Review Detail

Unfortunately this was the start of Romero's downfall. He sold out to the big studios with this awful mess. I think the edit does it's best, but it's truly Romero's fault and everyone else who worked on the project whose to blame for this, not the fan-editor who has tried here to salvage what is left.

So, the zombies are rightly dumbed down, the leading macho black zombie is given a lesser part, the zombie shotgun scenes are removed, which probably was for the best. I think there may have been POV zombie shots, which were taken out too and I think much for the better. The mall scenes of the butchery of the middle class seem a bit brief here, but there may not have been much to play with on that front. The jump scares are minimal too and I think that improves the film massively as Romero never did zombie films for jump scares in the first place. The zombies were just part of the bigger narrative and were always supposed to be secondary, it's just a shame Romero failed to make much of an narrative here as zombies alone cannot make a good Romero film.

Lastly, I feel sorry for the fan-editor that there was simply nothing else that could have been done with that abrupt and dismal ending. Romero is completely to blame for that. It really is terrible. It's just one of the those films that leaves you with "what was the point in making that?" and it's the ending which makes the whole film feel much worse as it's simply hasn't been made well altogether. I feel the same with Romero's final project "The Living Dead", a novel that starts well, but you are quickly left disillusioned, disconnected and disinterested with the whole narrative towards the end. Still, we have "The Dead Trilogy" and we have everything to thank Romero for making those classic horror films.

Overall I couldn't tell where half the cuts were made so the fan-editor did a brilliant job in making it seamless. The audio and visual quality were both fine. A job well done.