Day of the Dead (1985): The Entropy of Communication and the End of the Human Race
By Thomas L. Vaultonburg | Zombie Logic Blog | Day 3
I first encountered George A. Romero's Day of the Dead in 1986, sitting on a shelf in the little video rental section of Cacciatore's Food Mart in Byron, Illinois. It had probably been about a year since the movie's theatrical release. I was already a devoted fan of Romero's zombie movies, having discovered Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, and naturally I was eager to see the third installment. I don't remember exactly what I expected, but I remember being disappointed. It wasn't that the zombies weren't convincing. They were spectacular. Tom Savini's makeup effects represented an enormous advancement in the depiction of the living dead. The violence was more graphic, the decomposition more convincing, and the zombies themselves more horrifying than anything Romero had previously put on film. But the movie seemed to consist mostly of people screaming at each other.
Everybody was angry. Everybody was frustrated. Nobody seemed capable of having a conversation without threatening somebody else. The soldiers hated the scientists. The scientists regarded the soldiers with contempt. Everybody was trapped underground, everybody was miserable, and nobody seemed particularly interested in doing anything about it. I didn't get it. For years afterward, I continued to regard Day of the Dead as the weakest of Romero's original trilogy. Night was a masterpiece of claustrophobic horror. Dawn was a brilliant satire of American consumer culture. Day seemed like an unpleasant experience populated by unpleasant people. It took me a long time to understand that this was precisely what Romero intended. The movie wasn't failing to communicate its ideas. It was a movie about the failure of communication itself.
The Entropy of Communication
Entropy, in its simplest thermodynamic sense, concerns the dispersal of energy and the tendency of systems toward equilibrium. Applied metaphorically to human communication, it provides an interesting way of understanding what happens when information, meaning, and cooperation break down. People continue talking, but less and less information is successfully exchanged. Eventually communication becomes little more than noise. That is the world Romero depicts in Day of the Dead. The survivors have retreated into an underground military installation, where a small contingent of soldiers and scientists attempts to maintain some semblance of civilization while the dead have inherited the surface of the Earth.
They have weapons, scientific equipment, food, electricity, and a relatively secure shelter. They possess nearly everything necessary to survive except the ability to cooperate. Every conversation becomes an argument. Every argument becomes a contest of authority. Every contest of authority becomes another opportunity for violence. The characters aren't listening to one another because they aren't really trying to communicate. They're trying to impose their individual understanding of reality on everyone else. The remarkable thing is that nearly everyone believes he or she is acting rationally. The scientists believe scientific investigation might eventually provide a solution. The soldiers believe maintaining order and exercising force are the only realistic means of survival. Sarah believes cooperation remains possible. Captain Rhodes believes his authority entitles him to obedience.
They aren't merely disagreeing about tactics. They're operating from fundamentally incompatible definitions of what it means to survive. And every attempt to resolve those differences makes the situation worse. The underground facility is a closed system, and the people inside are consuming its remaining reserves of trust, patience, and goodwill faster than they can replenish them. By the time the zombies arrive, the human community has already disintegrated.
For me, the key to understanding Day of the Dead eventually came from John, the helicopter pilot played by Terry Alexander. Sarah is still attempting to convince the survivors that cooperation might save them. She believes that if everyone could set aside their differences, the group might accomplish something worthwhile. John understands the problem more clearly. He tells her, "That's the trouble with the world, Sarah darlin'. People got different ideas concernin' what they want out of life." It took me years to recognize that this might be the thesis statement of the entire movie.
Not everyone wants the same things. Not everyone shares the same values. Not everyone defines progress, success, freedom, or even survival in the same way. And people are remarkably reluctant to acknowledge that other people might have legitimate reasons for wanting something different. Sarah wants to save humanity. Rhodes wants to control what remains of it. Dr. Logan wants to understand the zombies. John wants to escape the entire miserable enterprise and live whatever life remains available to him. They are all using the language of survival, but they are describing completely different objectives. John has stopped believing that the problem can be solved through further discussion. He isn't necessarily the most intelligent character in the movie, but he may be the wisest. He has recognized that the greatest danger facing humanity isn't the walking dead. It's humanity's inability to live with itself.
