Day of the Dead is famously known as the third chapter in George Romero’s zombie trilogy and as such, being a third film and all, it may not rank as high on some people’s meters as the first two films but it does have its positives and is ultimately a very good movie.

For this entry, Romero had to go through many revisions of his script, looking to find that balance between what he wanted and what the studio and budget would allow. While one might never know what that first version might have contained or how they might have turned out, this movie would focus on the psychological horror of a post-apocalyptic future where the dead roam the land and humanity is scarce. When watching this, one would think of the term rats in a cage and all that entails and perhaps that was something that might have passed through Romero’s head as this film features several people essentially stuck in a bunker, supplies running scarce, men dying, research stalling and everyone getting on everybody else’s nerves. It is a fascinating bit of horror that some might find a little sluggish because there is little action to be had and when there is a bit, it tends to be explosive in nature and often of the verbal kind rather than the physical. It all goes hand-in-hand with the tale that Romero is trying to tell and he does what is needed to get it across. Some might want to compare this to his earlier films and that would be doing it a disservice as it is unlike Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Living Dead despite being in the same celluloid universe.

Bringing this horror to life is done in two ways, the actors who star within and the practical effects by the master, Tom Savini. The zombies themselves were not as frightening as they could have been, most of them just looked like regular people with a little facepaint. Rather cheap actually but given there was a fairly constrained budget it is understandable. Savini would really work his magic on the more visceral aspects that would take place, namely that of people being torn apart, getting bitten and so forth. It was bloody and gruesome and it looked great. It is easy to see how the characters in the picture did not want to end up as victims of the walking dead and would beg to be killed or would take their own lives to avoid it. Even better are the cast’s reactions to the death and destruction around them as they make the audience believe in their fear. That is better than having a big budget for special effects because it is the human element that really makes it all come alive and more importantly, relatable.

Night of the Living Dead would introduce readers to a new kind of post-apocalyptic horror from the mind of Romero, though zombies themselves had been around for decades. It would continue in Dawn of the Dead, considered by more than a few to be the best of the series as mankind would look to survive those that would make them extinct. Day of the Dead, the third entry is not a film that would be as exciting as the previous two, at least for its first few acts but it might be the best of the lot given its look at the human experience in this new world. How would mankind fare under the most intense of pressures, to both survive the dead and each other? Romero takes this melting pot of an idea and makes it come alive as only he can and whatever obstacles he might have faced in its making are not evident in the finished product.

4 out of 5