Instead of a shape-shifting alien that overtakes its human hosts, capitalism is represented in Romero’s film by the military and to a lesser extent, the zombies. Zombies have long been associated with capitalism. They literally consume and devour, to the point that by the beginning of Day of the Dead, they’ve reduced the world to military rule and few survivors. The outlook is so dire that the survivors squabble with each other even more than characters from Romero’s previous films, making it nearly impossible to dream of post-capitalist possibilities, a more equitable world, or even life outside of the bunkers.
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While Night of the Living Dead (1968) is the most heralded film of George A. Romero’s initial “Dead” trilogy, and for good reason, Day of the Dead feels the most relevant now following the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the most recent U.S. election where masculinity was front and center. Just consider the oceans of articles about young men drifting hard right. For example, an October 2024 New Yorker piece written by Jay Caspian Kang asked in its headline, “What’s the Matter with Young Male Voters?”1 Day of the Dead (1985) feels so pertinent because it’s a critique of Reagan-era cinema, specifically the uber macho male action hero, and, as film critic/theorist Robin Wood stated in his review of the film, it’s very much a woman’s nightmare, following a female protagonist struggling to survive against hostile male forces and the constant threat of rape. Yet, despite its grim setting and the horrid plight of its protagonist, it does hint at possibilities beyond hyper-capitalism and violent masculinity, serving a much-needed dose of optimism after full collapse.
Day of the Dead showcases the horrors of a patriarchal society in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by zombies to the point the survivors, namely military men and a few scientists, live in underground bunkers and tunnels. While both Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead (1978) have their social commentary, neither is quite as cynical as Day of the Dead. In this film, the military has taken over, constantly barking orders at scientists who either want to domesticate the zombies or find out what caused the outbreak in the first place. Unlike Romero’s previous zombie movies, Day’s protagonist is a female scientist, Sarah, played by Lori Cardille.
In his review of the film, Wood referred to Day as “a woman’s nightmare” because Sarah is frequently threatened with rape by the military men. Her fears are represented in the opening. She’s first shown seated against a gray wall, her head lowered. She then looks up at the camera and eventually a calendar on the wall with all the days of October x’d off. Suddenly, as she moves toward the calendar and stares at a picture of farmers and pumpkins, representing life and the world pre-apocalypse, zombies burst through the wall and grab her. Rightfully distressed, she turns but is unable to resist the force. The link between this jump scare opening and the greater threats of rape Sarah will face as the movie progresses isn’t exactly subtle. However, while the sequence reminds reviewers that the zombies still pose a threat, like all of Romero’s zombie movies, it’s the humans who pose the most danger, especially to Sarah.
After Sarah wakes up from the nightmare, she’s shown with helicopter pilot John (Terry Alexander) and electronics expert McDermott (Jarlath Conroy). This association is important because John and McDermott don’t align themselves with the military villains or the scientists. In that regard, they’re good guys, so to speak. The trio are on a mission to find a radio signal and any signs of life. Just as the first credits appear on the screen, Romero focuses on a zombie-infested neighborhood, to the point money blows down the street. The old world is gone, replaced by a much harsher order. This contrasts Romero’s previous films. Night of the Living Dead was confined to a farmhouse, while Dawn of the Dead took place in a shopping mall. The outbreak wasn’t as widespread. Those early street scenes in Day of the Dead showcase how everything has collapsed. The zombies have indeed fully taken over. The only government remaining, at least in the U.S., is a fascistic military regime, run by brute men.
To add to Wood’s commentary and review, Day of the Dead is not only the bleakest entry in Romero’s initial zombie trilogy, but it also represents the capitalist, seemingly inescapable hellscape that Mark Fisher describes in Capitalist Realism. Fisher, who was also a pop culture critic, compares capitalism to the monster in John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing. It absorbs and consumes whatever it touches. Instead of a shape-shifting alien that overtakes its human hosts, capitalism is represented in Romero’s film by the military and to a lesser extent, the zombies. Zombies have long been associated with capitalism. They literally consume and devour, to the point that by the beginning of Day of the Dead, they’ve reduced the world to military rule and few survivors. The outlook is so dire that the survivors squabble with each other even more than characters from Romero’s previous films, making it nearly impossible to dream of post-capitalist possibilities, a more equitable world, or even life outside of the bunkers. They have a chance to reset, but instead of doing so, the characters are victims of a harsh military dictatorship. The timing of Romero’s film is important, just a few years shy of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Released in 1985, Day of the Dead is relevant in the context of Fisher’s critique. The fall of the Berlin Wall marks the end of the Cold War. This was a triumph for both the U.S. and Western capitalism. It became impossible for the collective imagination to envision anything but Western capitalism as the dominant global force. Yet Romero’s film does envision an alternative, which will be addressed later in this article.
