Zombie, zombie, zombie!<\/p>\n
Zombie-tastic! Zombie-licious! Zombie-rama! The Zombiemeister! Zombie-riffic!<\/p>\n
I do enjoy the presence of zombies in films, be they the tear-arsing sprint bastards on 28 Days Later or the dullfully incompetent and slow brain-eaters in any of Romero’s back catalogue.\u00a0 The pure animal nature and carnality of them.\u00a0 Excellent.<\/p>\n
What, in essence, is the appeal of a zombie in a film?\u00a0 They’re mindless, seemingly hopeless and clumsy.\u00a0 They probably smell too.\u00a0 Why do people enjoy them? What is their charisma?\u00a0 I can obviously talk only on a personal level but let’s analyse the facts.\u00a0 My facts:<\/p>\n
1. They’re expendable 2. Emotionless 3. Stupidity<\/strong> 4. Relentnesness 5. Sheer numbers 6. They’re bleedin’ difficult to nobble 7. Infection So why were zombies invented? I’m sure I heard somewhere they were a metaphor (Romero I think) for something.\u00a0 Might have been Communism or Consumerism or something, either way it makes sense to me (although the brain is very good at seeing patterns that aren’t there).\u00a0 They are mindless drones driven by basal emotions.\u00a0 They are followers with the same mindless aims<\/strong>, in the zombies case brain eating, in the consumers case wanting ‘stuff’.\u00a0 The Communist representation, I suppose, is them following what they have been told with no obvious individuals.<\/p>\n Whatever the reason for zombies, I’d like to think they were written about and represented in film because of their pure ridiculousness.\u00a0 They are stooges in a story, there to be slaughtered and laughed at.\u00a0 They do, however, form excellent props in survival stories.\u00a0 Imagine the futility of being chased by hundreds of them, no escape despite how slow and cumbersome they are.\u00a0 You could just shoot and run away.\u00a0 That wouldn’t make much difference, mind you, since there are another 150 of them round the corner.\u00a0 Too many to kill, too many to hide from.\u00a0 It’s cearly the apocolypse isn’t it?\u00a0 So next time someone says to you a zombie film is shit because “look at them, they’re so slow, why do people always get caught by them in films<\/em>, they’re idiots!<\/em>“, look them in the eyes, lay them a punch in the gut and tell them to fuck off for being so ignorant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Zombie, zombie, zombie! Zombie-tastic! Zombie-licious! Zombie-rama! The Zombiemeister! Zombie-riffic! I do enjoy the presence of zombies in films, be they the tear-arsing sprint bastards on 28 Days Later or the dullfully incompetent and slow brain-eaters in any of Romero’s back … Continue reading
\n<\/strong>I think my this is a good point.\u00a0 They come in their thousands slaughtered in their thousands.\u00a0 Gunned down with numerous species of weaponry, mown down by a multitude of vehicles, cut to pieces by a plethora of sharp\/mechanised weaponry and burnt to cinders by anything that can produce a flame.\u00a0 Despite being shells of humans, but humans nonetheless they are killed off in large numbers.\u00a0 You might even reference genocidal tendancies here, but lets just move to my next point:<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>They are run purely by their animal ego, and insticts, namely hunger.\u00a0 The thirst for brains is what drives them.\u00a0 They don’t feel for each other, they don’t feel for their vicitims, they are solely steered by ensuring they are filling their zombie guts with cerebral matter.\u00a0 Their decision making abilities are purely limited to finding the nearest source of the grey stuff.\u00a0 Ace.\u00a0\u00a0 What else though?<\/p>\n
\nThey are incredibly stupid.\u00a0 They walk into things, can’t climb ladders or start a car.\u00a0 This is often used for comic effect, I mean who doesn’t find a lumbering bloke walking in front of a fast moving car exploding in a shower of blood and innards funny?\u00a0 No one.\u00a0 That’s who.\u00a0 This has, though, been mucked about with to some degree in the ‘post modern’ remakes\/new films where the writers\/producers\/directors feel the need for them to be quicker and smarter.\u00a0 This, to me, misses the point of the ‘zombie’…\u00a0 Anyway, next?<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>They don’t give up.\u00a0 Like a chimp with an accordian, they won’t go away.\u00a0 They hang around outside the shopping mall (centre)\/house\/laboratory you are locked in groaning and just stick it out.\u00a0 They’re not going anywhere… They just want brain!\u00a0 This is exacebated by:<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Hundreds and hundreds of them.\u00a0 Everywhere.\u00a0 As far as the eye can see.\u00a0 No matter how many you kill, they will be replaced by the same again!\u00a0 ‘Killing’ them is futile.\u00a0 But how do you kill them?\u00a0 This segways nicely to:<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>How do you kill one?\u00a0 Usually by shooting\/chopping it’s head clean off.\u00a0 You can stab them numerous times in the torso to apparently no effect. I guess you wouldn’t really want to stab them anyway as you’d have to get close, and you wouldn’t want to do that because of:<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>The zombies themselves inadvertantly pass on their zombie ailment.\u00a0 If they scratch or bite you, more often than not you will end up being one of them.\u00a0 How terrible!<\/p>\n