George A. Romero was a master of his craft, and his Dead series remains the most iconic zombie films ever made. No one is denying that. But as is often the case with horror films (zombie films in particular!), some of it doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense.
Now, audiences don’t typically expect a rigid adherence to realism in their zombie flicks. We are all more than willing to suspend disbelief for two hours to watch reanimated corpses eating other people. But sometimes the movies stretch the imagination just a little too far.
These are ten things about Romero’s classic Dead series that don’t really make sense.
What’s With The Woman Upstairs?
One of the earliest scares of Night of the Living Dead sees Barbra coming face to face with a decayed corpse on the staircase. The only question is – why isn’t she a zombie yet?
This unnamed lady was presumably killed by the undead, seeing as how her face has been seemingly eaten off. Perhaps she received a fatal head wound by the zombies, but that seems unlikely. And maybe Cooper killed her when he came to the house, but if that’s the case, why would he leave her corpse there to rot and stink up the house?
Why Does The First Zombie Use A Tool?
The very first zombie seen in Night of the Living Dead is the older man who attacks Barbra. What makes him peculiar is that he uses a rock to bash in her car window instead of just trying to bite whoever is in front of him.
No, he isn’t the only zombie to use a tool. Bub and Big Daddy later use them as well, but Bub was trained and Big Daddy presumably “evolved” over the decades. Even later in Night, most of the zombies are their typical brain-dead, shambling selves, so why is the first onscreen zombie (plus a few notable ones in the crowd) apparently smart enough to wield a weapon?
Why Don’t They Consider The Top Floor?
Night of the Living Dead primarily concerns the contrasting survival plans of Cooper and Ben. Cooper wants to stay in the basement because they remain hidden and there’s only one access point. Ben wants to stay on the ground floor due to its multiple escape routes and to observe the zombies.
But why not go upstairs? They can look outside, there are multiple escape routes, and there’s only one main point of entry (the stairs). It’s a win-win.
Why Didn’t They Stack The Boxes Another Way?
This “goof” is down to character error rather than filmmaker error, but it still applies. In Dawn of the Dead, the core survivors bar the upstairs storage room by stacking boxes in front of the door.
While this could prove detrimental to a single zombie, a bunch of them could probably knock the barrier over given enough time. A far better approach would be to stack the boxes in a line leading from the door to the opposite wall. There’s no getting through that.
Why Did They Place Bodies In The Freezer?
After going on their rampage through the mall and clearing out the zombies, Peter and Roger place the corpses inside the mall’s walk-in freezer. But during this scene, it’s clearly shown that the walk-in freezer still contains food.
It makes sense that they would want to place them in the freezer, as that would mask the smell and also help avoid the risk of infection or contamination that a rotting corpse would bring. But isn’t there a better way to do it other than storing rotting corpses next to perfectly good meat?
Why Did That Biker Check His Blood Pressure?
This is one of the most famous questions within the Dead fandom, and for good reason – it doesn’t make a lick of sense.
During the final battle between bikers and zombies, one of the bikers decides to get his blood pressure checked. This obviously goes very poorly, and he is ripped from both the machine and his own arm by the zombies. It’s meant to be morbidly funny, but it still doesn’t make any sense with or without the context of the movie.
What Exactly Did Fran Want?
By the latter half of Dawn of the Dead, Fran is a consistently horrible mood due to confinement and not being consulted by the men. Fair enough. Yet she also shows hesitation towards the mall itself, despite it being a very good place to wait out the apocalypse.
They have stores of food and water, electricity, a TV, comfy beds, a roof over their heads, entertainment, and even a pharmacy. Yet she’s not happy. Perhaps she’s holding out hope that there is some secluded safety zone somewhere else, and she probably wanted better for her baby, but these are tough times. It doesn’t get much better than the mall.
Why Didn’t Logan Reanimate?
Matthew Logan is the resident kooky scientist in Day of the Dead, yet he gets on Rhodes’s nerves so much that the latter eventually riddles the scientist with bullets. This obviously kills him, but seeing as how Logan wasn’t shot in the head, he should have reanimated as a zombie.
However, Bub later sees the doctor’s bloodied corpse laying in the refrigerator, still unresurrected. Perhaps the cold temperatures did something to hinder or slow his turning, but it’s never really explained.
Why Did They Check Fort Myers?
The beginning of Day of the Dead sees Sarah, Bill, and John flying to Fort Myers, Florida to check for survivors. It’s a good idea in theory, but why would they check Fort Myers of all places?
The city is home to tens of thousands of people and as Dawn of the Dead previously established, everyone was getting out of the major cities due to their massive zombie populations. It’d be unfeasible to check the vast rural areas of Florida for survivors, but it’d be a better idea than checking a city that is almost surely swarming with zombies.
Why Should We Sympathize With Zombies?
As polarizing as it was, Land of the Dead deserves some credit for attempting something different: it tried forcing the audience into sympathizing with the zombies. It didn’t really work. For one thing, zombies have been persistently portrayed as mindless killers who will eat a person’s organs without a second thought. Secondly, this would work better if the zombies of Land were portrayed in a more pacifistic manner, but they weren’t.
They infiltrated Fiddler’s Green and devoured everyone inside, further reducing the number of remaining humans in the world to the point of extinction. While the attack wasn’t exactly unfounded since the survivors themselves are rather reprehensible, the fact remains that Big Daddy and company still committed mass genocide. What part should audiences be sympathizing with here?
