Kind of hard to put into words what Romero meant to horror fans, the man simply created his own genre that is still popular to this day. Romero wasn't just blood and guts, each of his films satirized popular culture or made a political statement- his early work did that extremely well
The original trilogy Romero brought to us (Night,Dawn,Day) were groundbreaking in violent content , as well as their middle finger to racism, consumer culture and militarism. All three of these films are cult classics and foundation of the genre of horror for the last forty years.
Romero's later trilogy -( Land, Diary, Revenge) was a decent but shallow takeoff on social mobility and Diary was a commentary on voyeurism and reality television but felt lost in the era. Quit frankly Survival was his weakest work and after repeated watches I still don't get it
The larger impact Romero had was on the horror genre itself his "ghouls" as he wrote them quickly became a permanent fixture of pop culture. Romero created the rules for a modern movie icon. Romero influenced dozens of content creators over the years, without Romero there is no The Walking Dead, ZombieLand, Shaun Of The Dead - and countless others Romero's peripheral impact on comic book art, novelists and directors will start to leak out over the coming days
Science fiction fans have George Lucas - he inspired a generation, Horror had George Romero .
