Night of the Living Dead ending explained

What happens

Ben survives the night alone in the cellar. At dawn, a posse of armed locals sweeps through, spots him at a window, assumes he is one of the dead, and shoots him. His body is dragged away and burned with the rest.

The last image

Ben's body is hauled onto a pyre and burned alongside the ghouls, in grainy, news-photo stills.

What it says

The ending turns the film's fear on the living. After the dead failed to kill Ben, the rescuers do, with no malice and no doubt. The film is saying that order and authority can be as blind and deadly as the horror they fight.