Zombies! Part 1

There is a certain amount of fear of death in all of us. No where is this so certain than in the genre of Zombies. Personally i have a big place in my heart for Zombie movies and all the things that go with it. From books to games the whole world of the Zombie fascinates me. In the first part of my talk about Zombies we will talk about how they are made, the type of zombies there are, and the fears they represent.

Zombie Creation

In the very first of the Romero Zombies (more on that category later) the dead start to rise due to a comet and space dust (damn you space dust you have doomed us all!) This idea was also picked up in Gangs of the Dead but this time the thing hit in LA and not just orbited the world. I find that this is one of the more abstract way that Zombies come about. It is the Dues Ex Machina of the Zombie world and it doesn’t ask you to care if it makes any sense.

The next an most popular way that the Zombies rise and eat our tasty flesh is the tired and true (and some would say too close to real) Virus/doctors with questionable ethics event. This concept of Zombie creation has had a big rise in popularity in the last ten years and most visible with 28 Days Later and its sequel. While these two movies are very well done with concept and execution of said concept no conversation about the creation of Zombies by virus of we do not talk about Resident Evil.

Before Resident Evil and all of its squeals came out (both games and movies) the main world of the Zombie was run by Romero and the D&D Necromancer. Once we where told of Umbrella and the T-Virus the game of Zombies was changed forever and also gave birth to the explosion of Zombies in modern culture.

The last common way that zombies come to life is the way of Magic. This comes in many forms and is the way that the myth/legend of the zombie comes to the real world.  Be this truth or fancy the puffer fish is the basis for real world zombification with its tetrodotoxin. They say that a powder made with this chemical will make a person mindless much like the Zombie. In the fantasy world a necromancer with the right ritual can bring the dead back as mindless zombies to do their bidding. Really what D&D player hasn’t killed tons of these as a matter of course in any game?

Types of Zombies

There are really only two types of Zombies in the world of the risen dead. There is the classic shambling zombie that is the gestalt for most people when you say the word Zombie. There is also the new comer to the world of brain eaters in the fast Zombie. The internet is rife with arguments that fast Zombies really aren’t true zombie but for the sake of this conversation we will include them.

The slow zombie is a classic horror icon. You are stuck in a farm house in the middle of nowhere surrounded by a horde of slow moving dead people who aren’t very strong but can kill you easily if enough of them grab you.  The slow zombie has a power that can only be explained as a mental one. When that zombie starts walking to you for your succulent flesh you can’t reconcile that the zombie used to be your beloved Aunt Nora and now she is about to kill you horrible.  That slow steady walk to you filling you so full of fear that you can’t move. This of course (by the end of the movie or as soon as it starts if you are the lead) can be overcome and then its just a game of aim for the head and don’t let them box you in.

The fast Zombie is another creature all together. They run. Think about it the Slow Zombie was all your fears of death in front of you but at least it was easy to escape. Now you have this faster than you beast on your tail and it is going to catch and eat you. It is stronger than you and you haven’t run a 100 yard dash since 12th grade. The fast zombie doesn’t just represent death it is a death that you cannot even stave off. You are just a pre-zombie at that point. The fear that the fast zombie invokes is not just our collective fear of death but also our primal fear of being prey.

~ by treyrificus on June 23, 2010.