architectural space and physical constraints. Yes, these zombies are slow. But the action is relentless. This is one of the great suspense films, bursting with frankly horrific gore.

Dawn of the Dead is one of the best horror films ever made — and, as an inescapable result, one of the most horrifying. It is gruesome, sickening, disgusting, violent, brutal and appalling. It is also (excuse me for a second while I find my other list) brilliantly crafted, funny, droll, and savagely merciless in its satiric view of the American consumer society. Nobody ever said art had to be in good taste.

Roger Ebert