rs down many of the accepted roles and institutions of modern society, beginning with the family. The film opens on an image of family loyalty with Barbara and her brother, Johnny, visiting their father's grave. However, Johnny does not act the part of the loyal son and instead says he barely remembers his father and does not care for his mother. He does have feelings for his sister, though, as is evident when he leaps to protect her when the first zombie attacks in the graveyard. The zombie knocks Johnny to the ground and takes out after Barbara, who runs away.
Later, in the farmhouse to which Barbara runs, another family group is found that is no better than the first we have met. Harry and Helen Cooper are a couple with a daughter, but they speak only to fight and are a family only to the degree that they try to protect their daughter. In a larger sense, the six people hiding in the farmhouse constitute a family group for a time, a group that is slowly whittled down by the attacks of the first monsters outside and the later monsters some of them become once bitten.
The zombie in the film is a monster, a human being changed into something no longer human, and now a creature that was a threat to other human beings, capable of taking away their hymnody and making them into zombies as well. There is a clear connection between this film and the traditional horror story of the vampire, for the dead and unburied come back to half-life and seek human victims much as Dracula did. The fear induced in the audience is twofold--on the one hand, the viewer can place him or herself in the position of the threatened victim; on the other hand, the viewer can experience the fear of becoming a zombie and having to act out the role of monster as those on the screen are doing.
The six people in the farmhouse are potential victims, with little knowledge or ability to protect t
...