I tried replying to a post Tom Chick made on the front page, but the comments section is broken. So…
Tom was mentioning that he didn’t understand the appeal of Italian Zombie movies:
“I really don’t get the appeal of Italian zombie movies that aren’t called Dellamorte Dellamore”
Okay, yes the international version of The Cemetary Man was a great art house zombie film. But I really don’t watch zombie films to think, I watch them to FEEL. I want to feel that utter hopelesness, knowing that no matter how many battles you win, you will lose the war. Zombie captures that, stranded on an island, no where to go. No escape from the horror. Plus the zombie shark fight is the coolest fight. That shark, having been bitten, will turn into a zombie shark. And soon all marine life will become zombified.
A co-worker asked me what the appeal of Zombie movies were, and for me that was it. The horror of hopelessness.
So, what is it about Zombie movies that appeals to you?
I don’t think there’s anything particular about zombie movies that appeals to me; just that there are certain films that happen to be zombie movies that appeal to me.
For instance, George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, which is perhaps my favorite horror film of all time. Sure, I like Romero’s social commentary, but mostly I like the determination and perseverance that the characters exhibit in the face of such a bleak, grim situation. Also, the mostly-believable, non-Hollywood performances and cheap, DIY production values that give the film a slight verite feel. This isn’t just a horror film: It’s a documentary of the apocalypse.
In the case of Peter Jackson’s Braindead (a.k.a. Dead Alive) I just love the sheer exuberance and weirdness on display. Yeah, it’s gory beyond belief at times, but it’s just so much fun. Also, Diana Peñalver is cute as all get-out.
Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead, on the other hand, left me cold. It was too loud, too slick, too fast, and too nihilistic to be enjoyable for me. I can certainly appreciate the technical skill that went into producing it, but I wish the entire film had been more like the found footage from the gun dealer’s shop.
So, to bring it back to my original point, I don’t like zombie movies for the sake of the zombies. I like the movies that I like because the story, the cinematography, the performances, sometimes even the music, appeals to me; whether there are zombies involved is immaterial.
I think this topic has been done before - obviously elsewhere, but here too IIRC - to the extent that I recall a variety of arguments about this.
For me - in addition to and somewhat related to the hopelessness angle - it’s the fact that it’s a post-apocalyptic genre in a true sense, not post-apocalyptic-lite like Fallout where there’s folks etching out a living and hope for the future. Everyone you know is dead (or worse) and the usual “save the world, avert the horrible menace” tropes are all sidelined by the fact that the worst possilble ending happened before (or during) title card.
I think I mentioned it in the older thread, but with a lot of “fate of the world” thrillers or sci/fi movies, the existential threat to human existence is often the crux of the plot. With a zombie apocalypse - at least the pessimistic kind - that threat, gruesomely fufilled, is part of the setting.
I guess it’s two things that draw me to zombie movies, really. The first is, as you pointed out Jorune, the existential dread involved. Zombie movies rarely turn out well for the living because there’s an inevitability involved. Some movies kind of skirt this issue by making zombiehood transmittable only by being bitten, for instance. So it’s quite possible, theoretically, to hide a small group out that’s well supplied and create a miniature society. But with Romero’s films, and I agree with Omnisicia that he is the ultimate arbiter of all things zombie, everyone who dies becomes a zombie. It’s a minor but critical distinction his films – we’re all doomed. His Land of the Dead catches a lot of crap, but I liked John Leguizamo’s line after he gets bitten by a zombie: ‘Time to find out how the other half live.’
The second thing is just a theory, but I really think zombie films are relatable, in a weird kind of way. It’s really easy to watch a zombie movie and get caught up in that whole, what would I do? kind of thinking. We all know from the original film that some wanted to hide in the basement, while others wanted to run for the pickup truck and get the hell out of there. One of the things I really dug out the original Night of the Living Dead is that Romero subverted both efforts, both attempts at survival failed. Which ties back into the first point I guess, but it leaves you wondering, what would I have done? Could I have lived through the night?
