3. Dawn of the Dead
George Romero returns to direct the excellent sequel to Night of the Living Dead. Don't get me wrong, Night was a brilliant film that introduced zombies into mainstream cinema, but Dawn improved on so many levels. With the zombie outbreak continuing, a local weatherman named Stephen and his girlfriend Fran decided to flee the chaos in the weather helicopter. Meanwhile, their SWAT member friend Roger decides to flee with them after his team is overwhelmed while trying to contain an outbreak in a local apartment block. He's joined by Peter, another SWAT survivor. They hole up in a shopping mall and create their own idyllic world inside it, once they get rid of all the zombies inside. This raises the point that Romero wanted to get across - America's culture of consumerism and how it turns us all into zombies, buying into every new product that the media offers us. Tom Savini also lent his expertise to the zombie and gore effects. The ambiguous ending leaves us wondering what happened to the survivors.