Zombies!

Zombies are very much en vogue in pop culture today.  The zombie renaissance started a few years ago with movies like 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead, and Zombieland bringing the undead back to prominence in some fresh ways (via Danny Boyle's kinetic sensibility, the perfect comedic timing of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, and an undead Bill Murray, respectively), and now, The Walking Dead is one of television's premiere dramas, pulling in millions of viewers each week and providing a heart-wrenchingly human story that's more about the characters than the carnage.

Why the sudden renewed fascination with zombies?  There are a few possible reasons:

1) Vampire fatigue.  You don't have to go far to hear someone complain about the multitude of vampires that have dominated books, TV, and movies during the past five or six years.  Twilight, True Blood, and The Vampire Diaries have focused on the sexy, romantic, enigmatic side of the potentially fearsome creatures, resulting in a sometimes impotent take on a monstrous figure.  With zombies, the undead are really dead: rotting, gruesome, reanimated corpses.  No fancy homes, unstoppable sex drives, or beautiful bodies here; zombies are the anti-vampires, and in a culture of wannabe fang-bangers, decaying flesh is refreshing.

2) The fear of contamination.  Sometimes horror deals in the truly farfetched: giant gelatinous creatures, aliens, monstrous forms that bear no striking resemblance to anything we recognize.  But the genre is at its most effective, its most terrifying, when it draws on the social anxieties of the age.  The concepts of illness, contagion, and biological warfare are borne out in zombies; here is a horror that, with a simple bite or scratch, becomes yours.  It's easily communicable, and it makes the infected dangerous without transforming them into something completely foreign.  It's a danger that's knowable but surreptitious, the danger within that seeps without.  It strikes close to home, which is what blurs the line between horror and terror.

3) The humanity of the monster.  This point is sort of the intersection of the first two.  By presenting the undead as a mangled human form, and by presenting that mangled human form as a real threat to humanity as a whole, the zombie becomes one of the scariest (but also most relatable, in a strange way) monstrous figures.  It's uncanny in a very personal way, undeniably human but just as undeniably not, anymore.  Knowing that a zombie was once, perhaps very recently, a normal human being makes it that much more fascinating, and that much more tragic.  This is what adds poignancy to scenes like that scene in the most recent episode of The Walking Dead (no spoilers here) or comedy to Shaun keeping his zombified mate at the end of Shaun of the Dead: knowing, or hoping, or not hoping, that, underneath that putrefying flesh, your loved one is still there.

These are just a few ideas about why zombies seem to be the flavor of the moment, and apparently the flavor of next year.  Trailers for two zombie movies recently released.

First up is Warm Bodies, a Romeo and Juliet-esque romantic comedy from Jonathan Levine (50/50) about a zombie named R (Nicholas Hoult) who starts to regain his humanity when he falls in love with a human survivor named Julie (Teresa Palmer).  R's transformation starts to affect other zombies, suggesting that love might be the cure for the zombie epidemic.

Warm Bodies looks hilarious, and should be a nice alternative date movie for Valentine's Day, as the film hits theaters February 1.

 

Next up is the much-anticipated adaptation, World War Z, based on the novel of the same name and starring Brad Pitt.  Marc Forster (Finding Neverland) directs.  The trailer has an I Am Legend vibe going, which should work nicely for its June 21 release date.



With Twilight coming to an end next week, maybe it's time for vampires to stick to the small screen, where they're still turning in some exciting, interesting work, and let zombies claim the cinema once again.