So time for a little opinion kiddies. The zombie thing has been played out. Don't get me wrong, I love a good zombie. But it's gotten pretty ridiculous recently. Movies, TV, video games, books, comics, advertisements, radio, slippers, magnets, the list goes on. Much like an apocalyptic story, they're everywhere.
Growing up, my favorite monster quickly became the zombie. For the most part, if you wanted a zombie tale, you were looking for reading material. There were a few zombie movies out there, but not a lot. You had versions like the mummy. Cheesy and barely inspired stories. Then you had George Romero's original trilogy. Those were great movies that made you double check the doors at night. I would watch those with my dad on many occasion. Just about every Halloween, he'd paint his face up zombie style too. I even remember going with him to see Return of the Living Dead 2, while my mom and little brother were across the hall watching Throw Mama From the Train.
Zombies had that appeal because they weren't common. Vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and various others were a dime a dozen. They even had their own cereals, courtesy of General Mills. Now I know some of you are saying, "What about Frankenstein's monster?" He was just that, a monster that was pieced to together by several dead people, and therefor not a zombie. Even the Monster Squad stayed clear of zombies, with a loosely connected mummy that was essentially nothing more than a wad of toilet paper.
Fast forward a few years. New breeds of zombies were starting to come out, and the first Resident Evil games stepped forward. This combined with the monsters and demons from Doom coming to eat you, zombies had a new platform. Even a good remake of Night of the Living Dead found it's way into theaters. And for about a decade it was good. While there were some absolutely horrible movies made, there weren't a lot. The entertainment biz was taking care to make good zombies. Then came the early 2000's to present. Zombies crawling from the ground, zombies made by viruses, zombies that aren't really zombies, but are merely people infected by viruses, people turned into zombies because they're bit by a mosquito that had previously fed on a zombie. Zombies have joined their undead brethren in becoming a dime a dozen. There are few zombie movies that I enjoy anymore.
The biggest allure that zombies had was that you didn't know what you were going to get because there just were that many of them. Now, you know just about everything you need to just by seeing an ad for the new show. What's worse is when Hollywood takes a great book and then tries to convert it to the big screen. I weep for World War Z, as I do for the many other books that Hollywood has done completely wrong. While most of the world is excited to see what new zombie movie is on the horizon, I'm patiently waiting for Netflix. That way, when I fall asleep my snoring doesn't bother anyone. At least the Walking Dead, hasn't taken a huge fall on its face yet.
I remember reading a recent analysis lately that said that our recent fascination with zombies isn't so much zombies as much as it is our curiosity to see the absence of social structure. Which just happens to be caused by the zombies. Personally, I just think it's interesting that the lore of a zombie is seen so pervasively across human cultures that it's almost universal at this point.
ReplyDelete