THE DEAD TIMES
DEAD ARE COMING...
The Death of Death
It has finally risen, like a mouldering corpse having shattered the sealed shutter of a stone sarcophagus after years of relentless pounding, spilling over the raised boundaries of it's supposed final resting place, staggering fourth; not as a mindless ghoul, not a Zombie, but a Revenant, doomed with eternal unlife until a wrong has been righted, a mission completed, a foe vanquished, the stoppage of a practitioner from an unholy deed. It was inevitable really. Nothing lasts forever, nothing is truly immortal. Even the undead - those braindead, reanimated shells of once living men, women and children - cannot go on forever; their flesh is bound by the laws of physics and nature to decompose, wither and fall until nothing remains but useless bone. As soon as I embarked on this journey; writing about the living dead - often week after week - I knew such a despicable task could not continue eternal. And so it is, after over a decade of Zombie horror, I have decided to end this foray into their world, to bring final end to this website of the macabre; The Dead Times. It has been an honour to write so passionately about my favoured dread beasts but, following this final article, I will close the technological tomb of terror for the last time, never to be reopened; no more news will be spilled, no more films reviewed, no more videos posted - all future updates will cease yet the site will remain, languishing eternal in the cursed virtual halls of the unreal.
The state of the industry
Whenever you leave a large endeavour like The Dead Times, it is customary to take a look back over what has changed, what the new world has become, as well as pontificate on the future. Firstly, a glimpse at the past - a shady world of half-forgotten dreams in which I dare not linger too long. Way back in 2013 and continuing up until the early 2020s, Zombies were in full, diabolical swing; the undead ghouls were shambling into the world of TV with highly-acclaimed shows like The Walking Dead, adapted from legendary comic series of the same name demonstrating their already, well-established dominance in this sector. Zombie movies, 28 Days Later, World War Z and even big franchises like Resident Evil, were ripping up the charts, a few going on to become the highest grossing movies at the time. Zombies were a common sight in video games with titles such as They Are Billions, Resident Evil, DayZ and, of course, when it was finally released, Dead Island 2. It was fair to say that the Zombie industry was booming, growing at an uncontrollable rate and I, like the rest of the world, had caught the infection.
Fast-forward to the present day and the story is grim, very grim. At the time of writing this article, a quick Google search shows a grand total of 2 Zombie movies releasing in 2025; 28 Years Later (more on that later) and, I quiver with true terror for this one (and not in the good way), Disney's Zombies 4: Dawn of the Vampires. In terms of TV shows, things appear equally bleak; with Marvel Zombies, an animated spin-off of the Marvel comics where canonical superheroes are turned in Zombies, and the continuation of the long-running The Walking Dead franchise, a show that was once extremely popular but now simply refuses to die with unnecessary spin-off after spin-off. The games industry, surprisingly, does not fair much better with many of the major companies avoiding Zombies like the plague that they are - the upcoming State of Decay 3 being the singular notable exception. Even the legendary Resident Evil franchise that arguably made a name for itself from the predominant use of Zombies as enemies in the first three games (and its countless unnumbered entries) has veered away from the undead menace.
Last minute musings
I may have painted a very bleak picture above but, there is still hope for the Zombie menace. Taking the movie side of things as an example, the Zombie industry has a marked ability to resurrect itself following the release of a single, stunning movie involving the moaning dead, hungry for human flesh. In 1968, George Romero's Night of the Living Dead was released and the modern Zombie industry was born. Its popularity was astronomical, and stories abound of people, usually underage, sneaking into theatres to see the black and white, horror movie. Fans were desperate for a sequel, and, in 1978, they got just that with Dawn of the Dead, perhaps the best Zombie movie ever made - certainly my favourite. Zombies were on the rise and seemed unstoppable but, in 1985, the very man who started the fandom - George A. Romero, inadvertently almost killed it with his third movie in the franchise, Day of the Dead - well-regarded nowadays but received poorly back then. It was not until 2002's 28 Days Later that Zombie's came back into the limelight - screaming at enormous speed rather than lurching. Zombies had evolved, shedding the shackles of the old rules - slow, lumbering, mindless, eager for human flesh, seemingly harmless when isolated - and adopting new ones - biblically fast, lethal in groups or on their own, not actually dead but suffering from some unknown affliction, driven mad with a need to spread the disease to others. As a fun sidenote, neither of the two notable figureheads in the Zombie genre - Romero and Boyle - actually placed Zombies in their movies; Night of the Living Dead had flesh-eaters and 28 Days Later had infected, it was purely the public perception that labelled these monsters as Zombies - however, I digress. My point is that Zombies were back and, their popularity, once again, seemed unstoppable. That popularity would fade, however, bringing us up to present time. There was no single culprit this time; the increasing cost of making movies, real-world pandemics, the over-saturation of Zombie movies with few new ideas - they all played a part.
As we enter the first few months of 2025, there is signs of a revival with 28 Years Later - a major movie that people have been eagerly expecting for years. It is ironic that Danny Boyle and Alex Garland, director and writer of 28 Days Later that - perhaps inadvertently - refueled the dying Zombie genre all those years ago, have now returned to that world - very likely to trigger yet another resurgence in Zombie movies. Even in the gaming world, rumours circulate that Resident Evil, father franchise of the digital undead, could be returning to "evolved" Zombies for their 9th instalment.
However, even with these glimpses of hope for our undead friends, dear readers, I am sad. Both the above future tidings combined with the trends I have noticed over the last ten years of writing for The Dead Times has me disappointingly convinced that we have seen the end of slow-moving, mindless ghouls, the hostile monstrosities that I would call "true" Zombies. The Godfather of the Dead, George A. Romero, once said he really liked Zombies because they were the true lower-class citizens of the monster world; alone they are easily defeated, outmanoeuvred, outsmarted. It is only in groups, hordes of immense size, that the "true" Zombie is lethal or indeed, menacing. With these sprinting Zombies, sometimes capable of thought, usually concerned only with spreading the Zombie plague, not with devouring warm flesh as with the Zombie of old, each individual is a nigh-unstoppable terror. They are "in your face", at your door and attacks are quick, brutal and deadly - there is no dread, no slow onslaught of impending doom; the horror is there, don't get me wrong, but it perhaps takes a back seat to window-smashing, gun-fighting, "do or die" action. That is the true nightmare of Zombies that I love; it's not the brutality or the shocking immediacy of fight-or-flight but that creeping feeling of unease, that sight from afar telling you that death is coming, you can outrun it, outsmart it, maybe even dispatch one of its vanguards but you can never escape it, it's there, marching on, crawling, inch by inch, being joined by others, always hungry, never stopping, never showing remorse, fear, mercy or any comprehension of its own actions. Put simply: "They are coming to get you Barbra...".
DESCRIPTION:
In this, last ever article to be put up on The Dead Times, I take a brief look back at the Zombie industry, give a summary of its current state (it's in a bad way) and end with a glimmer of hope for the future, however tarnished it may be.
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DATE UPLOADED:
19/01/2025