George Romero’s ‘The Amusement Park’ an unsettling, revealing look at ageism

A “lost” film from the late, great horror film director George Romero was released this month and has people talking about its contributions to ageism and how society treats its elders.

Romero is perhaps best known for the zombie classic, “Night of the Living Dead.” In the early 1970s he was commissioned by the Lutheran Society to create a PSA of sorts that would deal with ageism and society’s poor treatment of older people. The organization was displeased with Romero’s surreal yet gritty take on the subject matter, so the film was shelved until recently, where it is now streaming on Shudder.

I found the film to offer a more accurate take on what it feels like to grow old in this country than one might think at first glance. The film follows the main character as he navigates his way through a bureaucratic nightmare of an amusement park, where elders find themselves charged exorbitant prices, banned from certain rides and harassed as nuisances. There is a speech by the main character at the beginning of the film that offers this ominous line: “Remember as you watch the film, one day you will be old.”

It’s sad to say that in the decades since this film was made, we haven’t progressed that far in the way we care for our elder population. The release of this film now as we grapple with the fallout from the pandemic only reinforces the importance of elder care and how it reflects upon a society.