Spoiler Discussion

1. Watching Harry come up and then try and take control repeatedly, definitely felt like a form of racial tension. He constantly looks at Ben as a threat to him, even though it’s established that he didn’t know Tom before and was completely fine with him. You could argue that it’s because Tom was more subservient, but that feels like more of a stretch to me.

2. I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen once it was clear that Barbara was going to be taken. The whole movie, her character is so sad and innocent- almost like she’s caught in the past and can’t move on. Like a fragment of humanity’s past or a form of innocence. Seeing her face turn as she realizes it’s her undead brother dragging her and watching her die was tragic. Like a childlike dream for the past had finally been crushed out.

Then Ben does what Harry had been suggesting the whole movie and locks himself in the cellar. It’s comedic in the worst way. Harry had been trying to force everyone in there the whole time and Ben ignited an optimism and certainty that the cellar was a “death trap.” Realizing that Harry was trying to use the gun to get everyone in the cellar and then died for doing the same amplifies the tragedy of the whole situation. Would they all have survived if they had just gone down there from the beginning? I don’t think so- but it’s the realization that Ben might’ve come to the exact same though, and that’s where the nihilism starts to set in.

There’s finally this last sense of hope- at least Ben is alive, and then, in a cruel ironic way, just as he indiscriminately shot and killed the undead, he too is shot on sight. Despite surviving an onslaught of the “living dead”, he’s shot by the living who assume he’s the same monster he had been fighting the whole time. It’s almost poetic, but it feels like hope is gone.