This thread from a few years ago, had some good insights. I thought this was a particularly brilliant post from one of our more erudite and entertaining (to say nothing of handsome) posters.
Wait until this thread is a year old and I’ll tell you.
Really? Zombies these days represent anxiety related to advances in genetics and medicine.
Godzilla represented what happened when atomic power went bad. Zombies represent what happens when viruses or genetics go bad.
ETA: oh, and they’re a metaphor for the inexorable path that dystopians might say we’re on towards becoming mindless consuming swarms.
Our fears are defined by the scientific advances of our times. QED.
Excellent movie! It is very darkly funny plus it has beautiful camera work. It is the only zombie movie I have ever truly liked.
The philosophy is a nice little side discussion, but the real answer is… paging Mr. Olivier… “Money, dear boy.”
The zombie genre had been more or less played out after Day of the Dead and Return of the Living Dead dueled each other at the box office in 1985. Neither one made very much money and the genre shuffled away except for periodic re-risings like Evil Dead II, Cemetary Man, Night of the Living Dead (1990), and Army of Darkness. They all have their fans, but again, no big box office money.
It was actually a Japanese video game, Resident Evil, that brought the genre back. There were no allusions to a higher purpose. It was designed as a scary game that Capcom hoped to make a lot of money with. And they did. Then came the many sequels and more money and even a few awards.
Then came the Resident Evil film adaptation. It made money. Zack Snyder remade Dawn of the Dead because he thought it would be fun. More money. Then came World War Z the novel. Even more money. And on and on and on.
Going back to the OT, I think it’s because mostly people don’t know the difference between a zombie and a ghoul.
If you imagine shooting your parents, your teachers, and that girl who wouldn’t go out with you, then you’re a psychopath. But if you imagine that they’re zombies first, than it’s OK. Sort of.
The zombie outbreak roughly came at the same time as the rise of computer gaming, especially Doom-style shooters. Both offer unambiguous targets with no morality to get between your brain and the trigger.
We all wonder how we’d go in the drama of the movies we watch. Yes, we’re being Jason Bourne killing the baddies chasing us, but not by flipping over the schoolbus, because even most action movies are bounded by some morality and sense of proportion. Zombies excuse us that last bit of morality. Connecting with one of the survivors in the Walking Dull, you get the chance to act decisively and not flinch from shooting. It feels like you’re being all action, but only because that value-free zone has been carefully manufactured to allow you to suspend moral thought.
There was a recent story about emotional desensitisation being visible in brain-scans of people playing computer shooter games. Emotionalism inhibited the rush of adrenalin gained from placing yourself in scary situations.
This is not an answer. This is begging the question:
(Why are zombie movies so popular? Because lots of people go to see them)
My own thoughts tend in this direction. Zombies seem to serve as a general symbol for The Bad Thing. My complaint here is the lack of effort and imagination expended to develop new Bad Things. Just insert zombies.
No it didn’t. Zombies have been a staple of movies for almost as long as movies have existed. If you look at this list, which doesn’t claim to be all-inclusive, you’ll see there hasn’t been a year without multiple zombie films in over 40 years.
Keep in mind that the pre-Romero and post-Romero zombies are, for all practical purposes, two separate creatures that share little more than a name.
Yes, definitely read the book. As others have said, the movie bears almost zero resemblance to the book. I thought the structure of the book was also very effective.
Because they’re fun. Simple as that. The Resident Evil game were, above all else, great games. This lead to a resurgence in zombie popularity. The first RE movie piggybacked on this. That lead directly to Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake, which had novelty (fast zombies!), great special effects (really, the first time you get a sense of the scale of a zombie horde), and it was loads of fun. World War Z picked up the baton and put out a book that was both fun and literary. Each one builds off the last until you’ve got multiple different zombie tales being released in the year.
Remember, the loonies who use “the zombie apocalypse” to stock up on bullets are the fringe. The rest of population that has a “zombie survival plan” does it because it’s a great thought exercise. And also, as mentioned upthread, it allows you to put yourself in the shoes of a survivor.
Not really. “Voodoo” zombies have been showing up in movies since the '30s, but those are a very different sort of creature than what’s being discussed in this thread. Frequently, the zombies in those films aren’t actually corpses, but living humans under a form of mystical and/or narcotic mind control. They’re not usually presented as a threat unto themselves, but as mooks under the control of a specific individual villain. There’s no contagion aspect, and generally no apocalyptic themes.
It’s worth noting that when Romero conceived of Night of the Living Dead, he didn’t call his creatures zombies - he called them ghouls, because he saw his creations as distinct from the voodoo inspired zombies that existed in films up to that point.
I don’t think that’s a part of the appeal of the zombie genre for most people. Rather, it’s where a large part of the horror of these movies comes from - part of what makes zombies frightening is that they used to be people you know and love, who now want to tear your flesh off with their teeth.
That said, I do think part of the appeal of zombie movies is the idea of being able to move about in a modern society, while being entirely unencumbered by society’s rules. Little Nemo pointed out that zombie movies more properly belong to the apocalyptic genre (I’d quibble, and say that they belong equally in both genres) but zombie movies are distinct from Mad Max films in that the physical structures of civilization are still intact - stores are still stocked, movie theaters still have movies in them, gas stations still have gas. The creature comforts of modern life still exist, provided you can survive the zombies long enough to enjoy them. You can take any car you want, raid Best Buy for as many plasma TVs as you can fit into your new car, and drive up to the fancies house in Beverly Hills and move in, and there’s no one to tell you “no.”
Also keep in mind that that goes back to 1968.
I don’t know about that. We get plenty of media that presents living human beings as unambiguously evil targets that you can kill with impunity: Nazis, terrorists, drug dealers. There’s plenty of games and movies where you indiscriminately slaughter people in job lots. I don’t think “zombie” is a necessary fig leaf for the impulse.
Again, I don’t think zombie films are about an abrogation of morality - like almost all horror films, zombie movies tend to be very moralistic, with people who act selfishly usually meeting particularly horrible fates, while characters who are co-operative (or, at least, have a nice rack) tending to survive.
Rather, what sets zombie movies apart from your run-of-the-mill action film is the idea that I, the real-life person who is typing this right now, have a decent shot at kicking ass and taking names in a zombie apocalypse scenario. It might be fun to fantasize about being Jason Bourne, but I’m never, ever going to actually be him, because he has an absolutely crazy amount of training and dedication to be that sort of super-spy badass. You put me in a room with a toaster, a couple of magazines, and a CIA wetwork squad, it is not going to turn out like this. Put me in a room with a couple of zombies and access to a blunt instrument? As fat and out-of-shape as I am, I think I got a decent chance of living through that.
I’m calling bullshit on that one.