DAY OF THE DEAD (1985)

Unleashed in 1985, George A. Romero’s Day of the Dead stands as the most contentious and often misunderstood instalment in the filmmaker’s seminal zombie trilogy. While Night of the Living Dead (1968) earned admiration for its raw vérité style and biting social commentary, and Dawn of the Dead (1978) seduced audiences with its carnivalesque gore and capitalistic anarchy, the final instalment in the undead triptych was met with cold ambivalence.

Zombie fanatics entrenched in the visceral pleasures of its predecessors found themselves alienated by the sombre tone, claustrophobic setting, and philosophical fatalism. However, in retrospect, Day of the Dead emerges not as the trilogy’s weakest link, but as its most intellectually rigorous chapter in Romero’s oeuvre. It’s a bleak meditation on human collapse that arguably laid the foundation for the more grounded zombie narratives that would oversaturate Hollywood in the ensuing decades. Although it has been overshadowed by its siblings, its influence on the genre is often overlooked.

It’s instructive that Romero allowed a full decade to pass between Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, and then waited another seven years before delivering Day of the Dead. It was the final obligation of a three-picture deal Romero had signed with United Film Distribution Company (UFDC), stipulating that one of the projects would be a sequel to its commercially successful predecessor.

Fearing that the sequel wouldn’t match its predecessor’s financial performance, he opted to direct Knightriders (1981) and Creepshow (1982) during the interim, deferring Day of the Dead until last. The filmmaker originally envisioned a sprawling, apocalyptic epic that resembled Gone With the Wind (1939) recast with the undead. Unfortunately, Romero’s ambitious screenplay was ultimately curtailed due to budgetary constraints. Forced to overhaul his initial vision, he revised the screenplay and completed the project on a modest budget of $3.5M. Despite its production woes and tepid reception, Day of the Dead has since developed an enthusiastic cult following and is arguably just as influential as its two predecessors.

Taking place seven years after the events of Dawn, the zombie apocalypse has ravaged the entire world. The societal structures that used to safeguard civilisation have mostly collapsed under the weight of the undead epidemic, leaving the scattered remnants of human survivors vastly outnumbered by hordes of the living dead. Deep beneath the surface of a devastated Florida landscape, a dwindling group of military personnel and scientists has taken refuge in an underground missile silo repurposed as a makeshift research facility. Led by Dr Sarah Bowman (Lori Cardille), a small team of researchers works fruitlessly to locate survivors and formulate a solution to the zombie plague. Unfortunately, their efforts are continuously hindered by the volatile leadership of Captain Rhodes (Joseph Pilato), an authoritarian whose hostility towards the scientists steadily erodes their fragile unity.

Tensions begin to escalate when Dr Mathew “Frankenstein” Logan (Richard Liberty) reveals he has been conducting morally questionable experiments on the undead. In the hope of uncovering a means of control or understanding, he’s started training the captive zombie, Bub (Sherman Howard). Logan believes the undead can be taught because his test subject has exhibited unsettling signs of learned behaviour, emotional response, and remnants of human memory. This controversial undertaking provokes outrage from Rhodes’ team, who view the experiments as dangerous and grotesque. As the claustrophobic environment begins to break down the chain of command, the fragile alliance between the scientists and military collapses into chaos. Once the subterranean compound is breached by the creatures they’ve been studying, the survivors are forced to confront the external threat of the undead and the collapse of order within.

Despite being much smaller in scope than its predecessors, Day of the Dead is perhaps the trilogy’s most unforgiving entry. In stark contrast to the conventional horror of Night  and the satirical grotesquerie of Dawn, the final entry plunges audiences into the psychological despair of living in a world overrun by the walking dead. There are no frivolous shopping montages, impromptu pie-fighting sequences, or amusement arcades. The surface world has become an uninhabitable, cruel wasteland ravaged by the undead. Civilisation has collapsed, society has become completely devoid of empathy, and the remains of humanity are entombed in a subterranean concrete crypt. Romero constructs a tonal palette that’s uncompromisingly pessimistic, saturated with a suffocating sense of hopelessness as the audience follows the desperate exploits of a group of survivors trying to withstand the zombie onslaught. Whether it’s intentional or not, Day of the Dead is ironically the darkest of the three chapters.

