One of the mall survivors says that the zombies are hanging around the mall because of past memories of it being a pleasant destination (or words to that effect).
It’s been described in bits and pieces above, but just to jump on the spoiler tag bandwagon…
[spoiler]In quick flashes through the credits (from the perspective of a camcorder they find on the boat), we learn that the survivors on the boat run out of gas, find some gross and scary stuff (like a zombie head in a cooler), and get on each other’s nerves.
They make it to the dock on the island and get off the boat to investigate, then are attacked by a mob of zombies. They appear to be overwhelmed, the camera is dropped, and all you see are zombies, Zombies…ZOMBIES!!![/spoiler]
D
Perhaps one of her undead parents decided to give her a smooch on the lips, an action they no doubt performed countless times while alive, and ended up biting them off. Wasn’t in theorized by the mall denizens that the zombies may be showing up because that’s where they went while alive?
Marc
In teh Romero films, which this was based on it was explained that some basic memories exist in the zombies.
For example In the original Steve knows how to go to their living area after he’s zombified
Also in Day of the Dead it is established certain repetative learned behaviours. One of the Scientists talks about watching a zombie sitting in a car as if he was driving and of course there is Bub.
I guess that is another problem I have with the film. It sort of follows and drops Romero rules as it pleases and then expects the audience to follow even though many have not seen the originals.
Eh, it’s one of those moments where they bend the rules a little bit for the sake of dramatic impact. I mean, say Andy went up to the roof to write a note, keeled over, and re-awoke with the board in his hands…there wasn’t enough in the movie to show what some zombies do when they first awake and there’s no food present. Would a zombie who died in their car reawaken and try to drive? This movie didn’t have the time to examine stuff like that, but it’s possible, for the sake of emotional impact and suprise to have zombie Andy fiddling with the board in a state of mezmerized habit. I liked it, and thought it worked well. Artistic license, and all that.
As for the little girl, it’s possible that perhaps one of her parents was turned and attacked the other, then got distracted and ran away. The little girl went up, scared of what was going on, kissed the dead parent in hopes that it might “wake them up,” and got her lips bitten off in the process (much like I felt was going to happen to Daddy during delivery). It didn’t make much sense, but it reminded me of how creepy looking baby teeth are. Yikes!
Sooner or later, those zombies were gonna rot. If I were a survivor, I would have waited it out. They had enough food, water and shelter. Come on now it was a huge mall, there had to be more than one food court there. The red headed bitch ruined it all. I would have left her ass to die.
Question though, what was the point about the abondaned boat and the head that was inside its cooler?
My theory is this; the epidemic started on the island. The survivor from the island was trying to make his way back to the mainland with news of an outbreak and proof (the head in the cooler). But because not too much was known about the disease, the survivor from the island was bitten (prolly, by the head in the cooler), he runs out of gas in the middle of the ocean and is somewhat incoherent when he is found by another passing boat. They dock at the pier, and stop at a bar close by. The survivor from the island thus becomes a zombie while in the bar and attacks a parton at the bar by biting him.
This is where the beginning of the remake of Dawn of the Dead starts. A man admitted to the hospital for a bite he received at a bar near the pier.
What do you guys think?
I’m inclined to agree. The difference between this and the original was that the mall lost power. All that food wasn’t going to keep very well without refrigeration. There are ways to preserve food even without power, but none of our survivors frankly struck me as bright enough to manage this.
Something NONE of the zombie movies I’ve ever seen seem to address is the half-life of zombies. It’s plain that they DO decay… but how long does it take before any given zombie is no longer viable as a killing machine? In real life, depending on the climate, assuming protection from scavengers, an unembalmed human corpse will either liquefy or dessicate in a month, easy – at least to the point where the corpse’s structural integrity just ain’t happenin’. Leave a steak on your kitchen counter, if you don’t believe me. And an embalmed human corpse ain’t good for that much longer; modern embalming methods, I’m told, are simply meant to make the body hold up longer in the short run, to allow for modern open-casket funerals.
In the open, things can get worse. Scavengers, insects, and so on. Why no packs of feral dogs attacking zombies? Dogs wouldn’t know that a zombie bite equals death, and a pack of dogs could easily make short work of a Romero zombie before it ever had a chance to fight back, really. For that matter, do ALL life-forms come back as zombies? Zombie dogs and cats? Zombie squished cockroaches? Or is this particular plague limited to people? Seems like if ALL life can zombify, then the food chain is screwed. Every predator on the planet is going to find its life severely complicated, as its victims suddenly wake up in midmeal and go for their throats…
The only other theory I’m familiar with is that regular ingestion of flesh retards the process of decay indefinitely… but by the time of Day Of The Dead, the zombie population is in the billions, presumably. What the hell are they all eating?
You could well be right, although if I had just escaped from an island infested with screaming feral zombies, the last thing I’d do would be to bring a zombie head with me. And if I did – say, to prove things to the authorities – the last thing I’d do would be to stick my damn hand in there. And it still doesn’t explain the incredibly rapid spread of the disease, sufficient to clean civilization’s clock worldwide in 48 hours.
