What type of Zombie do you like?
Festival Director — Tue, 04/01/2008 - 19:24
Old rotting creeping menace or the speedy jock Zombie?
I do think I have a like for the old creepy slow moving Zombies but they don't seem much of a threat. Just wait a week or two and they will rot away... their heads will fall off. Now the quick Zombie is much more of a threat, able to break through things.
From another Forum ...
loopback — Thu, 05/15/2008 - 17:03A scientist-of-sorts broke down the whole Zombie conundrum in a way that I thought was rather nice, making it possible for, at some point, a filmmaker to do a zombie movie that goes from fast -> slow zombies.
"Well it isn't quite that cut-n-dried, a freshly reanimated individual in good shape can move surprisingly fast. If you were in a footrace with a handful of cadaverous athletes down a level street, you might not last half a mile.
But that's a very specific scenario - very fresh, very athletic bodies aren't very common in reanimation outbreaks. Of greater relevance is my caveat about the pursuit taking place on level ground. Even when the muscles still function efficiently, agility is *always* compromised following reanimation. Simply put, even though the fastest "zombie" might keep up with you on a 100 meter run, it wouldn't stand a chance at the hurdles.
The raw speed deteriorates pretty rapidly as proteolytic enzymes begin to leech into the muscle parenchyma and break down the tissue. After maybe two days in the tropical heat the biomechanical integrity of the anatomy starts to fail, and if you give it a week you'll make Terry Funk look like Rey Misterio Jr.
All of this is just academic, of course. Don't be afraid of fast zombies or slow zombies. Be afraid of lots of zombies."
"A scientist-of-sorts broke
Edward Martin III — Mon, 05/19/2008 - 11:44"A scientist-of-sorts broke down the whole Zombie conundrum in a way that I thought was rather nice, making it possible for, at some point, a filmmaker to do a zombie movie that goes from fast -> slow zombies."
Stressing the "of sorts." ;)
Once people die, they lay very, very still, except for a little stray electricity and gas.
If we admit to the conceit of a corpse being reanimated, frankly, we can do whatever we like with it. It's like gamma rays and comic books. The moment we make the dead do anything other than lay there and outgas, as long as we're internally consistent, we're fine.
The key here is understanding that we're dealing with -- essentially -- a magical force. Maybe it's a comet, maybe it's a can of gas from the Army, maybe it's just weird random shit, maybe it's a genetic/species thing. Whatever it is, it's basically a magical force (when one simplifies the magical force enough, and doesn't overtly contradict the vernacular of science, this could belong to the realm of "science fiction").
Arguments about whether or not "slow" or "fast" is "accurate" or "smart" versus "stupid" is best for a zombie is a lot like arguing over whether or not it's appropriate that Reed Richards gets to be all stretchy whereas Ben Grimm loses all future Cosmopolitan cover contracts.
My POINT is that your monster should match your movie. If it's a mismatch, then it fails. This goes for zombies as well as any other monster. If your monster is slow and stupid and blundering, then put it in a movie where slow and stupid and blundering is scary. if your monster is fast and predatory and nasty, then put it in a movie where such traits are scary.
I suggest that when people aren't moved emotionally by a movie (in this case, scared by a monster movie), then it could be that the movie has failed internally (such as a bad mis-match), and it could ALSO be that the viewer simply doesn't have the framework necessary to be emotionally triggered by that particular scenario.
For example, The Exorcist doesn't do a thing for me, because I haven't internalized any aspect of the Imaginary Friends Club enough for the monster to be any sort of credible threat. I happen to think, however, that the monster/movie match in the Exorcist is perfect, so clearly, I am not the proper audience for this particular movie.
No one's asking the real
Edward Martin III — Fri, 05/02/2008 - 09:34No one's asking the real penetrating questions, though:
Should zombies sing?
Should zombies do yoga?
And what would happen if you converted a zombie into a Cyberman?
Hell yes, they sing
Bigmac64 — Sat, 05/17/2008 - 20:29I think the singing zombie question was answered in Dead and Breakfast. And they dance as well. After that one, I'm all for singing zombies.
Might be a great film for a future festival.
No More Coffee
Festival Director — Mon, 05/12/2008 - 20:44No More Coffee for you young man.
Have to be slow to be a zombie
Bigmac64 — Fri, 04/25/2008 - 23:58I have to go with the slow zombies. I know a lot of people talk about 28 Days Later when they talk about the practicality of fast zombies, but remember, these were victims of a viral infection. They were not zombies.
Now, the remake of Dawn of the Dead decided to add some speed to their zombies, and it was a fun film, but it failed to address the basics of decomposition. Zombies rot, and as they do, one has to assume the tissues become loose and joints become unstable.
