History Film / NightOfTheLivingDead1990

** Johnny's teasing was light-hearted in the first film. Here he's annoying Barbara for the whole trip to the cemetery, complaining about everything and nagging Barbara about her personal life.

** Cooper fervently insists only the cellar is safe and ''insists'' everyone get down there immediately. [[spoiler: In the end, he was proven right: a massive horde of zombies try to get Ben in the cellar, but are unable to knock down (or even '''damage''') the door. And they were all gone in the morning when the militia turned up to save them.]] Naturally, that would also have led to the nasty issue of [[spoiler: Sarah Cooper soon dying and reviving as ravenous zombie, in close proximity of all six survivors...]]

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: Played with during the sequence at the cemetery. [[spoiler: Most of Barbara's efforts to keep the cemetery zombie at bay end up hurting Johnny more than the zombie itself. While Johnny is behind it attempting to restrain it, she kicks it which sends the back of zombie's head into Johnny's face, and later, when she's stabbing it with the metal stakes of an artificial flower arrangement, she accidentally stabs Johnny in the hand with it. In fairness, she's completely terrified at the moment.]]

* FiveManBand: The film plays with the traditional roles:
** TheLeader: Ben takes charge but it's implied taking charge is all he can actually do to stop himself from going mad. He frequently dismisses other ideas and insists everyone stick to his plans. [[spoiler: Which it turns out, weren't good ideas at all, though he truly meant well by them.]]
** TheLancer: Cooper is equally as stubborn as Ben and, instead of offering reasonable alternatives, insists that ''his'' way is the right one. The two of them pick fights simply because their egos won't allow them not to and other characters call them out on it.
** TheSmartGuy: Barbara. Initially falls to pieces but is able to eventually think clearly. She remains solid-minded while everyone else slowly goes mad. She suggests a plan that, if they had followed it, [[spoiler: they wouldn't have died]]. In this version it's her [[spoiler: who is the sole survivor]].
** TheBigGuy: Tom. He's probably the straightest example, being fleshed out as a local country boy who can handle a gun and is able to fix up the house. He ends up doubling as TheFace, often mediating between Ben and Cooper's rows.
** TheChick: Judy Rose takes over Barbara's original role as the ScreamingWoman instead of being calm and reasonable simply because she's a woman. However she reacts realistically to what's going on and becomes a little more proactive (going outside to get the gas pump keys, insisting that she drive the truck).
** TeamMom: Helen mostly mothers her own daughter but is dominated by her husband. However she eventually resists him in the name of doing what's best for her daughter.

** Cooper fervently insists only the cellar is safe and ''insists'' everyone get down there immediately. [[spoiler: In the end, he was proven right: a massive horde of zombies try to get Ben in the cellar, but are unable to knock down (or even '''damage''') the door. And they were all gone in the morning when the militia turned up to save them. Naturally, that would also have led to the nasty issue of [[spoiler: Sarah Cooper soon dying and reviving as ravenous zombie, in close proximity of all six survivors...]]

** [[spoiler: Barbara stabs the zombie that attacks her at the cemetery with an artificial flower arrangement and the metal stakes cause it to stick to its chest. She's able to notice it later stuck to the zombie's chest in the distance while at the farmhouse and shoots it in the head for killing her brother.

** [[spoiler: While Ben does shoot Cooper, it's only after Cooper shot him to prevent him from shooting zombified daughter Sarah. Worse, the two men exchange shots more than once, resulting in Ben sustaining a moral wound when Cooper shoots him for a second time. Also, while they're skirmishing, it's Barbara who puts Sarah down. She doesn't get shot at all in the original film.]]

** Judy Rose compared to her kinder and softer portrayal in the first film. She's at odds with Barbara and shouts at Cooper and Ben. Of course in this case, they're more reasonable reactions to stress, making her a mild example. In fairness, she's justified in her outrage at Ben and Cooper, due to them fighting over control of the house when Tom himself is the one with the familial connection to the place, since it belongs to Tom's uncle, and yet Ben and Cooper behave as though the house belongs to each of them.
** The shooters who show up at the end get additional scenes where [[spoiler: they prank Barbara and tie up still-alive zombies to lynch them]]. Beforehand they were just trying to keep the area safe from zombies.

