You can cherish or despise George A. Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” for its ability to inspire numerous sequels and countless rip-offs, creating the zombie genre as we know it. I myself dislike that fact about the movie. As a movie itself, I don’t feel it holds up that well.

In “Night of the Living Dead”, a band of survivors must hold out in a remote building as zombies try to attack them. The tension is high as they try to decide whether it is safer upstairs or in the cellar. With more zombies attacking and supplies running low, the survivors must attempt to escape before their flesh is devoured.

The acting is definitely very weak in this movie. None of the characters are particularly well-defined; they just make it so they disagree a lot. Very few character traits are present, which is surprising as the film focuses on the survivors a lot more than it does the zombies. The zombies themselves are alright as the actors playing them are not required to give complex performances yet they’re not scary as they’re only zombies. The cast overall doesn’t do the film justice and they’re all too serious for my liking.

Zombie movies aren’t scary in my books so why not make them more fun? Throw in a macho hero, give him enough firepower to take them down and make the whole thing creative. “Night of the Living Dead” isn’t horrible and it’s probably one of the best serious zombie movies so if that’s your thing then you’ll enjoy yourself with this. I and I imagine a lot of other critics would love to have a time machine and destroy this movie in the making, thus salvaging the world from lots of brainless imitators. Despite a few okay moments, it doesn’t work for me and I don’t understand why it is a ‘classic’.