In most of Romero’s zombie movies, there’s strife among the survivors. In Day, there’s a clear-cut human antagonist, Rhodes, played by Joseph Pilato. He overshadows the threat of the zombies and poses the most danger to Sarah. He’s typically surrounded by his yes men, Steel (Gary Howard Klar), and Rickles (Ralph Marrero), who laugh like jackals and frequently joke about rape. Each of the military men is depicted as hyper-masculine. Steel frequently cocks and waves his gun around, for instance, but Rhodes poses the greatest threat. During the first time he and Sarah interact in a scene, he tells her, “The way I see it, lady, I’m not so sure we need you at all. I’m not even sure what it is you’re doing.” When Sarah pleads for more cooperation, Steel readies his gun. Further, when Sarah asks that her boyfriend, Miguel (Anthony Dileo Jr.), be given time off due to his fragile mental state and the stress of their situation, Rhodes threatens to cut off their “extracurricular activities,” again threatening a form of sexual violence. During this exchange, Rhodes removes his coat, revealing two guns and a string of bullets draped around his chest, Romero’s clever way of jabbing at the 1980s action hero. Rhodes is a grotesque caricature of the Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger-type action hero that was so prevalent in Reagan-era cinema, a representation of hypermasculinity.
This aggression is also seen in how the military characters treat the zombies. During an early scene, as the men try to lure the zombies into the tunnels and capture them for the scientists to study, Rickles encourages Steel to “whip it out.” Steel also declares that he has “the biggest piece of meat in the cave.” The sexual violence is utilized against both Sarah and the zombies, who are constantly othered by the men and referred to as “puss buckets” and other derogatory terms. There’s only one man in the unit who doesn’t conform to the harmful standards Rhodes and his men constantly display, but it wears on him. From the get-go, Miguel teeters on the edge of a nervous breakdown. When we first see him and Sarah interact, he tells her, “I know that you’re strong, all right. So what? Stronger than me? So what. Stronger than everyone? So what.” Miguel seems both threatened and intimidated by Sarah’s survival instincts, while at the same time deploring the men in his unit. He also faces the brunt of the men’s racism, and when the zombies nearly kill Rickles in the tunnels, Miguel is blamed and endures a barrage of racial slurs, by Steel especially. Unable to survive in this far crueler world because he doesn’t live up to such hypermasculine standards, Miguel is eventually bitten and then lures the zombies in the tunnel to kill Rhodes and his men.
Contrasted with the military is a group of scientists, led by Logan (Richard Liberty). He’s referred to as “Dr. Frankenstein” by Rhodes because of his experiments on the zombies, including one he nearly domesticates named Bub, played by Richard Shelby. Yet, while Logan is a formidable opponent to Rhodes and frequently stands up to him, sometimes defending Sarah, he’s ultimately no better than the military. He wants to control the zombies and uses human body parts as part of that process, feeding them scraps from people the survivors knew. This marriage between science and the military is another reflection of the era. Reagan wanted to build the Star Wars Defense System, for instance, which was meant to repel a nuclear attack. While Rhodes and Logan both seek their own means of control and domination, they never see eye to eye. Rhodes constantly belittles knowledge and refers to Logan as an “egghead,” among other terms. Logan is a threat to Rhodes’s power, though, because he constantly challenges his masculinity and gun fetish, asking Rhodes what exactly his plan is, since there’s not enough ammo to shoot all the zombies. However, Logan never uses his smarts for good. Instead, he believes he can simply control the zombies. It’s merely another form of domination and conquest, a notion that humans always belong at the top of the food chain, even in this dark new world. Additionally, even if Logan stands up to the military goons, he’s still part of the larger military project and thus part of the hypermasculine ideology, even when challenging it.
