Halloween Horror Flick Week 3: Zombie Overload

by Teresa

Zombies (aka re-animated corpses that usually snack on the living) have had somewhat of a horror renaissance at the box office lately. I think Zack Synder’s remake of Dawn of the Dead from 2004 revived the zombie horror genre. Ever since then, box office seemed to exploded with films variations of the zombie mythology, most notably with the continuation of the marginally successful Resident Evil trilogy.

Zombies have been part of the film horror lexicon since the 1940s, most notably portrayed in RKO’s I Walked with a Zombie (1943). This film decided to take use voodoo spells to conjure up zombies.

And of course who can forget the 1968 classic, Night of the Living Dead, which was shot entirely on 16mm format and then transfered to 35mm for theatrical exhibition. In this film, a chemical spill created the undead epidemic of dead bodies rising from their graves. There have been countless remakes and sequels to George Romero’s original film (most of them by himself!). My favorite sequel was the camp-tastic Return of the Living Dead (1985) where the zombies could talk and use machinery! Hilariously, all they could say was the word “brains” over and over.

Every film purports their own back story of how and why the zombies appear. My favorite explanation of events was in 28 Days Later where the “rage” virus was created in a lab and spread into the human population with a simple bite from a lab monkey. The sequel, 28 Weeks Later further pushed the idea of zombie-ism as disease by suggesting there was a possible cure tucked away in the dna of individuals that have different colored eyes.

My favorite comedy-horror hybrid of the mythology is Shaun of the Dead starring the hilarious Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Bill Nighy. It’s a dark satire that portrays a London based zombie infestation that is hardly noticed by the city’s inhabitants until it’s too late. And in the end, they domesticate the afflicted and have them performing menial jobs!