Review: Zombies Galore! aka World War Z and Night of the Living Dead (1968)

What a treat this week's reading has been. Max Brooks's World War Z has been one of my favorite books since high school, and it absolutely held up to scrutiny the second time around. It was the book that first introduced me to the zombie genre, and for that, I am eternally grateful.

I say "introduced," but in reality, I haven't read or seen a whole lot of other zombie interpretations. I had certainly never seen Night of the Living Dead before, and boy. Oh, boy. I hated it.

I'll do my very best not to allow the age of the movie to factor into my review. I get that special effects in 1968 weren't up to the standard they are now—nor to I expect them to have been. I'm a huge fan of the original Star Trek series; I can suspend my disbelief past costume makeup and campy fight scenes. But the character dynamics in Night of the Living Dead were absolutely unwatchable.

I'll give George Romero credit where credit is due: it was brave of him to make a film with a black protagonist in 1968, and I love that he did. Ben was the only competent, capable character in the film, and the only character with whom I was able to empathize. But Barbara. Oh, Barbara. I wanted to throw something at the screen every time her face popped up. I could almost hear Romero on set: "Weaker! She needs to be weaker. More incompetent. She's not a woman, she's a child (har har, what's the difference?). Yes, clutch your face and pout at the camera like this is a fashion shoot. I need more hysteria in that scream! This is what women do, right guys?" I was livid.

Again to Romero's credit, I hear he made a remake in the 90's with the specific intention of strengthening Barbara's character. Fine. But that's not the version we watched. If we're using Gary Braunbeck's idea from the Writers Workshop of Horror of a character's Definition of the Self (DOTS), 1968 Barbara's DOTS seemed to be: "I am meek. I am an idiot. They cast me for my looks and not because I could act."

In contrast, I truly believe World War Z to be a masterpiece. It's a brilliant way of telling the story: a narrative collection of accounts of the Zombie Wars that made me shudder far more than the sight of paint-faced ghouls shuffling towards my computer screen. Despite the fact that the book is told from more perspectives than I could keep track of, every single character seems to have a highly distinct voice and an absolutely clear Definition of the Self.

This DOTS comes through in each character's voice in subtle and brilliant ways—not just in the vocabulary they use and the story they tell, but also the way they open to or defend themselves against the unnamed narrator's questions. I have no idea how Brooks manages to pull off such a feat or how he kept track of all those characters and their DOTS, but I want to learn.

Despite the different storytelling approaches, character portrayals, and fright-factors, what I truly enjoyed about both of these two zombie tales was the way they dealt more with the human reaction to the threat than the zombie threat itself. In both cases, there's an inclination to believe that some unnamed "They" will come to the rescue, and in both cases, individuals and groups need to learn how to defend themselves on their own despite the infighting that happens within those groups.

Last of all, the endings. I hate to admit this, but I actually did like the ending of Night of the Living Dead. I genuinely, truly loved it. After 85 unbearable minutes, it suddenly got brilliant. Little Karen comes back and eats her parents. Barbara snaps out of her hysterical haze just in time to get dragged to her death by her undead brother. Ben survives the zombie threat only to be shot dead by his own local law enforcement in a truly dark and heartbreaking moment.

Contrast World War Z's ultimately human triumph—it's not a bad ending, and in the context of the story, I thought it fit. But it's a different message, isn't it? Not that humans will ultimately be more a threat to their own kind than any undead horde, but that with the right amount of planning and preparation, humanity will come together and prevail. It's a hopeful message, and one I appreciate, but the dark and cynical corners of my soul found a strange satisfaction in Night of the Living Dead's bleak irony.

All in all, I recommend them both. World War Z for a brilliantly-written book that serves as a master class on cultivating unique character voices, Night of the Living Dead for ten minutes of pure and wonderful horror—if, that is, you can manage to sit through near-unbearable levels of directorial misogyny.


Citations: Brooks, Max. World War Z. Crown, 2006.

Night of the Living Dead. Directed by George A. Romero. Continental Distributing, 1968.

Braunbeck, Gary A. "Connecting the DOTS." Writers Workshop of Horror, edited by Michael Knost, Woodland Press, 2010, pp. 27-46.