40th Anniversary Retrospective

When people talk about Day of the Dead (1985), it’s often in terms of technical achievement—Tom Savini’s masterclass in practical gore, the feral intensity of Joseph Pilato’s Captain Rhodes, or Romero’s pessimistic descent into nihilism. But forty years on, what resonates most deeply is something quieter, more human. It’s Lori Cardille’s grounded, gut-punched performance as Sarah—the film’s reluctant anchor, emotional centre, and overlooked Final Girl of the apocalypse.

Sarah doesn’t scream her way through Romero’s third instalment. She endures. She negotiates with tyrants. She dissects corpses. She cries in silence. In a film drenched in testosterone and hopelessness, Cardille brings a quiet defiance that holds the chaos at bay—not with guns or bravado, but with composure. It’s not the scream queen trope we were sold in the ’80s. It’s something rarer: a portrait of strength amidst absolute collapse.

When I had the honour of interviewing Lori Cardille, what struck me most was her thoughtful insight into what Sarah represented. This wasn’t just another horror role—it was personal. Her father, Bill Cardille, had worked with Romero on Night of the Living Dead. She wasn’t entering a franchise; she was stepping into a legacy. And yet, rather than echo the past, she quietly redefined the role of the horror heroine for a world that had lost its mind.

Romero’s vision in Day of the Dead is arguably his bleakest. The world above is overrun, but it’s the bunker below that’s truly inhuman. Soldiers and scientists alike disintegrate into bickering, cruelty, and delusion. The infected may moan and lurch, but the real horror is watching people lose their grip on reason. In that nightmare, Sarah becomes the audience’s last tether to empathy. When she breaks, we break. When she fights, we cling to hope.

Cardille’s performance is far from showy. That’s its strength. She plays Sarah as someone on the edge of psychological exhaustion, pushing through trauma on pure nerve. She’s a survivor, yes, but also a witness—one who sees the whole of civilization unravel and still chooses, somehow, to believe in the possibility of something better. Her silence speaks volumes in a film where the men are always shouting.

The Prognosis:

It’s a shame that Day of the Dead was initially dismissed by some as the lesser of Romero’s original trilogy. Yes, it lacks the cultural revolution of Night and the satirical punch of Dawn, but it offers something more intimate: a portrait of what’s left when hope has withered. And at the centre of it is a woman trying not to scream, trying to build something in the ruins, trying to survive without becoming what she’s fighting against.

Forty years later, that feels more relevant than ever.

• Saul Muerte

🎙 From the Vault: Lori Cardille on Becoming Sarah

“I didn’t see Sarah as a hero in the traditional sense. She was tired, she was holding on by a thread, and that’s what made her strong. She wasn’t there to be the last woman standing—she was there to try and hold something together while everything fell apart.”
— Lori Cardille, on portraying Sarah in Day of the Dead

In a genre often obsessed with scream queens and final girls who triumph in blood-soaked glory, Sarah survives not with a chainsaw or one-liner, but with focus, resolve, and fragility. Cardille’s portrayal elevates Day of the Dead into something more than just a bleak zombie flick—it becomes a meditation on holding onto your humanity when the world has long since lost its own.