Hate to say it, but the Brits had it on the ball with 28 Days Later. At least someone took the time to think out the logical conclusions, in that movie.
I dunno. Even with the bikers’ intervention in the original, I still maintain the “mall life” was what killed the main characters. It seemed to me that the 4 of them were trying desperately to cling to something hopeful and sane…something normal. This need to cling to a semblance of normalcy led to their downfall.
But, in the words of Dennis Miller, “That’s just what I think…I could be wrong.”
Master Wang-Ka: Presumably, the Romero zombies can continue living without any source of nourishment at all if need be. The ever-present need for food seems to be a residual memory for all the walking dead, even if they don’t necessarily need it to continue. That would also explain why the zombies vastly outnumber the living by the time “Day of the Dead” rolls around.
I’m confused at all why the survivors would think they could escape on a boat in Wisconsin. What, did they think it would be safe at the Wisconsin Dells? :dubious:
I agree. And in fact, I don’t think Andy was a zombie at that point. Otherwise, he would have just wandered around. He was close, but he hadn’t died yet.
Sorry, that’s impossible. Ana leaves work no earlier than 3pm - I don’t recall seeing a clock, but Vivian would have been in school if it was any earlier - and at that time there’s only the index patient. By 6.37am the next day, there are zombies in large numbers all over the world.
Now, we know from Luda’s injury that it takes several days to turn from a minor wound, and anybody injured more severely than Luda would be in hospital, not in a plane. Thus, it is not possible for the epidemic to have started on the island - or even in one country.
Of course, the film sucked anyway. The style was ripped off wholesale from 28 Days Later, and every moment that was even remotely frightening was in the trailer. If you want to see a horror movie written by James Gunn, go see Scooby Doo 2 - it’s scarier.
In the Romero universe, zombies do decay, but very slowly so that they retain mobility for an indefinite period. Remember also that there are succeeding waves of zombies as Zombie A bites Person B, who then becomes Zombie B and bites Person C and so on. Even with a finite expiration period for zombies from death to immobility, it could take years for the last iteration of the zombie hordes to rot away.
AKAIK, only humans become zombies, and they definitely eat non-human flesh if they can’t get warm humans to consume. In NotLD, zombies are shown gobbling insects and fieldmice. In Return, we see that dead animal specimens (the half-dog and the butterflies) are reanimated by the Army gas, so even thought the movie only shows human zombies, we can assume that there must be animal zombies, too. In the new paperback novel that crosses Romero with Lovecraft, The Rising, author Brian Kreene has zombie squirrels, zombie crows, and zombie cats and dogs, too.
Zombies don’t need to eat; they just have the urge to eat. In Day, Dr. Logan demonstrates that a zombie still wants to eat people even after he has removed its digestive system.
I thought the movie fell down there because the rapid spread of the plague makes sense only if all the dead were rising everywhere. But when the movie explicitly states that only the bitten come back, it makes the simultaneous global pandemic impossible.
Well, 28 Days Later has its own logic problems, but I agree that it’s a much scarier and more intelligent horror film.
A few thoughts:
What you refer to as the “index patient” is not really accurate. It is the first reference by Vivian to what we can assume is a zombie bite victim. However, two things make me believe that was not the index patient in the typical sense of the word. One, the paramedic crew outside splits pretty fast with a comment like “It’s starting early tonight…” which implies to me they are responding to a lot of emergency calls. Two, when Vivian is driving home from work, she changes the radio station in the car, twice passing up brief mentions of something going on to find a music station. One of the snippets on the radio mentioned “urban unrest” and I cannot recall the second one but it was along the same line.
I think the spread of zombies was well under way at the time the movie starts, the beginning of the outbreak for sure, but there was clearly something going on and the local media were starting to put info together. That could not have been from the “index patient” at that point.
I took the whole ending to be very a tip-o-the-hat to the Fulchi (sp?) movie Zombie. I’m not sure if it really works as the source of the infection in the new DotD but the entire presmise was done in Zombie. Island source of the zombies, boat travels to the mainland thereby spreading the epidemic to the major population centers. Only thing missing was a zombie vs. shark encounter. 
True. The original “clawed their way out of the grave” zombies would be long decayed into goo while the third “generation” (for lack of a better term) was still shufflin’ around. But by the time frame of Day Of The Dead, it’s been months. One would think it was safe to say there would not BE another generation of zombies… and they’re still shufflin’ around…
One fanfic I read (written to resemble a CDC report) indicated that in the absence of a food source, the zombies would seek shelter and enter a sessile state, remaining so for up to eleven years, reactivating when a food source entered the zombie’s sensory range (which could vary, considering the effects of decay on things like eyes, eardrums, and olfactory nodes). It’s not canon, of course, but it does make a good explanation. In Day Of The Dead, the science team periodically goes looking for survivors, and finds only swarms of zombies. This makes perfect sense if they’re flying around in a helicopter; any zombie would likely connect the noise of aircraft with a food source.
