Dawn of the Dead influenced Braindead

Jackson has talked about Romero as formative, and Braindead is what happens when a young film-maker takes Dawn of the Dead's gore effects as the point rather than the cost. The inheritance is the infection rules, the boarded-up house and the practical splatter; the departure is tone. Romero played it straight and let the satire sit underneath; Jackson puts a lawnmower in the third act and lets nothing sit underneath at all.