Zombies On Screen

Shuffling to a screen near you soon...

The past few years has definitely seen a revival in the zombie-genre, so much so that zombie films and TV series are pretty much mainstream entertainment. Especially so, if you combine it with the closely related pandemic virus and other similar genres.

Whatever the protagonist - reanimated corpses, flu-infected humans, walking carnivorous plants - the really scary thing isn't them, it's the sudden collapse of society. In the space of a few hours, days or (occasionally) weeks, the heroes of the story are wrenched from their comfortable lives as office workers, teachers, nurses, policemen or telephone sanitation engineers and thrown into a world without friends, family, electricity, running water or law. Not even a regular helping of The One Show.

I'll leave the analysis of the zombie genre to a later post - for the moment I want to name-check a few of my favourite, and not-so-favourite on screen (big and small) zombie romps. Note that I'm going to use a very wide definition of "zombie story", to cover all the pandemic virus and similar stories. Frankly having to write that out each and every time will drive me nuts - so if you object to me including pandemic flu and Triffids in zombie discussions... well, that's just tough.

The Day of the Triffids

Talking of Triffids, where better to start? Walking carnivorous plants, escaping into the world just after the vast majority of the population is struck blind in a meteor shower? Great stuff!

The film in the 1950s? Meh. Their Achilles' Heel was ridiculous. Fail.

But the 1980s TV series - that was another matter entirely: brilliant. The recent TV remake? Not brilliant, but pretty decent. I'd still take the '80s effort over the modern version.

Dawn of the Dead

Utter classic. The 1970s movie, that is. Genre-defining brilliance. The recent remake? Dreadful. Running zombies? Give me strength. That suggests intelligence, which kind of defies the point of "proper", undead zombies. If they're going to be undead, stupid, shuffling zombies, how do they suddenly find the ability to sprint? Either they're stupid or not - you can't have it both ways.

28 Days Later

Yet the running zombies in 28 Days Later are perfectly acceptable: the scenario of living, infected humans (as opposed to reanimated corpses) - more to the point, infected with the "Rage" virus - now that left the infected with understandably ability and good cause to run. Good film.

28 Weeks Later

Whereas the sequel was dreadful. All-too predictable - with characters doing ridiculously stupid and unbelievable things time and time again. Rubbish.

The Walking Dead

Now this one's a little complex, because there are many strands to The Walking Dead - so I'll cover it in more depth later. But I'll just say very briefly that as regards the TV series... meh. Again, too many people doing predictable horror-story stupid things, and too many things that just stretch your suspension of disbelief to breaking point.

Sean of the Dead

Now this is more like it! What should you do in a zombie apocalypse? Head to the pub, naturally. 10/10.