True enough, considering they’re dead; this is all but proven in Day Of The Dead, in the “dissected zombie” scene. I sure would like to know what’s keeping them from decaying to bits in a timely manner, though. Still, Romero was always pretty scrupulous about not really explaining why they were getting up in the first place, so maybe we can simply chalk it up to the lack of available apartment space in Hell…
With the exception of Resident Evil and Return Of The Living Dead, no canonical source has ever remarked on animal zombies. We have, however, seen that zombies aren’t picky; the DOTD remake is the ONLY source where, given the opportunity, zombies would NOT lunch out on a living nonhuman animal. A good thing, too… since the total collapse of the food chain this would cause would pretty much end all life on earth, aside from the zombie variety…
In terms of sheer panick and fear I’m going to have to go with the speedy zombies. Even when alone the speedy zombie is a serious threat while a slow moving one is just an easy target.
Marc
Don’t forget that, in the Romero universe, everybody who dies, regardless of the cause, becomes a zombie (if they have an intact brain). So there would be a continuous source of fresh zombies just from the inevitable death rate among survivors – although we can assume that, in any enclaves of people sufficiently well-organized to be surviving, they would promptly take care of anybody who died.
I don’t know why they changed the scenario in the new movie, going to some pains to make it clear that zombification only comes from being bitten. Apparently, a lot of people already mistakenly thought that was the case with the Romero movies.
Yes… but my point here is that as the dead rise and attack the living… well… there’s, what, something like six billion people, currently?
Eventually, the “zombie rate” is going to overtake the birth rate. Pretty frickin’ fast, I should imagine. Once you reach a certain point, the rise in zombie population is going to level out, simply because of the scarcity of living humans to convert into zombies, don’t’cha think?
Once this happens, once the spike occurs, I would think the zombie conversion rate would drop rather sharply. Everyone’s ALREADY zombies, assuming they aren’t barricaded in a safe place. Once this occurs, we have a baseline… and a time frame to work within. Call the top of the spike “X Day.”
My question is this: assuming a zombie rises on X Day, how long will it take him AFTER X Day to fall apart? Because every zombie created BEFORE X Day is going to fall apart in (X - Y) with Y being the amount of time between THAT zombie’s creation and X Day.
…so how long DO we have to hole up here in the mall while you try really hard not to shoot me because you’ve heard that damn Jehovah’s Witnesses story five times by now…?
Again, it’s been a while, but Day of the Dead had a little tid-bit in there where Dr. Frankenstien was discussing the decay rate of the zombies. Not in any really long explaination sort of way, but more in a “for some reason, they take a long time to decay” sort of way. He may have just been discussing the disintegration of the brain itself, but it seems whatever it is that causes one to become a zombie helps make the brain itself last an incredibly long time. I’m guessing in Romero’s films, zombies could survive intact for a good many years.
The one’s in the remake, though…I don’t know. It seemed those guys started decaying incredibly fast, possibly even faster than normal, so that plague doesn’t look like it would have lasted incredibly long…just long enough to apparently wipe out the world’s population.
The fast zombies do seem more dangerous than slow, but less interesting. Nobody would dare run among them like in the orginal. About the only hope of defeating one is to have a loaded gun, and the rapid motion leaves little chance to get a good look at the zombies. The slow zombies could be dispatched with a wide variety of household tools and shown in more detail.
For than many zombies to be in the parking lot, the mall must really be quite a big thing in the lives of Wisconsin residents. My impression of Wisconsinites is that their natural zombie instinct would be to make a pilgrimmage to Lambeau Field.
Why didn’t they rig up something for Andy to hook the dog and pull back up by rope, instead of leaving him little choice but to open his front door. If Andy was too far for shouting, that dog must be quite smart to head directly over there (although the whistle helped).
It seemed inconsistent how easily the readhead made it to Andy’s place without any problem or help, but when they make the big exit they are quickly mobbed. Shouldn’t the zombie mob have been around the last place where they saw fresh humans: around the open sewer near Andy’s?
Wouldn’t it get kind of chilly on that island in winter, or did they know there was shelter there? Do small islands is such a cold location have a self sustaining food supply? Didn’t Lakes Michigan and Superior both freeze over in 2003. If that can happen, even an uninhabited island may not be so safe.
Don’t forget that the second batch of survivors probably led a huge number of zombies to the mall as well. We saw that the zombies in pursuit of the caravan that was going to the marina didn’t tire, and they kept pace with them very well. I would imagine the same was true for that delivery truck.
Any idea if zombies attract other zombies?
Zombie #1: Dude, why are y’all just standing around the mall.
Zombie #2: There’s some live ones inside and we’re waiting for the buffet to open.
Zombie #3. Kick ass.
Marc