Filed under: Horror, Cinematical
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A camera pulls back from what appears to be a 1970s-style shag carpet. It’s not. It’s the lining in a soundproof room. A woman awakens, shaking, but she’s not waking from a nightmare; she’s waking into a nightmare of the walking undead stalking, killing, and consuming the living. The nightmare, of course, belongs to George A. Romero’s fertile imagination and the film ‘Dawn of the Dead’](Dawn of the Dead (1979) - Movie | Moviefone) released unrated in 1978-1979 due to violence and gore, remains a high-water mark for the undead/zombie sub-genre Romero redefined a decade earlier with ‘Night of the Living Dead.’](http://www.moviefone.com/movie/night-of-the-living-dead/3590/main)
Taking ‘Night of the Living Dead’ as a given, Romero set ‘Dawn of the Dead’ mid-apocalypse. The well-ordered world as we know still exists, but it’s quickly unraveling, leaving the voracious undead in its wake. The sleeping/awakening woman in the first scene, Francine (Gaylen Ross), is one of ‘Dawn of the Dead’s’ central characters. A mid-level television station manager at WGON-TV in Philadelphia, Francine watches first-hand as the station’s management structure breaks down, mirroring, apparently, events in the outside world.