Well, Romero’s highs were much higher than Wes Craven‘s, but Romero’s lows were almost as low.
I appreciated him far more in his early years when he was still trying to be more than just a horror director, but he ultimately settled into it while even then still struggling to get projects off the ground. Maybe if he had decided to move to Hollywood permanently instead of hanging out in Pittsburgh’s outer areas.
The greater tragedy of his career was how he became so intimately tied to zombie films. The combination of his name associated with Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead, along with his decreasing ability to craft compelling characters or lack of understanding of world-building put him in a very undead place. He was best when he could go with his cameras and a troupe of actors to find a movie through guerilla filmmaking and lots of editing. That doesn’t gel well with more strictly assembled films with tighter schedules when he started getting larger budgets. Then his films started relying more on his writing, and he was never a great writer.
So, much like Wes Craven, I wish he had a reliable writing partner, but at least he started reasonably strong. He became a cultural icon because of his first couple of zombie movies, ambling along for another couple of decades trying to make anything else and only able to get consistent work, especially towards the end, by embracing the zombies repeatedly.
I think Romero was a talented filmmaker and not great writer, but he had promise. That promise ended up mostly squandered deeper into his career, which is sad. But still, he had some very nice highs.
So, here is his filmography definitely ranked. And I should see no need to revisit it with new entries in the future. Unless, of course, he comes back from the dead. It’s a concern.
Also, check out the rest of the definitive rankings to bask in their definitiveness.
And finally, just a quick note: I did not include Two Evil Eyes in the ranking because it was only one half of a film. I also did include The Amusement Park because it was long enough and complete enough on its own to include.
“If not for the handful of guffaws, I’d say it has no worth at all. But, I did guffaw at least twice. Maybe it was only twice.”
15. Land of the Dead
“This movie is stupid to its core. It doesn’t work as a story. Its characters are uniformly dumb. The situation makes no sense. It all falls apart the second you think about it at all. Hiding behind metaphor is a terrible defense since the text still needs to work even when there’s intended subtext. Again, the gore is decent, though.”
14. Day of the Dead
“So, it’s just kind of miserable. No one performs well. Pilato is probably the best of the bunch, but he’s just yelling and chewing scenery unmoored from any character or narrative concerns. Liberty is just the worst, feeling like he’s in a campy 50s scifi movie instead of this grim bit of misanthropy. It meanders forever without a plot. Its point is thin. At least the gore is quality, I guess.”
“So, it’s not good. It’s really not. The script is mostly a non-entity with actors left largely flagging in the wind, looking for something to do while Romero can’t give them much. However, the opening is decent, is finely shot, and Romero gets to flex once late. It’s really not good, but it’s not completely terrible. There are a couple of small bright spots, and everything in between is more just dull rather than bad.”
12. Monkey Shines
“It’s a mixed bag that doesn’t really work, but it’s got some charms early.”
11. Bruiser
“It doesn’t really work. It’s hard to believe that this is the result of Romero’s eight year period in the cinematic wilderness. Sure, he’d been shopping stuff around and trying to get stuff made for all of it, but this is what gets made? I really feel like something just fell apart during production or editing. Honestly, it deserved to go straight to video.”
“Romero has lost all ability to make his films about something, and his efforts here are embarrassing. Still, as a neo-Western filled with Irish characters set on an island off the eastern coast of Delaware, it’s not terrible.”
9. The Crazies
“I just really wish that the film upped the tension as it got to its conclusion rather than had it taper off. It has to be incredibly difficult keeping the tension amped for so long, but Romero just makes some curious choices about how to move the action into its second half that drains the energy from the film almost completely.
Still, that first half really is something.”
8. Creepshow
“It’s something of a ditty, a quick work done to almost just entertain themselves. That it comes out pretty decently is quite nice, but, really, most of these stories could have used some rewrites.”
“That 104 minute cut, though, is solidly good. It’s not what one would expect from Romero, but I think it shows that Romero was far more than just the zombie guy. He had interesting directions he could have gone, but I’m not naïve enough to think that he ever had a chance. The only way he was going to get financing after a certain point was zombie movies specifically and horror films generally. This more interesting path wasn’t going to last for long.”
“I think this is one of the better King adaptations. It’s certainly better than Pet Semetary, Romero allowing the film to feel like an actual series of events in a narrative form instead of a series of highlights. He was pretty good at this whole moviemaking thing.”
5. Martin
“So, it’s good. I think the longer cut is probably better. Romero shows that he still has chops in making a film even after a few years in the wilderness, unable to find funding and in increasingly deep debt (reportedly a million dollars at the time). It’s not some forgotten masterpiece, but it’s solid and well-done in his own, dirt-cheap way.”
“It’s a good horror movie, I’m saying. It’s really not much more than that, though.”
“So, the zombie stuff is good. The character stuff is good. The man-on-a-mission approach to the storytelling works. The threats are handled well. I just find it to be a bit thematically bare and inconsistent. Perhaps not Romero’s masterpiece, it’s a quality bit of zombie cinema from the man who started it all a decade earlier.”
2. Knightriders
“It’s just an all around entertainment. That it failed commercially is potentially the saddest moment of Romero’s career. He was so much more than zombie movies.”
“In a certain way, this is pure Romero, and that he ends up closer to David Lynch than to, say, John Carpenter or Wes Craven, doesn’t surprise me as much as it might have. I’ve seen how much he leans into editing to make his films effective before. This honestly might be my favorite Romero.”
David Vining, Author 
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