Zombies are never bigger than the movie. They are too humble and modest for that. At least the filmmakers and authors who know what they are doing know this. Because let's face it: zombies themselves are not scary. It's what they do to us that's scary. And no, I'm not talking about turning us into undead, for the most part at least. No, I'm talking about something much more complex. For this entry I'm going to dig deeper into this cultural icon known as the modern zombie and perhaps enlighten those who simply see this creature as a reanimated corpse fuel by instinct.
I'm going to begin with my second favorite zombie franchise, Resident Evil. Like I said, good zombie flicks never place the undead as the forefront of the movie. Resident Evil is about a huge pharmaceutical corporation, called Umbrella, whose main profit comes from viral weaponry and defense research. Umbrella is so focused on military implications of their products that they even have an elite security force whose job requires them to "clean up the mess". So Umbrella synthesizes an agent called the T-Virus which under certain conditions reanimates dead tissue ie makes zombies! And the fictional mid-western metropolis of Raccoon City soon becomes choked with an army of undead. I think this is a great idea. Whenever I think about Resident Evil, I think of like Microsoft or like GlaxoSmithKline doing the same shit Umbrella does. Like there are paramilitary soldiers with a "GSK" patch on their flack jackets running down some street to cover up a mess that they made. Or the Microsoft Special Forces gunning down a witness in cold blood and burning the body in a dumpster in Hell's Kitchen. Resident Evil affects me so much because it could actually, if it hasn't already, come to that. The dominant ideology must be kept safe and that is that these corporations actually care about us. They can't let us know that while we are buying anti-depressants and birth control and band-aids from them that they are also making nuclear warheads and viral weaponry and pills that will make your head explode. And the video games and movies and books have always been about people against the corporate machine, not against the zombies. Sure the zombies are in their way and they have to fight them off but the plot is never, "We have to kill every zombie here before they infect us all".
Now I'm going to get into my favorite zombie franchise, the one that started it all: Romero's Dead series. The great thing about Romero's movies are that they are each about something different. Some aspect of culture or society is dismantled, examined, and eventually reproached. In NIGHT, violence was examined and shown to be destructive even to those dealing it out. In DAWN, consumerism fetishes reflected the rotting corpses that filled the world in the zombie apocalypse. DAY showed us that when in a crisis, logic becomes skewed. And finally LAND said that money can only give illusions of class and power. But the common bond in all of his films, the thing that really sets it apart from other horror films, is the nature of the zombies. The zombies in the Dead series are not the antagonist. They aren't the monsters. And it's strange to think, two of the greatest horror films to ever be release came out in the same year, 1978. Those films are Halloween and Dawn of the Dead. Both films were remarkable in their portrayal of the antagonist. Halloween's antagonist is Michael Myers, of course, but he was different because he was completely vapid and emotionless. There was nothing there. He was simply put - an autonomous killing machine. He nearly isn't even human. And it's all in the mask too - plain, white, unremarkable. Nothingness is the only way I can describe it and that's why I think he's so terrifying. He represents a void. So if this is true, then Romero's Dead series does the opposite. If Michael Meyers represented a hollow nothingness devoid of humanity, Romero's zombies represented a strangely human entity yet so very unhuman. Like Peter from Dawn of the Dead says, "They're us, that's all." Night and Dawn and the rest of the Dead series changed the face of antagonists by making the human characters the villains whilst surrounded by creatures that could have easily been handed that role. It's so easy to make a zombie a villain because it wants to eat people. Romero completely subverted the horror genre because now instead of being afraid of the monster, we are afraid of the people around us.
The strange thing is, this subversion of the genre almost nulls it. Dawn of the Dead isn't really a horror film. It's more of a dark comedy/human drama. The psychological subplot takes precedence over the main plot. The crux of the film is about a group of people losing their humanity to a stale life of luxury, not zombies.
This analysis only applies to traditional Romero zombies who walk. The running zombies is a whole new can of worms. Running zombies present a bigger threat than walking zombies and therefore are usually given the role of antagonist. And let's face it, running zombies are pretty fucking scary. And those movies are good but I think they serve to slake the appetite of MTV-addicted, onanist, Ritalin- fueled thirteen year old males across the country.
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