This is what makes ZA movies so much scarier to me than most horror movies, especially maniac/killer flicks. In the vast majority of those movies, there is an adversary, an opponent that can be outsmarted and defeated. There are protocols to be followed and conventions enforced. Most of these who aren’t Mary-Sued have rules and weaknesses. There isn’t really even an adversary. It’s more like a force of nature that actively hunts you down. Earthquakes and climate change don’t hate you personally; The deaths in a zombie movie are very intimate and to me (generally gang)rape-like, even more so than the phallic relationship between a knife-wielder and those whom he stabs. Then you are the enemy, captive with no will, part of the soulless, faceless automaton mob.
Generally the ZA is also world-wide; the first thing to be attacked is the thin veneer of civilization and the impression we all live with that our modern world is the natural state of the world, as opposed raw nature red in tooth and claw. In a zombie movie, there is no escape, no respite, nowhere to run. “The horror of hopelessness” is a great way to put it. It is the grinding down of the audience’s faith in the precepts of their own lives that gives those movies their power.
Growing up with cable in the 80’s I saw more slasher flicks than I can count. The one movie that still gives me the serious OMG creeps is the original Dawn of the Dead.
Additionally, I like the fact that (in the best of the movies) the protagonists are not super-scientists or action heroes or supernatural wunder-kids with a Grand Destiny that will come to fruition in the last act – they’re regular people whose previous professions or standings in the world are now largely irrelevant. The ZA is the great social equalizer.
Along the lines that Jason mentions above, these people aren’t going to “solve” the ZA. They might not know what caused the zombies to appear, and if they do then they also know that there is no hope of them finding a miracle cure or an eleventh-hour solution. Speculation or discussion of the cause is limited to fireside small-talk – survival is the only goal.
Besides what everybody else has said, I get a real kick out of how malleable zombies are as a metaphor. Unlike most classic movie monsters, which only have a small range of metaphoric possibilities, zombies seem like an endless blank canvas on which to project the metaphor of your choosing.
So we have: zombies as indictment of consumer culture (Romero’s Dawn Of The Dead, Shaun Of The Dead), zombies as class warfare and revolt (Land Of The Dead), zombies as the embodiment of mid-twenties malaise (Zombieland, Dellmore Dellmorte), zombies as fear of bad parenting (28 Weeks Later), zombies as a warning against imperialism (I Walked With A Zombie), zombies as victims of the military-industrial complex (Day Of The Dead, Return Of The Living Dead), zombies as a reaction to the civil rights movement (Night Of The Living Dead), zombies as Vietnam era post-traumatic stress disorder (Dead Of Night), etc. etc.
Actually, what I like about the film is that fact that the cellar idea was the only one that worked. Ben survives the night down there and is only shot when he comes back out. I love this because it turns the hero into the villain and the villain into the hero. If they had just done what the thoroughly horrible man had said then they would have all made it.
I half agree with you, John. The idea was sound - if they hid in the basement, it’s possible the zombies would not have found them and they could have maybe reinforced the door and waited it out. It’s possible they could have survived the night.
But, I still think they would have been set up for disaster. Remember the horrible man’s daughter is down there slowly festering, and they would have been trapped with her. So what, you say, how hard is it to take down one little girl? And you’d be right, but I have to imagine that her mom and dad would have protected her - remember they couldn’t bring themselves to kill her, they still thought she could be saved. So I’m thinking they would have turned on each other and, quite likely, everyone’s dead. Again.
And that’s not even bringing up the roving rednecks and lawmen just looking for anything to shoot the following morning.
yeah, i like how since it’s normal people who are the main characters. i could imagine myself in the movie much more easily than if it was the great destiny guy mentioned above.
I like zombie movies pretty much purely for the problem solving aspect. How to avoid them, how to fight them, how to get food, water, weapons, supplies. How to make fortifications and traps, who has what skills that can be useful, all that aspect.
There’s just something creepy about the dead rising up and roaming around with the only agenda being to feast on the living. Zombies are relentless, you can’t reason with them, intimidate them or reform them. There’s no way to glamorize them. You can’t empathize or sympathize with them. You can only run.
“And when there’s no more room in hell, the dead will roam the earth.”
The danger of over reliance on technology, obviously.
On a related note, I posted on G+ a while back that I thought the next Star Trek series should be about a Federation ship that was trapped in a temporal anomaly for a decade that finally breaks free only to discover the Borg have completely decimated the Alpha quadrant. Basically like Walking Dead in space.
