As the dead mysteriously revive and have to live on the flesh of living humans to survive, people struggle against survival from those dangerous blood thirsty, the thing that makes them hide from them, a young woman struggles against survival, as she goes to hide in a farmhouse, where she unites up with people there to find out a way to survive.
George Romero's remarkably assured debut, made on a shoestring, about a group of people barricaded inside a farmhouse while an army of flesh-eating zombies roams the countryside, deflates all genre clichés.
It's a virulent portrait of an America in flux and decay, from the flag billowing near the graveyard at the start to its disturbing depiction of a lynch-mob mentality. But Night also transcends its period through sheer intensity.
Although pic's basic premise is repellent -- recently dead bodies are resurrected and begin killing human beings in order to eat their flesh -- it is in execution that the film distastefully excels.
Over its short, furious course, the picture violates so many strong taboos -- cannibalism, incest, necrophilia -- that it leaves audiences giddy and hysterical.
I felt real terror in that neighborhood theater last Saturday afternoon. I saw kids who had no resources they could draw upon to protect themselves from the dread and fear they felt.
