George A. Romero
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That's because most of the film is nothing but a series of references and homage to previous releases ranging from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" to "Night of the Living Dead" and a whole host of others.
Entire bits of the film are lifted from Evil Dead 2 and Night of the Living Dead and numerous other films.
For the audience, we are treated to a 90-minute homage to the true classics of the horror genre: "Evil Dead," "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," "Night of the Living Dead" and others.
Roth's knowing homage to the gory glory days of 1970s American horror cinema draws inspiration from "Night of the Living Dead," the collected works of David Cronenberg, and every stupid kids-trapped-in-the-woods slasher movie.
The movie is actually not as nasty as he claims, though there are some nasty images of lesions and the like, and plot-wise it has more in common with The Stand than Night of the Living Dead.
While it's reasonable to assume that Roth is an unalloyed fan of the kind of horror film that began with George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead in 1968 and then took us on the various paths of Tobe Hooper, Wes Craven and Sam Raimi, it's also inescapable that Roth lacks the one thing that set those directors apart from the run-of-the-mill horror boys he brings nothing really new to the table.
(The movie is well-stocked with film-culture references, and this notion of zombie consumerism echoes George Romero's 1978 Dawn of the Dead —although here we have zombies wandering the streets in search of wi-fi and Chardonnay.
Much of its in-universe rules are borrowed directly from Romero: like 1978’s Dawn Of The Dead , these ghouls are all obsessed with the one thing they desired as living beings.
That’s a clever gag, but the more prominent theme that humans are already mindless zombies due to their materialistic impulses was already handled in a far more meaningful manner by George Romero in the 1978 classic Dawn of the Dead , the one in which the natural urge of the walking dead was to head straight for the mall.
You don’t watch mainstays of the genre, like George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” (1968) and “Dawn of the Dead” (1979), in the hope of spotting familiar faces.
“The Dead Don’t Die” leans hard into the consumerist satire of George Romero’s 1978 classic “Dawn of the Dead,” in which all the zombies went to the mall.
Signs (2002)
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
influenced by Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Themes Plot
Think Night of the Living Dead, only less creepy.
Like Unbreakable and The Sixth Sense, Signs takes place in Pennsylvania (my home state, incidentally), and in what seems to be the film�s most explicit homage to someone besides Hitchcock, the movie adopts, in its second half, the setup of George Romero�s classic horror film Night of the Living Dead, which was set outside Pittsburgh.
Even at the end of the film, after a blatant "Night of the Living Dead" rip-off, when he must deliver the goods, Mr. Shyamalan wisely opts for implication and reflection instead of gratuitous effects.
By leaving most of the menace to the imagination--and by borrowing from classics like "Night of the Living Dead" and "War of the Worlds"--he ratchets up the tension to nearly unbearable levels.
Shyamalan cites Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Birds, and Night of the Living Dead as his inspirations for the way he wanted Signs to feel.
Before you can say "duck and cover," Shyamalan is rolling in the paranoia of "The War of the Worlds," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "The Birds," "Night of the Living Dead" and the full spectrum of 1950s sci-fi cinema.
28 Days Later (2002)
Directed by Danny Boyle
influenced by Night of the Living Dead (1968), Day of the Dead (1985), The Crazies (1973)
Plot Characters
Not to be mistaken for a sequel to the Sandra Bullock drunk drama "28 Days," Danny Boyle's "28 Days Later..." is more a remake--or a nod to, or let's be honest here and call it a complete rip-off--of George A. Romero's apocalyptic horror masterpiece "Dawn of the Dead" (a superior sequel to his 1968 nightmare "Night of the Living Dead").
Unlike the monsters in classic zombie films like 1968's "Night of the Living Dead" and the throwaway copycats that followed, these aren't lumbering, mumbling zombies -- these are twitching, hissing zombies.
With their rotting flesh, blood-red eyes and snarling, spewing, clawing fury, the “infected” owe a debt to zombies of the genre launched by George A. Romero three decades ago with “Night of the Living Dead.”
Sure, the movie's creators have swiped most of their ingredients, from premise to casting to aesthetics, from George Romero's famous zombie trilogy, beginning with Night of the Living Dead (made in 1968, another catastrophic year in global life and political relations); the new film warrants praise for its effects even if it loses points for uniqueness.
And unlike George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead and sequels, these zombies can really move.
If you read Alex Garland's best-selling novel The Beach, you'll remember its jarring climax, which seemed like a cross between The Bacchae and Night of the Living Dead (1968).
