...revolve around a group of students?

Students are the only people interested in these movies. The ending of a life that hasn't even begun is a comedy to most of the gore-lovers who watch these movies. They love to see the nauseating moments and feel the despair of the survivors, as they get wiped out at the end of the film.

It's not enough to call horror movie lovers brain-dead; they're soul-dead. They are also more stupid than the victims in these films; they believe they would survive where the screen victims fall like Jews in Auschwitz. (Yes, that's an intentional metaphor. Another good one would be black people dying in the Superdome; both extinctions of nonwhite, non-rich people run through the minds of the soul-dead.)

That's a conceit that's visible in a lot of apocalyptic tales; the minor cult film Radioactive Dreams says that all normal people die, while people who fashion themselves after film noir detectives, punk-haired sluts and 50's greasers will survive the nuclear war. All you need is a sense of style, these films say, and you'll live while your parents and dull friends perish. And therefore nuclear apocalypse or zombie onslaughts are to be welcomed; they clear out the chaff.

In any real incident like this, style does nothing as a survival tactic. The stylish die with the bland. Maybe faster, because the stylish are interested in looking good instead of looking for threats.

So, yes, students are the centerpiece of horror movies because they want to think they're survivors. When this current recession turns into a depression, and they are all eating from trash cans with the rest of us, we'll see how well they survive. And we'll see how many people really want to take a dip in Romero's abbatoir.

Which, I'll have you know, is the best zombie movie since "Return of the Living Dead" in 1985 (essentially a dark satire). All the stuff Andrew mentions about showing footage of real disasters/genocides/violence as if it were zombie-induced was first done by Braff, but he took it further by interspersing expertly faked "news" footage of zombies breaking through military cordons and chomping on camera crews. Outstanding stuff. And nothing - and I do mean NOTHING - in any of Romero's movies comes close to the opening ten minutes of Braff's remake. It's simply magnificent, not to mention genuinely horrifying.

And last but not least, will someone please politely explain to critics everywhere that "28 Days Later" IS NOT A ZOMBIE MOVIE! It's the story of a plague, pure and simple. GEEEZZZ...

What was fascinating about "Day of the Dead" (and, at least in spots, about the "28 Days Later"/"28 Weeks Later" films) was the attempt to imagine a reconstructed human society in which something as devastating as brain-eating zombieism becomes an administrative problem or a quasi-manageable epidemic like AIDS or Ebola virus.

Shirley you meant "Land of the Dead", not "Day of the Dead." The situation in Day is way, way beyond quasi-manageable.

And 28 Days Later is too a zombie movie, unless you're being pedantic.

I haven't seen Diary of the Dead (Romero lost me at Land of the Dead), but I would like to remark on your final comment about 28 Days Later. I would argue that 28 Days Later is perhaps one of the only zombie movies (sorry, Mister Marker) that doesn't default "to an intellectually lazy, teenage-grade nihilism." In fact, it's refreshingly humanistic throughout, and downright hopeful in its denouement. The same can't be said for it's inferior sequel, but regardless of whether or not you actually liked 28 Days Later, I don't think it's fair or accurate to pin the "teenage-grade nihilism" label on it. In fact, one of the film's main themes is the rejection of nihilism, as the main characters strive to maintain familial bonds in the face of chaos and anarchy. And...spoiler ahead...they succeed! Quite the opposite of Romero's films, and every other pale imitation made in their wake.

Zach Braff is that obnoxious kid from "Scrubs" and the highly overrated "Garden State." Zack Snyder directed the remake of "Dawn of the Dead," which was fantastic.

I LOVE ZOMBIE MOVIES

that being said...It was horrid.

silly in the way its idiotic characters act and annoying in its pretentious self righteous goobly gook…that I now think George Romero is the John McCain of Zombie movies. He was cool once apon a time, but now he is a brain damaged old man.

O'Hehir's analysis of the zombie genre's demise would seem to be correct, especially if the genre's inventor now provides only the limpest of fare. However, as with most genres, exceptional movies are in fact quite rare anyway, so the paucity of zombie films of the quality of Night of the Living Dead should not be a surprise and may not signal the end of zombie art.

To the contrary:

1) Of all the genres that might die, I think we must wonder about the notion that a ZOMBIE genre could? Actually, though, since genre itself may be understood as zombiehood, a zombie genre is, unsurprisingly, a strange animal to begin with.

2) On the other hand, if one were to look for signs of the death of an undead genre: I can only agree that there are good moments in the Dawn of the Dead remake, but on the whole the film isn't very good if we are measuring it by its social/political insightfulness. I did enjoy watching it, but it certainly didn't encourage any kind of thinking. That movie will eat your brain just as ruthlessly as any zombie.

3) Although Shaun of the Dead parodies the genre, it is not merely a tombstone erected over the genre. Rather Shaun more effectively than any other zombie movie I have seen, exposes the simple point that, yes, in fact, we are all already zombies and that fighting zombification requires something more intellectually pressing than a wide distribution of guns 'n' ammo (a point lost on the Dawn of the Dead remake).

4) 28 Days Later and Weeks Later are, OF COURSE, zombie films. I have seen the contrary argument made before, and it seems both pedantic and simply to miss the point about what defines the zombie genre (not merely a question of what [undead] physiological process defines a zombie, which really would be a rather silly thing to worry about and ignores the genre's pre-Romero conventions with respect to such questions). Still, I have always regarded 28 Days Later as a peculiar film... it seems to me that it's really two different movies struggling with each other. Still, an interesting, thoughtful movie, I think--and by this, i also mean, it is a film that encourages its audience to do some thinking. I also quite liked 28 Weeks Later, and very much for the reasons mentioned by an earlier poster. In fact, I found it to be superior to it's progenitor as both a political and a social commentary.