Captain Rhodes and the Failure of Authority
Joseph Pilato's Captain Rhodes is one of the most memorable antagonists in the history of zombie cinema. He is also one of its loudest. Rhodes screams, threatens, humiliates, and intimidates nearly everyone around him. He demands respect without earning it and expects obedience without demonstrating competence. At first glance, he seems like an exaggerated caricature of military authoritarianism. But Romero is doing something more interesting than simply portraying a bad soldier. Rhodes represents authority that has become disconnected from its original purpose. The military exists, ostensibly, to protect the surviving community. But Rhodes has transformed that responsibility into a justification for maintaining his own power. The survival of the group has become secondary to the preservation of his command.
This is a recurring phenomenon in human institutions. Organizations created to accomplish some beneficial purpose eventually become more concerned with protecting their authority, reputation, and internal hierarchy than with fulfilling their original mission. Rhodes cannot tolerate disagreement because disagreement threatens his conception of himself as the person in charge. He has confused being obeyed with being right. His soldiers, meanwhile, are not particularly interested in the scientific mission. They want security, comfort, and the assurance that their sacrifices have some meaning. The scientists cannot provide that assurance. Rhodes responds by increasing the pressure, and the more pressure he applies, the less cooperation he receives. It is an almost perfect illustration of how authoritarian systems can accelerate their own collapse.
Dr. Logan, Bub, and the Question of What Makes Us Human
One of the most extraordinary elements of Day of the Dead is the relationship between Dr. Matthew Logan, played by Richard Liberty, and a zombie named Bub, played by Sherman Howard. Logan believes the undead can be conditioned to recover certain aspects of their former behavior. Through repeated exposure to familiar objects and carefully structured rewards, he attempts to demonstrate that memory and learned responses persist after death. Bub responds to a telephone, a book, a razor, and eventually a firearm. He is learning. Or perhaps he is remembering. Either possibility is disturbing.
Romero has gradually been developing the idea that zombies are not entirely separate from the human beings they once were. In Dawn of the Dead, the undead return to the shopping mall because something about the place remains embedded in their memories. In Day, that residual humanity becomes the center of an experiment. But Logan's research contains a terrible irony. While he attempts to teach a zombie to behave like a civilized human being, the supposedly civilized human beings around him are becoming increasingly savage. Bub demonstrates curiosity, attachment, memory, and eventually grief. Rhodes demonstrates rage, cruelty, and an almost complete inability to regulate his impulses. Which one is more human? Romero doesn't offer a comforting answer.
Logan himself is hardly an uncomplicated hero. His experiments are ethically grotesque, and his obsession with scientific discovery has compromised his judgment. He believes he is pursuing knowledge that might benefit humanity, but he has become increasingly indifferent to the humanity of the people around him. Science, like military authority, has become detached from its moral purpose. The tragedy is that Logan may actually have discovered something important. But nobody is capable of communicating long enough to understand what it means.
The Zombies Are Learning While the Humans Are Forgetting
Perhaps the most fascinating reversal in Day of the Dead is that the zombies appear to be moving toward a rudimentary form of civilization while the humans are moving away from it. Bub learns to recognize objects, respond to instructions, form attachments, and distinguish between individuals. The human survivors are losing their capacity for restraint, cooperation, empathy, and meaningful communication. The evolutionary trajectories seem to be crossing. This is one of Romero's most subversive ideas. The zombies aren't simply a threat to civilization. They may be civilization's successors.
They are patient. They are persistent. They do not waste energy arguing over status or ideology. Their motivations are primitive, but at least they are comprehensible. The humans possess language, reason, technology, and historical knowledge, yet they are unable to organize themselves around a common purpose. Bub, the supposedly mindless creature, eventually demonstrates something resembling loyalty. Rhodes, the supposed defender of human civilization, demonstrates almost nothing beyond his capacity for violence. Romero has turned the distinction between human and monster inside out.
The Reagan Era and the Militarization of Survival
Released in 1985, Day of the Dead emerged during the second term of Ronald Reagan's presidency, when Cold War tensions, military spending, nuclear anxiety, and ideological confrontation were prominent features of American political life. Romero's underground military installation is not an accidental setting. The survivors have retreated into the machinery of a civilization organized around the possibility of annihilation. They are surrounded by equipment designed to preserve military capability, maintain records, and prepare for catastrophe. But the catastrophe has already happened. The machinery remains. The institutions remain. The titles and ranks remain. The civilization that gave those things meaning is gone.