* AlasPoorVillain: A minor example. Barbara is approached by the zombie of a little girl, who's actually still holding her doll and in a nightdress (giving the impression she was bitten and turned while asleep in bed). Barbara hesitates before tearfully shooting her dead, even wailing "oh God!" after she does so.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Barbara survives, but Ben doesn't. Harry also survives, but Barbara immediately executes him. Barbara's faith in humanity has been completely destroyed, causing her to say in regards to the dead, "They're us. We're them, and they're us."]]

* BrickJoke: The gas pump key is forgotten about after [[spoiler: Tom and Judy get blown up]] in the original film. In here, [[spoiler:it shows up in the cellar at the end as a final irony, and Ben gets to be in on the joke in-universe, laughing at their failure as he holds it and the darkness envelopes the basement.]]

** A variation with Johnny. In the original he dies at the start but later shows up at the farmhouse as a zombie. He just dies in this at the cemetery and is found by Barbara in a corpse pile in the back of a truck. Though, to be fair, it's entirely possible that he revived into a zombie, and was shot down by the very men who tossed him into the back of the truck. Evidence for this can included, the sheer distance he is found from the cemetery, and the bullet hole in his left eye.

** [[spoiler: Even Tom and Judy Rose's deaths are slightly modified from the original. Instead of Judy driving the burning truck away from the pumps, panicking, and getting killed along with Tom as he tries to get her out when the truck explodes, in this film, the gas tank, pump, and truck all explode simultaneously, and both are virtually killed instantly. Judy Rose doesn't even have a chance to make it out of the truck, and we can actually see someone behind the wheel before the truck explodes completely.]]

* HateAtFirstSight: Ben and Cooper in the original film weren't fans of each other at all, but in the remake, that antagonism is dialed up to 11, and these two men really do truly hate each other the second they meet. In Ben's case, it's warranted due to how odious Cooper comes off the minute he opens his mouth.

** In-universe, [[spoiler: Harry Cooper gets one when he sees Barbara has returned. After the Hell he put her and everyone else through, she executes him without a second thought.]]

* LargeHam: Cooper was already one in the original film, and becomes an even bigger one in this version. As Mike Nelson put it in his commentary, "It's an interesting acting choice to start with inexplicable rage and just build from there."

** Almost the moment Judy Rose shows up, she takes this mantle from Barbara, who overcomes her own fear and starts [[ActionGirl kicking butt]]. Judy eventually gets over it and offers to drive the truck to the gas pump - as opposed to the original where she simply panicked and ''had'' to tag along because of it.

* TheMillstone: Harry Cooper might be one of the biggest millstones in horror movie, if not cinematic history. When he's not actively snarling or sabotaging the other survivor's efforts, he's yelling (constantly and all the time) about how stupid they are and how they're all going to fail, while offering no solutions beyond 'stay in the cellar'. He might be allowed a tiny bit of slack due to one line indicating he's scared for his injured daughter, but even with that he comes off as trying to be as disruptive as possible. One gets the sense that the overwhelming unnatural and horrible situation is causing him to condemn and interfere with the other survivor's choices in a desperate attempt to maintain control over something, ANYTHING, no matter what the consequences are. The Cooper of the original film was no saint, but he at least did SOMETHING, whereas the remake Cooper does nothing but cause problems for all involved.

** The first attack was changed to remain surprising. In the original, the [[MeaningfulBackgroundEvent man shambling in the background]] is a zombie that attacks Barbara (quite a shocker in 1968). In this film, the man is an alive but deeply confused hearse driver. Then a zombie appears out of nowhere to attack ''Johnny''.

** Barbara is promoted to this. Even when compared to Ben, she's the only one of the group who has any sort of common sense, trying to come up with more practical solutions rather than engaging in arguments (such as suggesting they should make a run for it considering how slow the zombies are). [[spoiler:She's proven right, considering she escapes from the farm by merely walking away without even firing a single gunshot. She winds up being the SoleSurvivor]].

* SignificantWardrobeShift: Barbara changing into a vest and jeans marks her getting over her trauma.

* StatingTheSimpleSolution: Barbara points out the zombies are slow and they could easily outrun them instead of just waiting for the house to be invaded, but gets dismissed by Ben. [[spoiler:Guess who's the only one who survives the film?]]