Resident Evil (2002)
Directed by Paul W. S. Anderson
influenced by Night of the Living Dead (1968), Day of the Dead (1985), Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Plot Characters Themes Visuals
Sure, it is derivative of many other flicks from the obvious "Night of the Living Dead" and "Aliens" to things more obscure, like "Ghosts of Mars" and Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians," but, even so, this modern horror/monster movie stands on its own as a sci-fi actioner.
Alice, Rain and their team spend the whole movie rushing about the Hive, fending off those "Night of the Living Dead" ghoulies (who have the power to infect the living by inflicting the merest scratch) and a pathetic handful of other beasties (namely, the aforementioned Dobermans and an Alien-like slime thingy).
First and foremost, however, "Resident Evil" is a genre film, the cinematic child of James Cameron's "Aliens" and George Romero's horror classic "Night of the Living Dead."
Enthusiastic and jubilant joystick jousters will probably get a rise out of star Milla Jovovich as the expressionless butt-kicking babe in a vehicle that's a weak-kneed cross between "Alien" and "Night of the Living Dead".
"Resident Evil" is basically "Night of the Living Dead" meets "Aliens," with the storyline of the former and the visual sense (and much of the dialogue) of the latter.
Its chief instrument of horror is a mob of flesh-eating zombies lifted part, parcel and gaping head wounds from Night of the Living Dead.
Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Directed by Edgar Wright
influenced by Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978), Day of the Dead (1985)
Themes Plot
Director Edgar Wright both pays homage and pokes fun at the walking dead films that inspired "Shaun," specifically George Romero's cult classic "Night of the Living Dead" (1968) and Sam Raimi's "Evil Dead" trilogy.
And like George A. Romero’s 1968 cult classic, “Night of the Living Dead” and its sequel “Dawn of the Dead,” sources of great inspiration for Pegg and director Edgar Wright, who co-wrote the script, it has a certain irresistible B-movie charm.
To disable the lumbering, stumbling creatures, the conventional wisdom -- set in gravestones years ago by George A. Romero's classic shocker Night of the Living Dead -- applies.
From here on out, events proceed as they do in pretty much every zombie movie since George A. Romero invented the modern iteration of the subgenre with Night of the Living Dead in 1968: running back and forth madly, living people dying because they make stupid, easily-avoidable mistakes, balletic fight scenes set to Queen songs.
For example, Shaun works at Foree Electronics (Ken Foree was one of the stars of 1978’s Dawn of the Dead); the video game that Ed is playing throughout the movie is Timesplitters 2, which features dimension-dodging zombies; a newscast says that the undead epidemic was due to rage infected monkeys, just like in 28 Days Later; and couple of Queen songs are used to great effect, with lyrics that match the scene ("Ooh, you make me live…").
The genre's modern-day innovator George Romero understood its inherent farcical qualities perfectly well; in his seminal Night of the Living Dead, we find a guy on TV summing up the zombie epidemic with "Ah, they're dead -- they're all messed up," and in 1979's Dawn of the Dead more than a few walking dead literally catch pies in the kisser.
Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)
Directed by John Carpenter
influenced by Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Plot Themes
The uneasy alliances between cop Ethan (Austin Stoker) and temporary inmates Wilson (Darwin Joston) and Wells (Tony Burton), and their fight against a seemingly unstoppable enemy recalls 1968's Night of the Living Dead, but it is to Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo that Carpenter pays the most explicit tribute.
Often described as a melding of Howard Hawks' "Rio Bravo" and George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead", this is one of the ultimate siege movies.
Less subtle though arguably more successful than Romero's Night of the Living Dead, the film evokes an ever-shifting political pecking order when a cultural cross-section of society trapped inside a Los Angeles police station wages war against a violent street gang named Street Thunder.
This film is pure tribute, a fond salute to Howard Hawks' masterpiece Rio Bravo with a healthy dose of George Romero's Night of the Living Dead thrown in for good measure.
A contemporary re-working of another Howard Hawks classsic, “Assault” originally titled “Anderson Alamo”, also takes some inspiration and atmosphere from “Night of the Living Dead.”
Films like Link and Monkey Shines…
Primate makes Monkey Shines look tame by comparison…
Harking back to Richard Franklin’s Link and George A. Romero’s Monkey Shines, the main menace is a murdering monkey.
Sure, we've had "Monkey Shines," "Link," and, of course, multiple non-horror films featuring "King Kong" (if you even count those), but a regular killer ape is surprisingly not a subject that many filmmakers have delved into.
Nor serious and earnest like George A. Romero’s 1988 horror film Monkey Shines.
