10 Horror Movies That Stick The Landing

Without George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead, the modern zombie movie simply wouldn't exist.

This 1968 classic established so many of the tropes now associated with the brain-munching genre and it did so without ever using the Z-word, instead referring to the undead as "ghouls". 

Ending with a last stand between a group of surviving humans and the ghouls, as everyone else falls around him, the final survivor is Ben (Duane Jones), who manages to hold off the monsters until daylight. 

In the morning, a group of armed men arrive to clear off the remaining ghouls. Ben emerges from his hiding place, thinking he's safe, but is shot by one of the men instead. His body is chucked on a flaming pyre with the rest of the ghouls, an ignoble end for such a resilient hero. 

Not only is this a gut punch to the audience, but it's also incredibly socially charged. Ben, a Black man, has just been killed by a bunch of White guys and then had his body unceremoniously burnt beyond recognition. Really makes you think about who the real ghouls are.