Culture

Classic Film

The mother of all zombie movies and, in my view, the most effective and terrifying, with the possible exception of 28 Days Later; NOTLD did a lot with a small budget, few special effects, few locations and a small cast. The grainy, shaky home-footage look gives it an immediacy that makes it all the more frightening, much like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and later films like The Blair Witch Project. You feel like you’re right there with the protagonists.

The zombies themselves are less elaborately made up than their counterparts in future films, but somehow scarier. Some of this comes down to good directing and storytelling. The first zombie appears minutes into the film with no prior setup, as our protagonists are visiting a graveyard. It is just a hazy figure in the distance, and all we can make out is a strange walk. The protagonists are at first amused, but become decidedly less so when it catches up with them, and the film then hits the ground running. The rest of the story takes place in a single location: an abandoned house in which a small group of survivors take refuge. We find out what has been going on in the rest of the world as the protagonists do, through chillingly realistic televised news bulletins.

The film drew some criticism for its characterisation of the female lead, Barbra: she runs the gamut of being completely hysterical to being completely catatonic, all the while fairly useless and non-functioning. Meanwhile the male lead remains calm, resourceful and proactive. Sadly the same observation can be made of many films. In support of Barbra, I found her to be by far the easiest character to identify with. If a zombie outbreak was to happen in real life, I’m sure many of us would be completely overcome with panic, even if we’d like to picture ourselves becoming action heroes. Barbra’s reaction seems the most human one, and it hammers home the film’s realism.

Ultimately the film is a haunting chiller that is still pretty damn terrifying today, thanks in no small part to said realism. I can only imagine how scary it must have been to audiences back in 1968.