** Helen is downplayed (she remains down on the cellar panicking about her daughter and Harry really doesn't want to hear her), but she also keeps telling him that he should stop being a dick and help.

* ZombieInfectee: [[spoiler:The ill Sarah Cooper dies in the basement, and becomes a zombie.]]

* IdiotBall: Poor [[spoiler: Tom grabs it at the worst possible time. Discovering that the keys they brought to the gas pump are the wrong ones, he panics and shoots it with his buckshot-loaded shotgun. While it does the job, it also perforates the gas nozzle hose. In his haste, Tom either forgot about, or wasn't thinking about, the lit torch Ben tossed in the bed of the truck. It gets sprayed by the gas from the perforated hose, and causes everything, including Tom and Judy Rose, to be destroyed in a massive explosion.]]

* ImprovisedWeapon: Barbara beats a zombie with a fire poker.

* IncongruouslyDressedZombie: There's a zombie of an overdosed junkie with a heroin needle still in his arm shambling around.

* One zombie isn't wearing clothes, but stands out because he's got tags on that show he reanimated at the local morgue.
* InfiniteSupplies: Mostly averted. Ben recruits Barbara, Tom, and Judy Rose into boarding up the home's multiple windows. Rather than have an endless supply of appropriate wood available, at various points the survivors use shelves, the dining room table, and pull doors off their hinges to nail over all the downstairs windows. Even that ends up not being enough, and after finding out that the doors upstairs have been replaced with weaker, new wood, Tom thankfully remembers that the old doors that were removed were put in the basement, and they recover them to board up windows.

* {{Irony}}: Ben spends the film arguing why it's better to stay upstairs while Cooper does likewise with the cellar. [[spoiler: Ben ends up fleeing to the cellar while Cooper goes to the attic. Ben dies and Cooper lives (or at least until Barbara kills him).]]
* ItCanThink: [[spoiler: After Ben's zombie comes to the basement doorway, he pauses and looks at Barbara, and for a brief moment it looks as though Ben's zombie still recognizes Barbara as an ally, even after his death and reanimation. However, he ends up being executed by the posse before the audience can see if Ben's zombie would have attacked her or not.]]

* JerkassHasAPoint: Cooper fervently insists only the cellar is safe and ''insists'' everyone get down there immediately. [[spoiler: In the end, he was proven right: a massive horde of zombies try to get Ben in the cellar, but are unable to knock down (or even '''damage''') the door. And they were all gone in the morning when the militia turned up to save them.]]
** Naturally, that would also have led to the nasty issue of [[spoiler: Sarah Cooper soon dying and reviving as ravenous zombie, in close proximity of all six survivors...]]
*** Easily remedied by taking the other option [[spoiler: the attic, where Cooper hides out at the end and survives the night, at least until Barbara shoots him.]]

* TheLoad: Almost the moment Judy Rose shows up, she takes this mantle from Barbara, who overcomes her own fear and starts [[ActionGirl kicking butt]]. Judy eventually gets over it and offers to drive the truck to the gas pump - as opposed to the original where she simply panicked and ''had'' to tag along because of it.

** When a zombified Sarah bites her mother's neck, a splatter of blood is seen hitting a nearby trowel. In the original, Karen ([[AdaptationNameChange Sarah's counterpart]]), used a trowel to kill Helen.

* OnlySaneMan: Barbara is promoted to this. Even when compared to Ben, she's the only one of the group who has any sort of common sense, trying to come up with more practical solutions rather than engaging in arguments (such as suggesting they should make a run for it considering how slow the zombies are). [[spoiler:She's proven right, considering she escapes from the farm by merely walking away without even firing a single gunshot. She winds up being the SoleSurvivor]].

* IdiotBall: Poor [[spoiler: Tom grabs it at the worst possible time. Discovering that the keys they brought to the gas pump are the wrong ones, he panics and shoots it with his buckshot-loaded shotgun. While it does the job, it also perforates the gas nozzle hose. In his haste, Tom either forgot about, or wasn't thinking about, the lit torch Ben tossed in the bed of the truck. It gets sprayed by the gas from the perforated hose, and causes everything, including Tom and Judy Rose, to be destroyed in a massive explosion.

