YMMV / Living Dead Series

• Anvilicious: The political messages behind the films are not exactly subtle and, particularly in the post-2000s entries to the official sextet, often attract criticism.
• Common Knowledge:
  • It is often believed that the Living Dead zombies are the result of an infectious virus, but in reality, the Living Dead movies hint at multiple explanations behind the reanimation phenomenon. The first movie outright states that space radiation was resurrecting the dead while the second movie theorizes that hell has no more room for the dead.
  • Related to the above, people that believe the virus explanation generally presume that Living Dead zombies are created through zombie-inflicted injuries, an assumption that stems from tropes in later zombie media like 28 Days Later or The Zombie Survival Guide and ignores that the "patient zero" zombies in the Living Dead series had no such injuries and were simply corpses that rose from their graves. Throughout the Living Dead series, every corpse with an intact head and a non-burnt body becomes a zombie regardless if they were bitten by any zombies in the first place. For example, in Land of the Dead, one citizen became a zombie after committing suicide despite never receiving any injuries from a zombie attack.
  • Thanks to Pop Culture Osmosis, a lot of people usually consider Living Dead zombies to be mindless shamblers. Funnily enough, one of the main constants in the series was that the zombies were smarter than they appeared. In the original Night Of The Living Dead, zombies were using tools to kill their victims and to damage their victims' cars and shelters. Dawn of the Dead (1978) established that zombies had some recollection of their old lives and could diverge from the usual mob mentality if necessary. Finally, certain zombies, such as Bub and Big Daddy, were intelligent enough to properly wield firearms and single-handedly outmaneuver humans.
• Contested Sequel: Every sequel that doesn’t have Dawn in the title is bound to suffer this in one way shape or form, though Land of the Dead and Diary of the Dead tend to come up most as to whether or not they’re worthy successors to the past films.
  • To be more specific, with Land, fans either see it as a grand return for Romero’s directing career with great gore and suspense, a So Okay, It's Average zombie flick that doesn’t do anything particularly new for the genre, or a bad follow up to Day of the Dead (1985) with a heavy handed message on the social classes and truly unlikable characters making it hard to be entertaining.
  • With Diary, it’s whether or not the Found Footage style filming was a unique approach to the genre, or a poorly executed way of incorporating a gimmick that took away from the what made the rest of the series beloved in the first place. There’s also debate on whether the found footage aspect was executed properly or not.
• Even Better Sequel: Night of the Living Dead (1968) is considered a groundbreaking masterpiece that helped invent the modern horror and zombie genre we see today, but it’s sequel, Dawn of the Dead (1978), is most beloved by fans and critics who love it for its strong character development and interactions, impressive gore effects, and its overall fun feel while still maintaining a serious attitude throughout.
• Older Than They Think: Many people hated Day of the Dead (1985) for it's bleak tone. Ironically, the bleak and hopeless tone originated in the original film. In fact, one could argue the tone was more bleak in the original, as everyone dies, whereas at least a small amount of characters made it out alive in Day of the Dead.
• Sequelitis:
  • Survival of the Dead is often ridiculed as the lowest point of the series, and the worst film in Romero’s filmography in general. Points of criticism go towards its lack of any interesting or likable characters to root for and the Humans Are the Real Monsters message being even more blatantly ham-fisted to the audience than ever before.
  • Day of the Dead 2: Contagium was made without Romero’s involvement and features unbelievably poor acting and effects and it shows.
  • Children of the Living Dead by John Russo ^note  One of the original creators of Night of the Living Dead is also frequently mocked for its poor, murky cinematography and lack of connections to any of the established lore of the past films. The fact that it’s also a direct sequel to the universally despised 30th Anniversary Edition of Night of the Living Dead only adds to its bad reputation.
  • Diary of the Dead is often the point where people started losing interest in the series. Mainly due to Jason prioritizing filming rather than actually help his friends. It also doesn't help that the mere existance of the movie causes the timeline to become... Questionable, to say the least.
• Squick: It’s a series about the living dead devouring human flesh in morbid and twisted ways. This was inevitable.
• Values Resonance: Many of the recurring themes seen throughout these films ^note  the conflict among ordinary people over their differences; material consumerism; the military industrial complex; the struggles between the lower, middle, and higher social classes; and the mistrust of reliable sources have become shockingly just as relevant, if not more relevant today than when the films were made.
• Vindicated by History: At the time, Day of the Dead (1985) was seen as the weakest of the Romero zombie series overall with Night and Dawn proving to be a Tough Act to Follow, and many viewers criticized the film's bleak and hopeless tone as a turn away. Nowadays it’s not uncommon to see many sites rank it on par with the first two movies with some even going as far as saying it’s the best of the original trilogy. It also helps that the sequels after Day have a more controversial reception.

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