Zombie Cardio
Over at the not-safe-for-work Suicide Girls, George Romero is interviewed about his upcoming DVD, Diary of the Dead. Reading through the interview, this passage in particular caught my attention. Romero gets asked how he feels about the high-speed, super-strong zombies that populate recent movies like 28 Days Later and the re-make of Romero’s own Dawn of the Dead.
Oh boy, I don’t believe they can do it. I mean, the stuff I said in the film is exactly [what I think.] I think their ankles would snap. It doesn’t make sense to me. I used to get asked, after the Return of the Living Dead movies, “Well, how come your guys aren’t coming up out of graves?” Because no individual zombie has the strength to dig through all that mahogany, man. So there’s a little set of rules there, anyway, that keeps it, at least in my mind, somewhat reasonable.
I like zombie movies, but aside from Shaun of the Dead and Romero’s own Land of the Dead, I find I have very little use for modern zombie films. The reason for this can be summed up in two words: Fast zombies.
Of course, Romero has a good logical reason for why zombies shouldn’t be fast or particularly strong. They’re dead. Dead people shouldn’t really be faster or stronger than they were when they were alive. As for me, I have a storytelling reason for why I don’t like it. Fast zombies lose the very element that makes zombies uniquely scary among other movie monsters.
A super-fast, super-strong zombie has nothing to distinguish it from a vampire or a werewolf or any number of creatures put on film by Hollywood over the years. They’re all beings who can outrun you, outfight you, and who want to feast on your flesh (or, in the case of a vampire, blood).
A slow, shambling zombie, however, is uniquely scary because of what it means if it actually catches you. If one of the new breed of movie zombies – fast, strong, and eerily intelligent – grabs hold of you, it’s not a big deal. They’re faster than you. They’re stronger than you. For some reason, they’re just better than you. Being caught by a slow zombie, however, means one of two things. Either you have been caught in a situation in which defeat is inevitable or – more likely – you seriously screwed up.
In other words, when a slow zombie chows down on your brain, there are no real excuses. There’s a better than even chance that it’s your own fault.
Comments
Heather:
Also, slow zombies leave themselves open to ridicule. You can confuse them by walking in circles, or frustrate them with a pane glass door. They're a bit funny in their shambling.
The fast zombies and infected aren't true to the genre, but they are SCARY. So are Reavers.
occasional fish ยป Linkpharm:
[...] of zombies (and when is one really not?), Glen has some thoughts on why modern zombie films aren’t scary. His main concern: speed: A slow, shambling zombie, [...]
Glen:
Good point, Fred. I guess 28 Days Later gets lumped in with the rest because it was largely sold as a zombie movie, even though the characters appearing in it aren't technically "zombies." As it is, they really are a different kind of creature that inspires a different kind of fear. The fact that they keep coming up in "new wave zombie" discussions is due to the marketing issues with the movie more than with the movie itself.
But if we want to compare oranges to oranges, there's still the remake of Dawn of the Dead to consider, where the producers were very proud of their "fast zombies," and in interviews with the cast and crew, a common statement was, "These zombies are scarier than the zombies that have been in other movies, because we've made our zombies fast!" In which case, I still maintain - fast zombies just aren't as scary as the slow shamblers.
Fred:
The thing is, though, in 28 Days Later, they're not dead. They're infected with a virus that makes them bloodthirstily violent. It's wrong, I think, even to look at them as zombies necessarily. They're a different type of threat, human rage turned in on itself. I agree they're not scary in the same way and often fail to be scary when treated the same way. But there are plenty of moments in 28 Days Later, for instance, where the "fast zombies" just keep coming; even set on fire, all they care about is killing things. In some respects, then, they're more like vampires...or like Joss Whedon's Reavers...or all too human Terminators, killing machines that can't be reasoned with but that, even more scarily, can all too easily turn you into one of them.
Apples and oranges, really.