Day of the Dead (1985)

"They're dead! They're f-ing dead and you wanna teach 'em tricks?!" I've been quoting that line for years. It captures everything that makes Day of the Dead the most undervalued entry in George Romero's Dead trilogy, and honestly, in my opinion, the greatest of the lot. Say what you like about Night being the blueprint and Dawn being the crowd favourite, but Day is where Romero brought everything together and made something genuinely profound hidden inside a very, very gory horror film.

The setup drops us underground, into a military bunker where the last scraps of humanity are tearing themselves apart faster than the dead are. The soldiers are losing their minds. The scientists are chasing increasingly desperate theories. And somewhere in the bowels of that bunker, a zombie named Bub is learning to salute. That tension between the living and the dead, who's more monstrous, who deserves to survive, is where the film absolutely thrives. Romero was always using horror to say something, and here he's at his most pointed and his most angry.

Joe Pilato's Captain Rhodes is one of the great movie villains, full stop. Not just of horror, not just of the eighties. One of the best, period. He's not some distant shadowy threat. He's loud, sweating, furious, a man who's grabbed power in a collapsing world and is white-knuckling it with everything he has. Every scene he's in crackles. "I'm running this monkey farm now, Frankenstein!" is a line I genuinely repeat in real life, probably more than is socially acceptable, and I have zero regrets about that.

Then there's the effects work. Tom Savini was operating at the absolute peak of his powers here, and the practical gore is staggering even by today's standards. There's a reason this film left such a long shadow over genre filmmaking. Worth noting too that Greg Nicotero, who went on to become one of the most important names in horror makeup and effects, appears in a supporting role here. You're basically watching the passing of a torch without even knowing it at the time.

But let me tell you about Bub, because Bub is the reason I keep showing this film to people. I've watched it with probably ten different people now, and every single time, without fail, there's a moment that stops them cold. It's not one of the big gore set-pieces. It's quieter than that. Bub picks up various objects, a razor, a book, a Walkman, and there's recognition in his eyes. Then he picks up a phone and tries to speak into it. And every single person I've watched that scene with has done the same thing: they've gone "woooah" and leaned forward. For just a split second, they forget it's a movie. They're genuinely astounded by a zombie. That is extraordinary filmmaking. That is performance, direction and concept all clicking together into something that transcends the genre completely.

Horror in 1985 was not short of competition. I've written about Re-Animator before, which came out the same year and is a brilliant piece of work in its own right. But Day of the Dead is operating on a different level. It has the guts, the craft and the ideas to back up every one of its ambitions. And where I find Survival of the Dead a frustrating late-career stumble, Day proves just how high Romero could reach when everything aligned.

I'll be honest, I went back and forth on the rating. But after that phone scene reaction from the last person I showed it to, I stopped deliberating. Five stars. A masterpiece of horror, and one of the finest films of its decade. If you haven't seen it, sort that out immediately. And if you have seen it, show it to someone who hasn't and watch their face when Bub picks up that phone.

Rating: ★★★★★  | Year: 1985  | Watched: 2025-04-13

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Where to watch

Watch in the UK
Stream: Shudder
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More from George A. Romero: Creepshow (1982) · Jacaranda Joe (2022) · BIOHAZARD 2 TV-CM (1997) · Survival of the Dead (2009)
More from the 1980s: Nightmare City (1980) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Style Wars (1983) · Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers (1980)
More horror: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Viy (1967) · Nightmare City (1980) · Angst (1983)
More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)