Yet the survivors continue behaving as though the old structures of authority still possess some inherent legitimacy. Rhodes insists on military discipline. The scientists continue their experiments. Everyone clings to the procedures and hierarchies of a world that no longer exists. It is difficult not to see this as a criticism of institutions that become incapable of recognizing when their original assumptions have ceased to apply. The world has ended, and the people entrusted with managing the aftermath are still fighting over who gets to run the meeting.
Sarah and the Burden of Being Reasonable
Lori Cardille's Sarah is the moral and emotional center of the movie. She is intelligent, resourceful, compassionate, and determined to preserve some possibility of a future. She also spends much of the film attempting to reason with people who have no interest in being reasonable. Her predicament is familiar to anyone who has ever tried to resolve a conflict between people who are more invested in winning than in finding a solution. Sarah believes that cooperation is necessary because the alternative is extinction. She is correct. But being correct does not make her persuasive.
This is another of Romero's uncomfortable observations. Truth does not automatically prevail over anger. Reason does not automatically overcome fear. Evidence does not necessarily change minds. Sometimes the people with the most reasonable arguments are the least capable of influencing the outcome. Sarah's frustration becomes the audience's frustration. We want someone to listen to her. We want someone to recognize the obvious danger. We want the survivors to stop behaving like idiots long enough to save themselves. But they don't. And perhaps that is why the movie initially feels so unpleasant. Romero is forcing us to watch people destroy themselves through behaviors we recognize from ordinary life.
The Underground Bunker as a Tomb
The setting of Day of the Dead is one of its most effective visual metaphors. In Night of the Living Dead, the survivors barricade themselves inside a farmhouse. In Dawn of the Dead, they occupy a shopping mall. In Day of the Dead, they retreat underground. Each location reflects a different stage in the collapse of civilization. The farmhouse represents domestic security. The shopping mall represents consumer abundance. The underground bunker represents institutional preservation. By the third film, humanity is no longer attempting to maintain its ordinary way of life. It is attempting to preserve the remains of a civilization that has already died.
The bunker resembles a tomb. Its inhabitants live among records, machinery, supplies, and artifacts of the vanished world. They are surrounded by evidence of human accomplishment but increasingly incapable of reproducing the social relationships that made those accomplishments possible. They are preserving the body of civilization after its spirit has departed. The zombies aboveground may be dead, but at least they are moving freely. The humans have buried themselves alive.
John, McDermott, and the Possibility of Escape
Against the relentless hostility of the bunker, John and Bill McDermott provide something approaching an alternative philosophy. They are not particularly interested in saving the old world. They want to find somewhere peaceful and live. John's outlook is sometimes interpreted as resignation, but I think it is closer to an acceptance of human limitations. He understands that not every problem can be solved, not every institution can be repaired, and not every person can be persuaded. He recognizes that continuing to participate in a destructive system can become a form of self-destruction.
There is something almost Zen-like about his position. Stop trying to control everything. Stop believing that every question requires an answer. Stop sacrificing the present to preserve a system that has already failed. The possibility of a simpler life becomes more appealing than the fantasy of restoring civilization. And John is not merely advocating selfishness. His friendship with McDermott and his eventual willingness to help Sarah demonstrate that he remains capable of loyalty and compassion. He simply refuses to confuse those qualities with an obligation to save everyone from themselves.
Why Critics Rejected Day of the Dead
When Day of the Dead arrived in theaters in 1985, it faced an almost impossible burden of expectation. Night of the Living Dead had revolutionized horror filmmaking. Dawn of the Dead had expanded Romero's mythology while delivering a savage and entertaining satire of American consumerism. Audiences expected another leap forward. Instead, Romero delivered a grim, claustrophobic film in which the principal attraction seemed to be watching people argue in a basement. Roger Ebert gave the film one and a half stars, praising the special effects but criticizing the performances and incessant shouting. He concluded that Romero should abandon the series while he was still ahead.
Other reviewers expressed similar frustrations. The film's extended arguments, limited setting, and overwhelmingly hostile atmosphere made it difficult to enjoy in the conventional sense. Commercially, it was also perceived as a disappointment compared with Dawn. Its domestic theatrical performance was modest, although subsequent international distribution and home-video revenue complicate the idea that it was an outright financial failure. The production itself had been compromised by budget limitations. Romero's original ambitions were considerably larger, but he scaled down the screenplay to preserve the graphic violence he considered essential. The result was a smaller, more concentrated, and arguably more philosophical movie.
The same year brought The Return of the Living Dead, a faster, funnier, punk-inflected zombie movie that offered audiences a very different kind of entertainment. I saw both films around the same period. Return was immediately accessible to me. Its humor, music, characters, and anarchic energy made an immediate impression. Day required something I didn't yet possess. Patience. And perhaps a little more experience with human beings.
The Rehabilitation of a Misunderstood Film
Over the following decades, Day of the Dead underwent a substantial critical reevaluation. As viewers returned to the movie, many began recognizing qualities that had initially been dismissed as defects. The claustrophobia was intentional. The unpleasantness was thematic. The arguments were not interruptions of the story but the mechanism through which the story unfolded. Romero had made a movie about the exhaustion of civilization. Its characters were supposed to be exhausting.
The film's extraordinary practical effects also helped sustain its reputation. Tom Savini and his collaborators created some of the most convincing and memorable zombie imagery ever committed to film. But the movie's lasting significance extends beyond its technical achievements. It is now frequently discussed alongside Night and Dawn as an essential part of Romero's original trilogy, and some critics and fans consider it his most philosophically ambitious zombie film. That doesn't mean everyone has come to love it. Its reception remains more divided than that of its predecessors. But the conversation has changed.
What once seemed like a disappointing sequel can now be understood as the logical culmination of Romero's argument about humanity. Night showed people failing to cooperate in the face of an immediate threat. Dawn showed people attempting to recreate consumer society after its collapse. Day showed people who could no longer even agree on what civilization was supposed to be. The progression is devastating.
The End of the World Is a Communication Problem
Looking back on Day of the Dead now, I find myself returning to that line from John. People have different ideas about what they want out of life. It sounds almost ridiculously simple. But the implications are enormous. We tend to assume that if people possessed the same information, they would eventually arrive at the same conclusions. We imagine that disagreements are caused by ignorance, misinformation, or failures of explanation. Sometimes they are. But sometimes people understand one another perfectly well and simply want incompatible things.
One person wants power. Another wants security. Another wants knowledge. Another wants freedom. Another wants recognition. Another wants to be left alone. Communication cannot resolve every conflict because not every conflict is the result of misunderstanding. Sometimes the problem is that people understand one another and refuse to accept what they hear. This is the deeper horror of Day of the Dead. The survivors aren't doomed because they lack intelligence or resources. They are doomed because they cannot reconcile their competing desires. Their language has become an instrument of domination rather than understanding. Their institutions have become mechanisms for preserving authority rather than serving human needs. Their knowledge has become disconnected from wisdom. The zombies merely finish what the humans have already begun.
The Movie I Wasn't Ready to Understand
When I picked up Day of the Dead from the video shelves at Cacciatore's Food Mart in 1986, I wanted another great zombie movie. I wanted the terror of Night of the Living Dead and the exhilarating social satire of Dawn of the Dead. Instead, I got a movie about people who couldn't stop arguing long enough to recognize that their world was ending. I thought it was tedious. I thought the characters were obnoxious. I thought Romero had somehow lost his touch.
Nearly forty years later, I see something very different. I see a filmmaker who had followed his central idea to its most disturbing conclusion. The living dead were never really the problem. They were a device for revealing the problem. And the problem was us. Not our hunger, exactly. Not our violence, although certainly that. Not even our stupidity. Our inability to understand that other people have different ideas about what they want out of life, and our willingness to destroy everything around us rather than accept that fact.
I can imagine that teenage version of myself standing in Cacciatore's Food Mart, studying the box and wondering whether the movie would be as good as the first two. I wish I could tell him that it was. He just wasn't ready for it yet. Because the older I get, the more I recognize the world Romero was describing.
Everybody talking. Nobody listening. And somewhere beyond the walls, the dead are gathering.
At least they seem to know what they want.
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