I’ve argued that their popularity in America is very much linked to that idea of American Exceptionalism. Everyone believes they’ll be one of the survivors and not one of the faceless horde. It’s about overcoming impossible odds through wit, determination and ingenuity.
For me - in addition to and somewhat related to the hopelessness angle - it’s the fact that it’s a post-apocalyptic genre in a true sense, not post-apocalyptic-lite like Fallout where there’s folks etching out a living and hope for the future. Everyone you know is dead (or worse) and the usual “save the world, avert the horrible menace” tropes are all sidelined by the fact that the worst possilble ending happened before (or during) title card.
More or less this. Most of the best zombie fiction plays on the inevitability and irreversibility of the apocalpyse, although some (eg WWZ) do actually inject some hope. WWZ gets away with it by being a fundamentally different kind of zombie story - it’s about public policy, not personal stories (despite being told as a series of personal stories). But in most zombie fiction it’s essentially a given that there’s no going back to the way things were before, and that the survivors are just hanging on as long as they can, no matter how hard they try. Few other genres of apocalypse or monster attack fiction are quite so bleak in their mise en scene (The Road is a good counterexample). It’s been mathematically proven (it’s a hilarious paper) that Buffy/Twilight style vampirism operates in dynamic equilibrium - at some point the vampire population is constrained by the availability of non-undead on which to feed. But because zombies are mindless, they just feed until there are no humans left.
The other thing I really like about zombie fiction, which is probably more contingent than intrinsic, is that it’s a great starting point for social and other commentary. The zombies are a blank slate on to which writers can project various fears (whereas vampires, say, tend to be fairly one note metaphors) and of course as commonly noted they provide an opportunity to show how the survivors are the real monsters.
A lot of zombie fans hate the 28 Days Later style fast zombies/infected, but I say bring it on. I certainly think slow zombies are more canonical, and in some sense I prefer them, but at the same time having fast zombies allows creators to explore new directions and ideas.
While the hopelessness angle is important, I also find the zombie apocalypse to be strangely full of hope. Zombies are like the waves of the ocean, relentless and neverending… except, despite the seeming futility of it, if you remove water from the ocean, you have actually done something. Every zombie you kill is progress and as long as you draw breath you can “win”, whatever winning means with so much gone. If there are 7 billion people on the planet, then unless the zombies can have zombie babies there are, at most, 7 billion minus 1 zombies you are fighting. They are finite and defeatable, even though the size of the task is daunting.
I’ve also found that I don’t care much at all when the zombie is a character. Zombies work best as a setting against which human drama plays out.
Every zombie you kill is progress and as long as you draw breath you can “win”, whatever winning means with so much gone. If there are 7 billion people on the planet, then unless the zombies can have zombie babies there are, at most, 7 billion minus 1 zombies you are fighting. They are finite and defeatable, even though the size of the task is daunting.
I can’t agree with this, in practice or in principle. In practice, with the exception of WWZ, I’m struggling to think of significant zombie fiction in which defeating the zombie horde is feasible (at least before the survivors die out). In principle, I think it goes against the main characteristic of the zombie apocalypse, which is that each survivor is a potential zombie (and in some fiction, even the dead). Fighting the horde is often counterproductive, because it ends up creating more zombies.
Compared to what other animate threat is the zombie horde more finite? The xenomorphs in Aliens have a queen, the bugs in Starship Troopers (film anyway) have a homeworld and a brain bug. The Triffids don’t even zombify their victims. Vampires, as I mentioned above, are selective killers and even more selective sires.
I like horror and/or supernatural stories
I like post apocalyptic stories
I like man against the elements stories
I like action, by this I mean violence of course
I like ‘what if I was there’ stories
I like to see gore and other blood effects
I like to be scared or laugh, or be scared while laughing
I like stories that take place in locations that are familiar to me
Zombie movies just happen to ping the needle in pretty much every category on my preferred list.
The biggest flaw in the majority of zombie fiction is that it takes place in a world that doesn’t have zombie fiction. Fighting the horde usually fails in most stories because they’ll waste so much time, effort and supplies on not killing zombies before coming to the realization that you need to either a) aim for the head or b) completely destroy the zombie.