Additionally, the brain dies without oxygenated blood, so one must assume that zombies suffer some brain and nerve damage, thus making fast movements difficult to say the least.
Not meaning to inject too much realism into a zombie movie. But it seems zombies, which are re-animated people, need more of a grounding in reality than a vampire. Keeping them more realistic makes them scarier in my mind.
Zombie Rot
Festival Director — Thu, 05/01/2008 - 16:43Actually DOTD 2004 does address rot. There are multiple stages of a zombie. Different colors of blood were used for zombies in different stages of decomposition: red for the recently dead, a browner version for the ones that have been dead for a few weeks; and a blacker version for the ones that have been dead for a considerable period of time.
Again people this is not a natural phenomenon. There is a supernatural element which the filmmakers will admit especially in the remake.
Although I agree... it seems if natural laws follow they would all fall apart in a couple of months... but this is clearly not the case in Dawn of the Dead (original) and Day of the Dead... or Land of the Dead for that matter.
Either
Edward Martin III — Fri, 04/18/2008 - 12:39Either works for me.
If you have slow zombies wobbling around, you've got to have stupid inbred rednecks as protagonists. Unless you TOTALLY make fun of slow zombies the way Riff and Torg made fun of slow mummies in Sluggy Freelance. At that point, the slow zombies become a joke.
If you have fast zombies, then you can raise the overall brain-level of your protagonists.
Slow zombies are usually fast once they attack, so really, they're just fast zombies who simply aren't in a hurry.
Probably one's preference is driven by what one finds scary about the zombies. if one is scared by the inevitability of a long slow demise, then one will enjoy slow zombies and Merchant Ivory films. If one is scared by something that is a predator on a peer level, then one will be flattered/scared by a fast, smart, strong predator.
Fear's an intimate thing.
Ouch . . . that's a little
Mail Order Zombie — Thu, 04/24/2008 - 13:00Ouch . . . that's a little harsh, ain't it, Edward?
I wouldn't call the lead characters in things like "Dawn of the Dead" rednecks. Certainly there's the one scene w/ the redneck shoot out and all, but the leads were certainly a bit more than that, weren't they?
Now, having not seen the upcoming "Flesh of my Flesh" yet (!), I have yet to see a movie solely featuring fast-moving zombies as really being worth while. They might have a lot of flash, but once the flick's over, that's it. The slow-moving zombies - which are also a bit more realistic, methinks - leave a lingering sense of dread that sticks with you long after the lights have come back on . . .
Again, "FomF" aside, it seems to me that filmmakers that opt for the fast-moving zombies are taking the easy way out. It's easier to make the threat something so obviously threatening. It takes a lot more skill to create a shuffling menace as a story's antagonist.
The best zombie movies aren't about the zombies anyway; they're about how we as humans can't seem to manage to survive in the midst of a zombie threat. Of course fast-moving zombies are going to be threating, but it's a lot more frightening with the slow-movers because we should be able to beat them, right? Yet, we never seem to pull it off (somewhat Lovecraftian there, i'n't?)
This all said, I really liked the way the movie "Quick and the Undead" addressed the mobility of the undead. The "fresher" ones could move a bit faster since they hadn't really had a chance to start to decompose whereas the older ones were less of an immediate threat.
Just my long-winded thoughts in the middle of a work day . . .
"Ouch . . . that's a little
Edward Martin III — Thu, 04/24/2008 - 15:11"Ouch . . . that's a little harsh, ain't it, Edward?"
Oh, it wasn't meant harsh -- it was just what I pulled out of recent memory for zombie movies. Actually, your example of Dawn of the Dead kinda supports that point -- the people who manage to survive for long are the SMART ones, but most everyone else is just a hoo-raw dork sort of person.
But (shrug) it's possible I've seen too many zombie movies where the protagonists are basically dumb as stumps.
"I have yet to see a movie solely featuring fast-moving zombies as really being worth while. They might have a lot of flash, but once the flick's over, that's it. "
Well, yeah, that could happen. I think it depends on what scares you. In a slow zombie movie, we root for the hero and we can see that, sure enough, he's splattering zombies right and left. he destroys 'em all and then finally gets out o the house -- to see an OCEAN of undead. So, that's a case where the creature is slow, but the horror isn't the individual creature, but the inevitability. We don't have to see the hero's demise -- we see an ocean of teeth and grasping claws and we KNOW and that's our imagination geting in there and digging us around.
