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Parents' Guide to

Night of the Living Dead

By Charles Cassady Jr., Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 17+

'60s zombie classic is still intense and gory.

Movie NR 1968 90 minutes
Night of the Living Dead Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Community Reviews

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age 13+

Based on 19 parent reviews

jcmcdowell
jcmcdowell Adult
October 13, 2021
age 15+

Classic, but not very scary.

This may be a classic and may have been extremely scary for audiences that saw this in 1968 and unlike anything they had ever seen, but it is not as violent as CSM says it is. I do not understand why ‘60s ads and commercials put an X rating on this movie for how extreme the violence is. The violence is not extreme and is extremely dated. This movie is also very talky and there is plenty of time spent in this movie without a zombie in sight. I would say that some of the members in the group serve as positive role models for their bravery in surviving the zombie apocalypse and getting through it even if it were to involve their lives being gone. I liked this movie, but there are PLENTY of horror movies that have more gory, grisly violence than this one.

This title has:

Great role models
Too much violence
2 people found this helpful.
doctora
doctora Parent of 5-year-old
May 30, 2022
age 17+

It clearly is the one that started them all...

I am not a horror fan, however the genre has ebbed and flowed and is currently in an exciting era with Get Out and Us. Watching Night of the Living Dead feels like recognizing every zombie television show, every horror film schtick...it feels like I have seen it all before because I have, Night of the Living Dead is the a priori, it started it all. Romero may not have cast Jones for his skin color, but it is impossible to not imbue current racial politics onto these bodies. An excellent ending to a well made film.
1 person found this helpful.
See all 19 parent reviews

What's the Story?

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD begins when a young woman and her brother are attacked in a cemetery by a zombie; the scene then moves to a group of strangers seeking shelter from the ghouls in a remote house. Barricaded inside, they see TV bulletins linking the zombie plague to "radiation" from a Venus space probe contaminating the environment, and they hear the only way to stop a ghoul is to destroy the brain with a well-aimed bullet or cranial blows. The panicked survivors split into two factions, a family called the Coopers, who want to stay barricaded indoors and wait for help, and a more proactive bunch, led by Ben (Duane Jones), an assertive black man, who plan a dash to safety, despite the ghouls massing relentlessly in the dark outside. Spoiler alert: A famously shocking finale indicates that neither of their plans works out.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (19 ):
Kids say (48 ):

George A. Romero's cult classic brought a virtually unprecedented level of realistic gore and disturbing grotesquerie to creature-feature fans (many of them children). When it premiered in 1968, critics and commentators were outraged that kids had been exposed to such a nightmare. Though it's unrated by the MPAA, some posters and ads carried an X rating (for gruesome violence, not sex), and that should tell you something. It's still intense today and pushes a lot of buttons, with its well-rendered camera angles, effective jolts, claustrophobia, and fate-worse-than-death zombie vibe.

Beware: The film is in the public domain, which means there are lots of fuzzy-looking, technically inferior copies on the market, computer-"colorized" versions, and spoof editions with completely dubbed-in gag dialogue (even with a bad-joke soundtrack, the imagery is still disturbing).

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about classic horror movies. How does Night of the Living Dead earn a place among the most legendary and groundbreaking of horror movies?

  • How does the use of black-and-white film make the scary moments seem even creepier? Could it have been just as scary in color? Why or why not?

  • What are your thoughts on the ending? Intentional or not, how does this ending, and much of the action taking place outside of the farmhouse, seem like a comment on the times in which the movie was made -- the late 1960s? Should movies, generally seen as a form of escapist entertainment, always have happy endings?

Movie Details

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