George A. Romero is among the most influential horror filmmakers ever. Romero is considered the king of zombie movies...Here's how his films rank.
George A. Romero is among the most influential horror filmmakers of all time. Romero is considered the king of zombie movies, updating tales of reanimated corpses for modern audiences. Romero's films are also rife with social commentary without sacrificing scares or entertainment value.
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George Romero branched out of the zombie trope many times over his decades-spanning career, making vital horror titles like The Crazies, Creepshow, and The Dark Half. However, Romero's legacy lies with his cinematic imagining of an undead apocalypse. That being said, some of these films are better than others. This list compiles every zombie film George Romero wrote and/or directed, ranked according to IMDb.
7 Survival Of The Dead (2010) - 30%
George Romero's final zombie film is also viewed as his worst. Romero both wrote the screenplay for and directed Survival of the Dead, which follows a group of AWOL National Guardsmen who played a small part in 2007's Diary of the Dead. The film turned out to be a box office bomb.
Survival of the Dead lacks both the imminent doom and post-apocalyptic vibes audiences look for in horror movies these days. With its slow pacing and abstractly loose character development, the movie feels more like an experimental Western than a jumpscare creature feature. While some fans enjoy the movie's philosophical undertones, most find it terribly dull.
6 Diary Of The Dead (2007) - 62%
Diary of the Dead capitalizes on the found footage craze that hit horror in the early oughts. Occurring in the same universe as Romero's original zombie trilogy, the film takes a meta approach to the genre, focusing on a group of film students from Romero's alma mater: the University of Pittsburgh.
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While shooting a horror movie in the woods, the graduate students are stunned by a zombie apocalypse unfolding around them. Diary of the Dead is shot in a cinema verite style, using a professional cinematographer in lieu of letting the cast shoot with handheld cameras. Romero both wrote and produced the film.
5 Night Of The Living Dead (1990) - 68%
Tom Savini's color remake of Romero's debut film maintains a spot on this list because Romero wrote the screenplay for it. Worried someone would make an unauthorized or subpar remake, Romero worked with Savini to revamp the story for '90s audiences. Instead of starting fresh, Romero reworked his 1968 screenplay. The plot is almost identical to the original.
Tony Todd – known for playing the title character in the original Candyman – stars alongside Patricia Tallman and Tom Towles. Todd reprises the role of Ben, originally played by Duane Jones. Savini, known as a special effects maverick, chose to minimize the gore in homage to the original.
4 Land Of The Dead (2005) - 74%
After an 18 year hiatus from zombie films, Romero returned with a bang – and a large budget. Estimates vary, but Land of the Dead was made with $15 billion to $18 million dollars. Like most of Romero's zombie films, this feature is set in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Land of the Dead picks up where 1985's Day of the Dead leaves off, tracing humanity's attempts to reorganized in the wake of the zombie apocalypse. People have established outposts all over America. In Pittsburgh, a tribal government reigns. The fortified city's survivors aren't prepared for the new wave of especially vicious and intelligent zombies organizing an invasion.
3 Day Of The Dead (1985) - 81%
Day of the Dead sees a group of military personnel and scientists hunkering down in an underground south Florida facility while the zombie armageddon rages on. Tensions rise between the scientists and the soldiers as they all strive to find a cure for the undead pandemic.
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Despite its poor reception at the box office, Day of the Dead became one of Romero's more profitable films, thanks to its VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray releases. Tom Savini managed the special effects for the film, which is replete with excess gore and extreme body horror. With its militarized themes, evil human characters, and violence, Day of the Dead takes the franchise to very dark places.
2 Dawn Of The Dead (1979) - 93%
Romero's second zombie feature film unravels in a large mall – the ultimate symbol of 20th century American prosperity. Romero collaborated with Italian horror brothers Claudio and Dario Argento to make this movie, considered a masterful sequel to Night of the Living Dead.
In the film, human survivors barricade themselves in a mall outside Philadelphia. In the mall, the compatriots revel in abandoned and useless wares as zombies close in on their consumer fortress. With its amped-up special effects and compelling character studies, Dawn of the Dead combines horror, action, and drama flawlessly.
1 Night Of The Living Dead (1968) - 97%
Romero's earliest effort remains his most iconic. Shot in 35mm black-and-white film, Night of the Living Dead doesn't actually use the term zombie once. Instead, the undead corpses hungry for flesh are referred to as ghouls. Night of the Living Dead is chockful of B-movie vibes, shock gore, and the kind of social commentary Romero became famous for.
The plot of the film is nearly the same as Tom Savini's 1990 remake. A group of disparate humans finds shelter in an abandoned home in rural Pennsylvania while zombies hordes form around them. Romero co-wrote the film with John Russo, and the pair pulled the story together with only $114,000.
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