Ultimately, Rhodes and his men receive their comeuppance once Miguel unleashes the zombies in the tunnels. Rickles dies laughing and screaming as zombies tear apart his flesh and devour him. Steel shoots himself after he’s bitten, and Rhodes is torn apart by a horde of zombies, after Bub shoots him several times. Rhodes has the bloodiest death in the film. He and his crew may have fashioned themselves as Chuck Norris clones, but all the guns and ammo aren’t enough to save them.
Eventually, Sarah, John, and McDermott make it out of the tunnels and reach the helicopter, their only salvation. It’s important to note that these three characters have characteristics that set them apart from the scientists and military and offer glimmers of a new post-capitalist world. Miguel is useful to Rhodes when he can help trap zombies, but as soon as he’s bitten, Rhodes disregards him. Rhodes also ditches his men the minute the zombies enter the tunnels. He put his own self-preservation and self-interest above all else. He doesn’t try to save anyone. On the other hand, Sarah exhibits care and compassion. She’s the one who frequently pleads for the scientists and military to work together more, while John and McDermott are realistic enough to understand that’s never going to happen. Yet these three make it to the chopper and out of the tunnels alive.
There’s another important sequence in Day that shows what the world may look like if John, McDermott, and Sarah are given the chance to rebuild it and begin anew. During a break from her work, Sarah follows John and McDermott to their own little private paradise, which exists behind closed doors, sealed off from Rhodes and his men. There they have beach umbrellas set up and murals with palm trees. When Sarah enters, John says, “Welcome to civilization, Sarah, the last holdout.” Sarah then questions why he and McDermott don’t offer to help but drink the water and eat the food. At this point it’s clear the two men want to exist on their own, separate from the military or the scientists and their constant quest for domination. They decide to live outside that system. John even says that they don’t believe in the mission, and they resist in their own way by not helping. He knows Rhodes won’t kill them, however, because John can fly the plane, and McDermott can operate the radios. They have skills Rhodes needs. John adds that the military kept records of the top 500 companies, Defense Department budgets, as well as microfilm with tax returns. He questions why the military would choose to save all of that and jokes that the bunkers are “a great 14-mile tombstone with an epitaph on it that no one’s going to bother to read” before adding all those records are “relics of what once was.” John envisions the survivors finding each other, and if they have children together, never allowing them to dig up the records of what was. In other words, John wants to reset everything and live in a better, post-capitalist society. This sequence is one that would likely make Fisher proud. It envisions a society beyond capitalism. In this one powerful sequence, John especially ponders a life detached from the usual system’s dominance, a new world that allows them to start over, to the point they’d refuse to even unearth the relics of the capitalist system kept in the bunkers.
This scene is a contrast to the film’s ambiguous ending. The trio make it the chopper, but just as she opens the door, Sarah is attacked by a zombie. She then wakes up on an island with McDermott and John. This scene links back to the beginning, when Sarah woke from the nightmare underscoring her fears of rape. On the island, she even has a calendar that reads November, meaning time has progressed from that opening shot. It’s difficult to say if the trio survived and whether Sarah will ever overcome her fears, but maybe the film begins with a nightmare and ends with Sarah reaching paradise with two men who stand in utter opposition to Rhodes’s military regime. In an optimistic reading of the ending, the trio can rebuild the world and make it better, leaving behind “relics of what once was.”
While Night of the Living Dead will remain timeless for introducing the modern zombie and featuring a gut-wrenching ending, and Dawn of the Dead’s humorous critique of consumerism never grows stale, Day of the Dead feels visionary for its depiction of toxic masculinity and an assault on female agency. This is the movie for the post-Dobbs, Trump 2.0 world we now find ourselves in. Though the film may be the bleakest of the initial trilogy, it also hints at post-capitalist possibilities, a new world from the wreckage, which, at this current moment, feels like a truly revolutionary idea.
Works Cited
Day of the Dead. Directed by George A. Romero. United Film Distribution Company, 1985.
Fisher, Mark. Capitalist Realism. Zero Books. 2008.
Wood, Robin. “The Woman’s Nightmare: Masculinity in Day of the Dead.” Robin Wood on the Horror Film: Collected Essays and Reviews, edited by Barry Keith Grant, Wayne State University Press, 2018, pp. 319-331.