Therein lies the beauty of Romero’s social commentary. The reputation of the first two chapters of his trilogy rests primarily on the perceptive awareness of the mood of their respective contemporary time periods. Night engaged with the sociopolitical undercurrents of a nation plagued by the simmering anxieties of the Vietnam War and the deep scars of racial division. Whereas Dawn examined society’s burgeoning obsession with consumerism by reducing the undead to a grotesque parody of shoppers mindlessly feeding their hunger for the sterile familiarity of mall culture. Day of the Dead condemns a decade enthralled by Reaganomics and Thatcherism dogma, where self-interest masqueraded as policy and societal cohesion disintegrated.

Romero’s script draws direct parallels between the remaining survivors and political ideologies that lead to further division and increased distrust in institutions that cannot communicate or demonstrate a willingness to compromise. This is demonstrated by the two human factions arguing over their dwindling resources and best course of action, while their overwhelming despair manifests as panic among the military and obsessive madness among the scientists. There’s a sense of inevitable doom as the bitter infighting captures a palpable brand of cynicism that mirrors a world currently eating itself alive under stress. The failure of civilisation felt imminent for Romero in ’85, and these divisions have only intensified the culture war during recent decades. In a world that seems to drift further and further apart into a diplomatic declaration or martial law following every Presidential election, Day of the Dead echoes the sentiments of all displaced people and feels achingly relevant today.

An argument could be made that the humans were indistinguishable from their flesh-eating counterparts, but that’s clearly Romero’s overriding statement. Day of the Dead represents a shift in perspective, moving from viewing humanity as a protagonist to seeing humanity as an antagonist. The scientists have become detached from any recognisable ethical framework, whereas the soldiers epitomise militaristic culture and are incapable of distinguishing domination from discipline. The remaining survivors have broken down into psychological husks, clinging to what they know best, even if it interferes with their ability to consider alternate ideas or assess situations rationally.

The zombies themselves are portrayed as lifeless automatons, but begin to exhibit a kind of tragic innocence. Under Romero’s deft direction, the undead are less monstrous than the living. Nowhere is this inversion more obvious than in the character Bub, the domesticated corpse who begins to mimic human behaviour with unsettling tenderness. He learns to use a Walkman and salute his human captors, becoming a symbol of grotesque grace yearning for connection. That this yearning arises in a creature presumed to be soulless is Romero’s cruellest indictment; perhaps it’s not the zombies who are the aberration, but the living.

Beyond discussions of social commentary and cultural reflectivity, Day of the Dead contains enough bloodshed to satisfy gore-hounds. Among the many elements that have secured its cult status, none are more arresting than Tom Savini’s (Creepshow) unforgettable practical effects. Alongside future luminaries such as Greg Nicotero (Creepshow 2) and Howard Berger (Alita: Battle Angel), they conjure up some of the most convincing zombies ever to shamble across the screen.

Unlike the pale cadavers in Night and the cartoonish ghouls in Dawn, the team has rendered a legion of undead looking appropriately decayed and deliciously viscous. There are countless sequences of flesh being ripped off limbs and long ropes of intestines being devoured. A particular moment that remains unmatched in Romero’s oeuvre is the indelible demise of the tyrannical Captain Rhodes. After becoming surrounded and outnumbered, he’s slowly dismembered by the ravenous undead. Yet, during his final bloody moments, he defiantly screams “Choke on ’em!” through a throat not yet fully eviscerated. It’s a perverse form of poetic justice and a moment that remains brutally undiminished four decades later.

While Day of the Dead may lack the immediate, visceral thrill of Night and the satirical exuberance of Dawn, it compensates with a brooding, introspective tone that renders it the most intellectually ambitious of the trilogy. George A. Romero crafts a claustrophobic meditation on the collapse of civility and a bleak philosophical inquiry into human nature on the edge of annihilation. Unfortunately, its nihilistic temperament and pessimistic vision proved too acerbic for mainstream appeal, culminating in a disappointing box office gross of $34M. Audiences and critics alike seemed unprepared for Romero’s refusal to deliver conventional catharsis, instead offering a harrowing chamber piece steeped in existential despair.

However, after decades of reassessment, Day of the Dead is now regarded as a cult classic of formidable substance. Its intellectual gravitas, paired with some of the most astonishingly grotesque practical effects ever committed to celluloid, has solidified its legacy as the most philosophically potent entry in Romero’s canon. Although it continues to be overshadowed by the adoration of its predecessors, Day of the Dead stands tall as Romero’s bleak and unsettling conclusion to his apocalyptic triptych.

USA | 1985 | 100 MINUTES | 1:85:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

writer & director: George A. Romero.
starring: Lori Cardille, Terry Alexander, Joe Pilato, Jariath Conroy & Richard Liberty.