[[spoiler: Even Tom and Judy Rose's deaths are slightly modified from the original. Instead of Judy driving the burning truck away from the pumps, panicking, and getting killed along with Tom as he tries to get her out when the truck explodes, in this film, the gas tank, pump, and truck all explode simultaneously, and both are virtually killed instantly. Judy Rose doesn't even have a chance to make it out of the truck, and we can actually see someone behind the wheel before the truck explodes completely.]]

** Cooper refuses to accept the reality that the things outside the house are reanimated corpses, despite a very clear demonstration by Barbara on one of the zombies that tries to come through the window. [[spoiler: He's so unwilling to accept the reality of the situation that when Sarah comes up the stairs and reveals to have turned, he shoots Ben when Ben attempts to put her down and tries to shoot Barbara before Ben gets a shot in on him.]]
** Also, [[spoiler: considering everything Cooper put Barbara, Ben, and everyone else through, including leaving her to be groped by zombies in an attempt to get the rifle, and attempting to shoot her after she killed zombie Sarah, when Cooper finds out Barbara has survived and returned and he reveals himself to her alone, he is stupid enough to think that Barbara will let bygones be bygones, and doesn't consider for even a moment that Barbara might be pissed off enough at him to kill him. Barbara quickly shows Cooper what a mistake he made.]]
* ImprobableAimingSkills: [[spoiler: Barbara is presented in the beginning as almost a bookish spinster. After she TookALevelInBadass, she ends up quite effective with the main rifle. To be fair, many of the shots she makes in the house are at close range, but she does effectively shoot multiple zombies in the head from a distance on her first try.]]

** Since the film involves most of the characters actively taking part in boarding up the windows, rather than Ben doing it all himself off-screen in the original film, there is at least once instance of a character using the tools they're using to nail boards over the windows to beat on zombie hands as they attempt to reach through the windows to grab them.

** [[spoiler: Also, Sarah Cooper encounters her father first when she comes up the stairs, and could have easily taken a bite out of him like she did to her stunned mother, but instead, she simply stares at him and doesn't attack. When Ben tells Cooper to shoot her, she ends up ignoring Cooper entirely and instead attempts to go bite Ben and Barbara, as if realizing they are the bigger threat to her.]]

** Judy Rose compared to her kinder and softer portrayal in the first film. She's at odds with Barbara and shouts at Cooper and Ben. Of course in this case, they're more reasonable reactions to stress, making her a mild example.

* BottomlessMagazines: Completely averted. The film plays the ammo capacity completely straight. Cooper shoots the survivor's main weapon, the rifle, completely empty once. Barbara asks Tom what the capacity is of the rifle and can be seen reloading the rifle twice. Cooper is also seen reloading the rifle after he empties it.

* BrickJoke: The gas pump key is forgotten about after [[spoiler: Tom and Judy get blown up]] in the original film. In here, [[spoiler:it shows up in the cellar at the end as a final irony]].

** A variation with Johnny. In the original he dies at the start but later shows up at the farmhouse as a zombie. He just dies in this at the cemetery and is found by Barbara in a corpse pile in the back of a truck. Though, to be fair, it's entirely possible that he revived into a zombie, and was shot down by the very men who tossed him into the back of the truck. Evidence for this can included, the sheer distance he is found from the cemetery, and the bullet hole in the center of his skull.
** A variation with the Coopers' daughter. While she dies in both films, the reanimated Karen Cooper is never seen destroyed before Ben retreats to the cellar. In the remake, the zombified [[AdaptationNameChange Sarah]] Cooper is taken out by Ben after she emerges from the cellar.
* DeathOfAChild: One of the zombies that approaches Barbara is a young girl, still holding her doll. Barbara can barely bring herself to shoot her and screams "Oh God!" afterwards. And of course [[spoiler: the Cooper daughter still becomes a zombie]].

** [[spoiler: Helen was stabbed to death by her daughter in the original. Here, Sarah bites her on the neck]].
** [[spoiler: Cooper is not killed and eaten by his daughter, but shot in the head by Barbara]].
[[spoiler: Even Tom and Judy Rose's deaths are slightly modified from the original. Instead of Judy driving the burning truck away from the pumps, panicking, and getting killed along with Tom as he tries to get her out when the truck explodes, in this film, the gas tank, pump, and truck all explode simultaneously, and both are virtually killed instantly. Judy Rose doesn't even have a chance to make it out of the truck.]]

