Shot outside of Pittsburgh at a fraction of the cost of a Hollywood feature by a band of filmmakers determined to make their mark, George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead is one of the great stories of independent cinema: a midnight hit turned box-office smash that became one of the most influential films of all time. A deceptively simple tale of a group of strangers trapped in a farmhouse who find themselves fending off a horde of flesh-eating ghouls newly arisen from their graves, Romero’s claustrophobic vision of a late-sixties America (literally) tearing itself apart rewrote the rules of the horror genre, combined gruesome gore with acute social commentary, and quietly broke ground by casting a black actor (Duane Jones) in the lead role. After decades of poor-quality prints and video transfers, Night of the Living Dead can finally be seen for the immaculately crafted film that it is thanks to a new restoration, scanned from the original camera negative and supervised by Romero himself. Stark, haunting, and more relevant than ever, Night of the Living Dead is back. (Janus Films)

DANIEL KRAUS is a New York Times bestselling writer of novels, TV, and film. His latest novel, Angel Down, was a New York Times Top 10 Book of 2025. His novel Whalefall won the Alex Award, was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist, and was named a Best Book of 2023 by NPR, The New York Times, Amazon, Chicago Tribune, and more. With Guillermo del Toro, he co-wrote The Shape of Water, based on the same idea the two created for the Oscar-winning film.