If you take a fast-moving creature and you drop it into the same basic zombie scenario, then it's going to crap out, I think. You've got to play such a creature DIFFERENTLY. This is why 28 Days Later or I am Legend wouldn't work with slow tottering zombies -- because the movies are structured around a different kind of danger.
"The slow-moving zombies - which are also a bit more realistic, methinks - leave a lingering sense of dread that sticks with you long after the lights have come back on . . ."
Depends on what scares you. Anticipation is a very scary thing, and when used effectively enhances the fear response.
"It takes a lot more skill to create a shuffling menace as a story's antagonist."
Sure, but that's what makes sports so interesting. Any idjit can pick up a ball, walk across a green, and place it in the hole -- but put that ball on the ground three hundred yards away and you can only hit it with a tick and then you've got to have SKILL! 8) If you subscribe to the sport, then you can appreciate the skill needed to achieve your goal with the sport's rules in place.
Here's the reverse for you: consider monster movies where things have happened fast and deadly. What's been scary about those? Not the actual attacks, as those are fast and furious, but (I suggest) the sense that they could happen seemingly random, and you don't get time to prepare or even think about it, no time for goodbyes, no time to react. A plane hits the building and a hundred people are freakin' vaporized, and within twenty minutes, three thousand are dead. For scenarios like that -- the terror is in surviving and the anticipation is wondering if one of those lightning strikes will hit YOU and vaporize you.
Different kinds of monsters -- different structure of movie. If you drop the wrong monster into a structure, you flop.
"The best zombie movies aren't about the zombies anyway; they're about how we as humans can't seem to manage to survive in the midst of a zombie threat."
The best kind of ANY sort of monster movie has less to do with the monsters and more to do with the people in the situation. Any writer forgetting that is screwed. ;)
"This all said, I really liked the way the movie "Quick and the Undead" addressed the mobility of the undead. The "fresher" ones could move a bit faster since they hadn't really had a chance to start to decompose whereas the older ones were less of an immediate threat."
The book "Day by Day Apocalypse", which is really nifty, touched on this, too. As a part of the narrative, a city was nuked. This vaporized the zombies in the fire radius, but the totaly sucky downside was that it STERILIZED the zombies in a much larger ring and made them radioactive. So now you had radioactive zombies that didn't actually rot (because bacteria couldn't survive on 'em). Talk about a sharp stick in the eye!
Are they zombies?
Bigmac64 — Sun, 05/11/2008 - 11:46Liked your reply, but have one problem. Actually, it comes up often in the fast/slow zombie debate.
"This is why 28 Days Later or I am Legend wouldn't work with slow tottering zombies -- because the movies are structured around a different kind of danger."
28 Days Later is NOT a zombie movie. Sure, the film follows the basic structure of a post NotLD zombie tale and (if memory serves me) Danny Boyle stated several times that he wanted to make a new type of zombie film. But, technically, The Infected are not zombies. They are living humans with a virus that induces a state of rage. The virus is not fatal, the victims do not die and come back to life (the definition of a zombie). Wounds that would kill a "normal" human kill them as well, and at the end of the movie, they've all died of starvation, two other actions not associated with zombies.
So, in 28 Days Later, it made sense that The Infected could move really fast. After all, they were still alive and not rotting away. The remake of Dawn of the Dead simply applied the rules set up by Boyle and writer Alex Garland to actual zombies. The result was a fast pace, fun, scary film that broke with zombie tradition.
I am Legend is also not a zombie movie. In the book, the creatures are more like vampires. In the movie, they're just crappy CGI effects. Ooops, my bad, I meant mutated humans with a taste for blood.
28 Days Later a great movie and no one can deny that it had a profound effect on the zombie genre in this decade. It's just not really a zombie movie.
"28 Days Later is NOT a
Edward Martin III — Mon, 05/12/2008 - 08:45"28 Days Later is NOT a zombie movie."
Sure, there are arguments before and against that. Boyle and Garland deconstructed zombies and made their own thing, tossing out the usual expectations. I think that's pretty damn cool, frankly. Any idiot can put rednecks in a cabin and have a slow wave of bad actors in blue makeup bump up against the walls.
I think clinging too desperately to some definition of "zombie" made up by a film director is gonna only bite one in the tuckus anyway (ha-ha!).
I mean, if it's not HAITIAN, it's not a "real" zombie... Once you start strapping on supernatural reanimation, I think it's a little silly to clasp tightly to only ONE manifestation of that as somehow being "genuine" or "authentic."
What about "Serpent and the Rainbow"? ;)
I'm not talking about a film
Bigmac64 — Sat, 05/17/2008 - 20:55I'm not talking about a film director's idea of a zombie, but part of the actual legend. Zombies are corpses resurrected from the dead to continue working at the whims of a voodoo priest. This is the ultimate horror tale for the slaves working in Haiti's sugar fields. For the zombie, no paradise or rest exists after death, just work for all eternity.
Romero changed the legend to fit his movie. His zombies became flesh eater. However, he kept intact the idea that one had to die before returning as a zombie. So it's not one manifestation I'm talking about. It's the basic rule that a zombie is an undead being.
Granted, some movies skate round that. Undead comes to mind, as did 28 Days Later, but films I love. But, I just feel those are not really zombies in the purest (undead) sense.
Now, The Serpent and the Rainbow is a zombie movie, though it tries to explain the zombie myth through scientific means. But let's not forget, Bill Pullman's character was "killed" by a voodoo priest and was resurrected from his grave not quite the man he was. He had to release his soul in order to become human again (in legend, the priest captured the soul of his victim and was then able to resurrect the body).
Of course, those are my thoughts and, as always, I reserve the right to be wrong.
Though I'm right in this case. :-)
"I'm not talking about a film
Edward Martin III — Mon, 05/19/2008 - 11:49"I'm not talking about a film director's idea of a zombie, but part of the actual legend. Zombies are corpses resurrected from the dead to continue working at the whims of a voodoo priest. This is the ultimate horror tale for the slaves working in Haiti's sugar fields. For the zombie, no paradise or rest exists after death, just work for all eternity."
Well, okay. Then no voodoo priest means not a zombie movie. ;)
Unless you want to "skate around it."
I'm just pointing out that not everybody is willing to take off their skates at the same time. ;)
Fast moving Zombies
Festival Director — Sun, 05/11/2008 - 20:53I agree 28 Days Later is a Zombie film only in structure and the attackers haven't been re-animated.
However I disagree about Dawn of the Dead [2004], I think the fast zombies worked. You also have to understand that there is a bit of supernatural mojo happening and that pure scientific logic doesn't apply nor is there a causal answer to why.
Also in the Romero universe, Day of the Dead and Land of the Dead for example, the dead are months if not years undead and still working fine?
I understand the viewpoint
Mail Order Zombie — Sun, 04/06/2008 - 13:45I understand the viewpoint that a faster zombie might pose more of an immediate threat, but the better zombies movies show us that a slow zombie will eventually get you in the end. Yeah, you can outrun them, outthink them, whatever, but in the end, THEY WILL GET YOU. They don't stop.
And that's where the real fear comes from.
There's no subtlety to running zombies. There's the initial thrill, but like a rollercoaster, it's over in a moment or two. Slow zombies constantly lurking around you? That's much scarier, don't you think?
(One thing I've learned ever since I launched my podcast and started reviewing 2-3 zombie movies a week, though, is that there's plenty of room for both varieties . . . !)
Old, rotting, creeping, and interminably moaning for sure...
Undead in Medford — Thu, 04/03/2008 - 17:06I'd have to agree that the "old school," slow moving, yet untiring zombie is my favorite. I do, however, think that the faster zombies in the Dawn of the Dead remake were cool. But being a fan of the older movies/zombies it was kind of like watching the Hollywood make of Godzilla instead of the original (and much better) Japanese Godzilla movies. Namely anticlimatic -- it just wasnt' the same for me as watching the slow movers inevitably and inexorably advance and infect or consume their prey.
Slow as snails...
Page Street Studios — Wed, 04/02/2008 - 07:16It is foolish to apply logic to the living dead, but I just can't buy the concept of fast zombies. I admit I enjoyed them is Return of the Living Dead and the Dawn remake to a point, but they aren't my cup of tea.
As evidence I point to the popularity of Zombie Walks all around the country, but so far not one Zombie Jog has been held!
"so far not one Zombie Jog
Edward Martin III — Fri, 04/18/2008 - 12:40"so far not one Zombie Jog has been held!"
Watch what happens when the cops show up.
Zombies'll jog, my friend. Yes, they run quite well, in fact.
Slow as snails.... Agreed!
Rowan Ashe — Thu, 04/03/2008 - 13:04I'll take the NotLD slow old school zombies any day. There is something much creepier about being chased by something that moves at the pace of a snail and yet still manages to get to you eventually. Tenacious little buggers.
Slow and steady
Chandra — Wed, 04/09/2008 - 08:52Something about slow and steady wins the race popped in when I saw this. That and the super-old Bugs Bunny "tortoise beats the hare" cartoon. Knowing that there's something after me that will keep going until it takes a bite out would make me more tense than a Speedy Zom-gales type.