Snails on the slope

As you know, in the cinema there are two kinds of living dead. The first, so vividly presented in the filmography of George Romero, slowly hobbling to his victim. The second, as it was in "28 days later", rushes to her from all angles. Until now, the question remains: what kind of undead is most important for us? There are too many supporters for runners and for slow-moving people. It is believed that the right living dead do not rush anywhere, they are piling on you with a shapeless biomass symbolizing the irreversibility of fate. In defense of the "athletes" it is worth noting that in the "Night of the Living Dead", the undecided hobbled for a resisting lunch fairly quickly and, according to one of the main characters, even "ran after the car."

However, despite some deviations from the subsequent canons, "Night of the Living Dead" is a reference film about the confrontation of man and hungry returnees from the other world. This script is already inscribed in the textbooks on cinematography. The beginning is a leisurely visit to the evening cemetery, where everything is saturated with sorrow and thoughts of eternal rest. Final - last sigh, implying an unambiguous interpretation in the primary viewing and disconnected reflex of multivariate meanings. Somewhere in the interval, the string is a fast race with one's fears and the culmination is a cacophonic ode to agoraphobia. Causal and investigative links explaining what is happening with a refrain rushes from television and radio boxes the best examples of the worst issues of the "Twilight Zone". In their absurd scientific validity, they look even more fabulous than simple tales of evil necromancers or Voodoo shamans who create dark rituals under the cover of night. Simple scenic moves, simplified drama, unpretentious scenery, black and white film. All this is a small step beyond the ordinary and a huge leap into the new genre.

The main roles played by the characters of the tape have long been turned into stamps. Here is a pseudo-main heroine, possessing the habits of a suicidal canary on the roadway, whose main task, to dispel spectator attention, is to distract from the main protagonist. Here is a young cute couple, on whose faces the Carollon raisin is laid out "Eat Me." Here is a hero without a past, but with a potential future, an exemplary fighter for himself and others. And, of course, the main antagonist, led by fear and despair. His struggle with the hero is the film-forming core on which any story of the living dead rests, and "Night" in particular. The winner in this fight (and the one who the script writer will consider to be a real hero of his time will win) gets the sacred right to live up to the final credits. So it becomes a judge for the dead and, worst of all, for yourself. What price each of us is willing to pay to see again a hopeless dawn?

The living dead in this story are nothing more than a background. Disfigured, half-rotten bodies in old rags, symbolizing a riot of elements. Replace them with a nuclear explosion, a worldwide flood, the world's plague, and history will not lose much of its colors. Almost, because apart from the personification of fatalism, one more important function is assigned to the undead. To some extent, the society of the insurgents from the graves symbolizes a happy society. They are deprived of all senses, except hunger. They are strangers to passion. They are not sick with mindless pity, which kills slowly and painfully. They will never shoot in the back, they will not put a fellow under attack, they will not use it as a bait or a living shield. In this monstrous metaphor of a conditionally happy commune, they look much more human than their dinner. After all, people so easily succumb to fear, and can no longer control their actions. Therefore, they become only food for higher beings. However, even in this state Hamlet's dilemmas are not alien to them. So the question is what is better, to hide and quietly wait for your fate or with methodical persistence of Mulchun from Strugatsky's story to stick a scalpel into the millstone of biological progress, constantly hovers in the air. Bones are thrown, the test for humanity is launched.

And then when the choice is made, when the dots over the "and" are placed, the ending explodes with a silent dry verdict of a well-known sociopath in a mask with ink spots. Justice overtakes the last hero. Lady luck with an indifferent expression raises the last detail and forever leaves the shivering poor fellow. Dawn came, but you have nothing more to pay the bills. And it's not so important who puts a bullet in the trunk: randomness, supreme providence, conscience or awareness of committed atrocities. The verdict was pronounced and can not be appealed.

"Night of the Living Dead" is a complex scary story told before going to bed. Losing all the parameters of modern tapes, the creation of Romero, however, takes an unconditional psychological revenge. The progenitor of the genre was not a mindless horror film, but a delicate depressive drama played out in wild scenery. Drama, where the main monster was still a man, not a half-decayed corpse.

8 out of 10