** TheLeader: Ben takes charge but it's implied taking charge is all he can actually do to stop himself from going mad. He frequently dismisses other ideas and insists everyone stick to his plans. [[spoiler: Which it turns out, weren't good ideas at all]].

--> "This is Tommy and me's house. Where would you be if we didn't kick you the hell out!"

--> "Whatever I lost, I lost a ''long'' time ago. You can talk to me about losing it when you all stop screaming at each other like a bunch of two-year-olds."

* EmergencyRefuelling: The film has a group of people trapped in TheSiege with the zombies outside, who have a car that could help them escape. Unfortunately the car has no fuel and the gas pump on the outside of the house is locked with key, so a significant side-plot is the frantic search for the keys to the pump's lock all over the house. Once a set of keys that may be the pump's have been found, the survivors implement a plan to refuel the car. [[spoiler:Except the driver discovers the keys are NOT for the pump.]]

* HateAtFirstSight: Ben and Cooper in the original film weren't fans of each other at all, but in the remake, that antagonism is dialed up to 11, and these two men really do truly hate each other the second they meet.

* InfinateSupplies: Mostly averted. Ben recruits Barbara, Tom, and Judy Rose into boarding up the home's multiple windows. Rather than have an endless supply of appropriate wood available, at various points the survivors use shelves, the dining room table, and pull doors off their hinges to nail over all the downstairs windows. Even that ends up not being enough, and after finding out that the doors upstairs have been replaced with weaker, new wood, Tom thankfully remembers that the old doors that were removed were put in the basement, and they recover them to board up windows.

* RageAgainstTheHeavens: After putting the zombie he ran over out of his broken-backed misery with a crowbar through the skull, Ben looks to the sky and curses the situation.
"GODDAMN YOU! GODDAMN ALL OF YOU!"]]

* TooDumbToLive: Tommy fires a shotgun at the gas pump when he realizes that he took the wrong keys. Apparently, it doesn't occur to him that it would blow up both him and Judy Rose.

* TheMillstone: Harry Cooper might be one of the biggest millstones in horror movie, if not cinematic history. When he's not actively snarling or sabotaging the other survivor's efforts, he's yelling (constantly and all the time) about how stupid they are and how they're all going to fail, while offering no solutions beyond 'stay in the cellar'. He might be allowed a tiny bit of slack due to one line indicating he's scared for his injured daughter, but even with that he comes off as trying to be as disruptive as possible. One gets the sense that the overwhelming unnatural and horrible situation is causing him to condemn and interfere with the other survivor's choices in a desperate attempt to maintain control over something, ANYTHING, no matter what the consequences are.

** Russell Streiner who played Johnny in the original, cameos as a sheriff who says "they're all messed up" at the end.

* ZenSurvivor: Once she gets over the shock of her initial zombie encounter and [[spoiler:Johnny dying]], Barbara gets jaded very fast and becomes one of the cooler-headed survivors (at least to a point -- Ben yells at her that she's 'losing it' when she wastes ammo shooting one of the zombies in several normally-fatal spots to demonstrate to Harry, Judy Rose and Johnny that no, the damn things are ''not'' crazy people).

* DeepSouth: There are strong southern accents on Tom, Judy Rose and the rednecks at the end. None of them had such accents in the original.

* InfantImmortality: Averted. One of the zombies that approaches Barbara is a young girl, still holding her doll. Barbara can barely bring herself to shoot her and screams "Oh God!" afterwards. And of course [[spoiler: the Cooper daughter still becomes a zombie]].

** Helen is downplayed (she remains down on the cellar panicking about her daughter and Harry really doesn't wants to hear her) but she also keeps telling him that he should stop being a dick and help.

* NoObjectPermanence: The zombies in this film has an interesting trait, Annas husband once infected begins attacking her, but when she closes the door (so fast she didn't even have time to lock it at first) her husband stops attacking as he seemingly forgets she exists for a brief moment. It's only when she makes enough noise that he begins attacking again.
** This is actually a bit of FrideBrilliance as the zombies have clearly undergone a bit of brain damage during their transformation, object permanence is but one of the many things lost.

* DiesDifferentlyInTheAdaptation: