DOTD (1979) Third Image Analysis

This screenshot is from the final scene of Dawn Of The Dead (1979) in which we see Fran and Peter escape and fly away from the zombie filled mall. Romero is half Cuban and hates racism and once again his auteur style is shown by having a black character, Peter, survive right through to the end. Fran is the other last remaining survivor and she is one that changed positively throughout her experience with the zombies. This challenges all horror conventions regarding characters as Romero has killed off the two characters most likely to survive, Stephen and Roger, the young, white male heroes. It shows Romero’s enlightened thinking when it came to both race and feminism.

At the beginning of the film, Fran is projected as being the stereotypical blonde female victim. She is no help to Stephen when he is being attacked by a zombie in the hangar scene and is paralysed by fear when confronted with her first zombie. However, Gaylen Ross who plays Fran refused to scream at any point during the film and Romero’s increasingly worked in strong aspects to her character. Fran is pregnant and is told by the others to take it easy but nevertheless throughout the film, begins to build herself up as a strong independent woman who is just as capable as the male characters. She began to voice her fears when saying “What have we done to ourselves?” and by the end, managed to look after Roger when he was sick, learnt how to shoot a gun well and learnt how to fly the helicopter. She becomes the female hero and final girl; something we would not expect from a blonde female character in a genre that stereotypically portrays them as a victim.

On the other hand, Peter had always been the laid-back, cool character, for example, in the hangar scene, he bangs the coffee machine and coffee comes out. He is also very good with a gun, makes good decisions and is physically strong; shown when building a wall upstairs to block off the entrance. He initially considers suicide but shows the mental toughness to escape the zombies and survive with her.

While Romero challenges stereotypes of characters, the ending is fairly stereotypical in terms of conventional narrative structure. Fran and Peter are low on fuel which leaves the ending open as we do not find out if they escape the country. It also finishes with an unhappy ending as their friends have succumbed unwillingly to the zombies and been killed. This follows the typical conventions of horror films which leaves the audience with a memorable ending  that makes them eager to know if the heroes survive. This type of open ending is also shown in The Hills Have Eyes (2006) where 3 people survive and we see they are being spied on so again at the finale, making the audience unsettles whilst setting up a sequel.