Monkey Shines…
Jeepers Creepers (2001)
Directed by Victor Salva
influenced by Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Plot Themes
From that point on, the rest of the film follows the "Night of the Living Dead" and "The Terminator" plots of people trying to flee from an immortal being that's determined to find and kill them.
The movie is part urban legend, part horror comic book, with subtle nods to "Night of the Living Dead."
The first "movie" is very reminiscent of all of my favorite horror films, from Phantasm to Psycho to Night of the Living Dead to Rear Window to Silence of the Lambs to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Dawn of the Dead (2004)
Directed by Zack Snyder
influenced by Dawn of the Dead (1978), Night of the Living Dead (1968), Day of the Dead (1985)
Themes
Sarah Polley and Ving Rhames lead survivors to safety in "Dawn of the Dead"…
I must confess that I walked into the screening of "Dawn of the Dead", the highly publicized remake of George Romeros 1978 horror masterpiece, with an attitude somewhat less than optimistic.
Of the recent spate of unnecessary remakes of horror classics (2003's 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' being the nadir), the new "re-imagining" of George A. Romero's 1979 'Dawn of the Dead' is probably the least shabby.
But unlike the 1978 "Dawn of the Dead,'' this remake of the George A. Romero film keeps that metaphor implicit and its social satire under wraps.
George A. Romero’s brilliant Dawn of the Dead, released in 1978, was a sharp satire of consumerism disguised as a zombie thriller — and, oh wait, it was a terrific zombie thriller to boot.
But when some misguided souls tried to remake Night of the Living Dead in 1990, it fizzled and was quickly forgotten.
It’s clear that as a director, Peele’s cinema is steeped in the history of horror – for those looking, German expressionist cinema, Night of the Living Dead, Italian giallo and The Stepford Wives are but some of the imprints to be found in the fabric of his work.
You don’t have to be Jung and easily Freudian-ed to recognize the American psychocanvas Peele is painting on, with a narrative spanning the invasive fears of Night of the Living Dead and Funny Games.
The movie evokes themes and images from, say, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Funny Games, The Birds, The Walking Dead , Night of the Living Dead and The Shining, let alone the “Mirror Image” episode of The Twilight Zone, all of which spring to mind.
In both Get Out and Us, Peele builds on a tradition of black horror as social commentary and pushback against white stereotypes of blackness that extends as far back as Duane Jones’ turn as Ben in Night of the Living Dead (1968).
The family watching the news in a scene right out of Night of the Living Dead .
The film’s next big set piece, the home invasion by the doppelgängers, is equally masterful, playing on the same fears of intrusion as “Night of the Living Dead” (1968), “The Evil Dead” (1981), “Scream” (1996), “Funny Games” (1997), “The Others” (2001), “The Strangers” (2008) and “The Purge” (2013).
Zombieland (2009)
Directed by Ruben Fleischer
influenced by Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Themes Plot
Far from the canny social satire of George A. Romero's "Night of the Living Dead," and from the zany zombie movie homage of "Shaun of the Dead" (2004), "Zombieland" exists only to show zombies getting shot in the head, run over with SUVs, and generally murdered in fast and bloody ways.
Every zombie movie of the last 40 years already has an uphill battle, of course; each of them must be weighed against the genre-defining trilogy of films by George A. Romero begun with 1968's Night of the Living Dead , and zombie comedies in the last few years must not only contend with that insurmountable hurdle, but with another, nearly as damnable: the extraordinary Shaun of the Dead from 2004, arguably the funniest horror comedy ever made.
Zombies have been a staple for the horror film genre for many years, especially after George Romero’s excellent 1968 cult classic “Night of the Living Dead.”
Like most zombie flicks, this addition to an already overstuffed, undernourished subgenre more or less follows the gore-slicked path charted by George A. Romero in his sanguinary 1968 masterwork, “Night of the Living Dead” : the undead chase after the semi-alive.
Okay, a lot of what Ive said could also apply to George Romeros 1979 classic Dawn of the Dead.
Now, I tend to like my zombie films with some sort of glaringly obvious social commentary -- whether it's a satire of consumerism (1978's "Dawn of the Dead") or a riff on 30-year-old boys who need to grow up ("Shaun of the Dead").
NotLD is also a history of American nightmares: The opening graveyard scene recalls Frankenstein (1930) and the Universal tradition.
28 Years Later (2025)
Directed by Danny Boyle
influenced by Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Themes Plot
…the genre really broke free from the grave in 1968 with George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.
With nods to Predator, Mad Max, the zombie plagues of Romero, and, of course, The Odyssey…
The manner in which the virus spreads can occur via a bite—a more traditional means used in films since George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968)…
While the director has repeatedly distanced 28 Days Later from the “zombie” label, his exciting new “rage virus” installment is in a league not just with his own earlier film but other genre standouts like Romero’s Dawn of the Dead and Yeon Sang-ho’s Train to Busan.
