George Romero, the Pittsburgh filmmaker who died last weekend, was best known for two of his horror movies. One of them, 1968's Night of the Living Dead, completely reinvented the zombie genre. The other, 1978's Dawn of the Dead, set his zombies loose in a shopping center.
Shuffling mindlessly through a mall has inevitably sparked arguments that Dawn is a critique of consumerism. The picture definitely has a strain of that, but its script is far too sly to stop there. When our heroes hole up in the abandoned Monroeville Mall, the place feels like a cornucopian playground; one sequence in the film may well be the most appealing portrait of mall life ever set to celluloid:
Dawn works perfectly well as an entertainment—it's suspenseful, exciting, and at times quite funny. But it's something more as well: a social satire that doesn't merely mock an institution but shows its appeal. Watching that four-minute sequence in 2017, a time when abandoned malls litter the landscape, I feel...nostalgic. It's an unusual emotion to have while watching a zombie movie, but Romero was always an unusual filmmaker.
My top five Romero movies:
- Dawn of the Dead (1978)
- Martin (1978)
- Night of the Living Dead (1968)
- Day of the Dead (1985)
- Knightriders (1981)