Secret Window (2004)
Directed by David Koepp
influenced by The Dark Half (1993), Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Themes Plot
"The Dark Half," his novel published that same year, explores the same themes again, so it would take a real King novice (or movie novice for that matter) to find any thrills in this thriller.
It's a movie that aspires only to entertain with easy apprehension, and harbors no delusions that it's anything more than second-rate horror cobbled together from familiar bits of other King stories (notably "The Dark Half" and "Misery") -- in short, a corny goosepimpler for genre gourmets who wish more drive-in flicks were made with a crafty cinematic élan.
There are no real surprises here; King had already mined the psyche of an unhinged writer with more depth in his novel The Dark Half, which was made into a very good film by horror master George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead) in 1993.
If the stranger isn't distracting enough, Rainey still pines for his ex-wife, who's found some normalcy with her new beau (Timothy Hutton, who starred in 1993's underrated King adaptation, "The Dark Half").
I've seen four movie adaptations of Stephen King books that have writers as heroes -- The Shining (1980), Misery (1990), The Dark Half (1993), and now Secret Window -- and I know of a few others.
Throughout his extensive career, Stephen King has habitually attempted (in novels such as The Dark Half and Misery) to confront the relationship between the artist and his work, and that thematic preoccupation once again comes into play in David Koepp’s Secret Window.
The movie’s title and basic premise echo 2009’s Zombieland , but the resemblance ends there: Where Zombieland deftly mixes horror and goofy, pop-culture humor, Stake Land is dead-serious, even when it’s dropping vampires out of helicopters into lockdowns (think medieval armies using trebuchets to lob plague-ridden corpses into enemy territory); George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead is a much more apt comparison.
This film is pure tribute, a fond salute to Howard Hawks' masterpiece Rio Bravo with a healthy dose of George Romero's Night of the Living Dead thrown in for good measure.
The present world has long exceeded the anxieties of, say, 1968's Night of the Living Dead, whose characters turned the home into a trench against external threats; by 2002, news reports, world events, pop psychology, and urban legend have combined to assert that the home has already fallen to moral and mortal invaders.
Train to Busan (2016)
Directed by Yeon Sang-ho
influenced by Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Themes Characters Visuals
Starting with George A. Romero, the filmmaker who invented the flesh-eating monster genre with 1968’s “Night of the Living Dead,” zombie movies often double as social allegories for the era in which they are made.
Owing a lot to “Night of the Living Dead” and “28 Days Later,” Yeon Sang-ho’s horror thriller is a masterful zombie film that succeeds in injecting pure terror in to the sprinting zombie once again.
Indeed, as all the best monster movies and undead efforts such as Frankenstein and Night of the Living Dead have previously emphasised, pondering the concept of culpability is as compelling as charting causality, consequences, and the usual narrative mechanics.
Almost 60 years since George A Romero’s Night of the Living Dead made its bow, and some seven seasons deep into The Walking Dead, one would imagine that the zombie apocalypse sub-genre is surely running out of fresh brains.
Sure, the movie borrows from tons of other films, notably Snowpiercer , made by another South Korean director, and there's even a nasty Karl Hardman-type businessman character (whose extreme selfishness leads to the deaths of others), borrowed from the original Night of the Living Dead .
But the vibe here, executed with technical polish but with more lo-fi intimacy than the likes of World War Z, is actually closer to classic zombie fare, especially OG classics like George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978).
Green Room (2016)
Directed by Jeremy Saulnier
influenced by Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Plot Themes
It’s a simple, pulpy set-up—reminiscent of George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) and John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), which were themselves derived from various westerns involving characters trapped inside forts and farmhouses—and Saulnier, who both wrote and directed, revels in the primal nastiness of what the will to live looks like in the most dire of circumstances while also infusing the film with a level of visual artistry and black humor that suggests he is capable of much more.
If your own misspent youth involved watching Assault on Precinct 13 or Night of the Living Dead on a loop, then you'll feel 16 again throughout.
Saulnier wears influence lightly, not limited to “Night of the Living Dead,” “Assault on Precinct 13,” “Die Hard” and “Straw Dogs.”
At this point, the movie becomes a siege film in the vein of "Straw Dogs," "Night of the Living Dead" and "The Purge," to name just three popular examples, with the Ain't Rights and another witness (Imogen Poots) trapped inside the room with a corpse, a hostile skinhead hostage and few notions on how to escape, much less survive.