THE DEAD TIMES
DEAD ARE COMING...
Zombies - On the edge of Death
Greetings and welcome to yet another article delving into the mysticism and loosely, romance, of Zombies. We all love these brain-curdling post-human monsters but they face a difficult challenge ahead - one that threatens their very existence...
Our culture is fickle, moving from fashion to fashion, trend to trend; new, fresh ideas replacing tired old ones, due to changes in world mood, advancements of science and so on. Who would have believed that a TV celebrity would become the president of the United States of America? Who could have foreseen, so long ago, that mercilessly hunting animals would eventually lead to the extinction of those animals or that vampires, turned humans that cannot die, who feed on human blood and stalk the streets at night, would transform from beasts of nightmare into beings idolised as sex symbols? It's this last question that peaks my interest - not vampires, per say, I've never been overly concerned with these blood-sucking devils - rather, the implication of it; that someday we may, very well, simply move on from Zombies.
Why I like Zombies
This may seem strange but the main reason I like Zombies is their pathetic-ness - there lack of skill at pretty much anything. Put a single Zombie and a human together and the human is always going to win (assuming, of course, the human is aware of the approaching ghoul); the human can think, improvise, avoid obstacles intelligently, bypass lunges - a Zombie can do none of these things. Put a single human up against several Zombies, and it becomes a different matter; give a human multiple things to think about at once and, sooner or later, mistakes will be made. I love that; that concept that Zombies work together to succeed but have absolutely no idea that they are actually working together.
This love affair with the living dead has led to a life-long obsession. Not only have I created a website about them, providing regular updates, thoughts and musings into their physiology, I have bought collectible Zombie figures, made video games about them and read countless stories about these wandering cadavers - heck, I even act as one of them as part of Castle Horror. However, by doing all these things, by being that guy that wants to learn all he can about these damnable fiends (and then some), explaining and sharing as I go, I realise that I may, unwillingly, have a large role in their downfall.
The Fear Effect
Humans are, as a species, afraid of the unknown. It makes sense - evolutionally speaking. Fear is a wonderful tool for self-preservation; you are far less likely to die if you take a step back and think about a situation instead of running in, hell for leather. As an example; if something roars in the Jungle, naturally, any sane man would want to go the opposite direction or, at the very least, approach with caution. However, once you know that roar, once you know what animal it comes from and where that animal's weak spots are, the fear fades away - it never quite goes, there is always that nagging doubt in the back of your mind forcing you to prepare, but it's lessened, decreasing exponentially each time the roar is heard. This is what I call the fear effect; the fear you feel when encountering a situation, object or individual being decreased every time you are exposed to it. It's not always true, some people stay terrifically scared by the same things all their lives - we call these phobias and the uncontrollable fear of spiders is a really common example. In general though, the fear effect is valid and it can easily be seen how it effects Zombies; the more you know about them, the more you see them in movies, the more you read about them in novels, the more you shoot them in video games, the less you fear them.
Bad Road
This fear effect has serious consequences - especially for producers of horror - and, in my uneducated opinion, it is one of the major reasons why potentially great Zombie films such as the epic project George Romero could just not find funding for or the planned Nightmare City remake struggle to get off the ground. It is undoubtedly also a factor in the recent downturn of once legendary TV show The Walking Dead - the show opting for evil human characters in later seasons, shunting the Zombies, the very thing that gave the show its fame, into the background. Even games have not escaped the dreaded fear effect as the debacle of Resident Evil 6 quite clearly illustrates.
There are work-arounds, ploys that people use to try and 'force' the fear back into the hearts of audiences. However, each has problems. I loved the early Zombie movies; Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, and, yes, even the much maligned Survival of the Dead precisely because the Zombies were always clear and in-your-face, they were never hidden away in partial darkness or shrouded by too much gore. In modern times, darkness is considered an ally, a way to make a scary thing more scary - and, don't get me wrong, it can work wonderfully when used in the right amount such as in Ridley Scott's Alien - but over do this darkness and the tireless work gone into that frightening scene, is lost in an inky, black void.
Then there's adaption; the technique of trying new things, giving Zombies new abilities or dramatically altered appearances, often to only a few choice individuals to form so-called "special infected". This is a bit nicer an approach, after all, if you've read my excellent What is a Zombie? article, you'll know that a Zombie can be pretty much anything, living or dead. The problem is that you are mixing with the traditional Zombie formula - extremely hazardous waters to be in. There are loads of very opinionated Zombie fans out there and, while minor adjustments here or there to what is considered a "true Zombie" (and what that actually means differs from person to person) are widely acceptable, stray to much from that original ideology and you may just get bitten.
The last, and probably most common, way to deal with the 'what you know doesn't scare you' conundrum is to set your film, book or TV series in a world where Zombie media does not exist - literally no one has any idea what a Zombie is. To me, I just don't understand how anyone could think this approach would work - simply making the characters in the film or book more scared of Zombies because they have no concept of the dead re-animating cannot, surely, have any impact on the, much better informed, audience. However, this bizarre technique clearly does work as shown by The Walking Dead universe and the Resident Evil movie series.
Fighting back
The expectation is for me to give a solution at this point in the article, some cast iron method of keeping Zombies as scary as the day when they wandered out of their tombs and, honestly, I would like nothing more than to spout these words of wisdom. There is no solution, no cure that can stop the fear effect in its tracks. Whenever a new creature of horror is born, or somehow manages to struggle back into the spotlight, a timer is started and the creature of dread is doomed as soon as it appears. There is no denying it, as awful and unjust as it sounds. We've seen it so many times before: Vampires, Mummies, Werewolves... yes, they still linger on, icons held aloft by the diehard few, but they are merely a half-forgotten shadow of what they once were. Even Slender Man, the new kid on the horror block has begun his descent into obscurity, the Internet littered with crude images, joking memes and faked "sighting" videos of the hapless character. This will happen to Zombies. The signs are there that it is already happening, an unstoppable force has begun to propel these fantastically hideous creatures towards the fame-ending "cult status".
However, there is still hope - the ultimate fate of the Zombie is set in stone, but they can at least be saved from a premature end. Zombies have a truly wonderous trait that few other horror icons possess; diversity. Because a Zombie can be pretty much anything - there are hardly any exact rules to follow and most can be bent or broken - and, therefore, they can do pretty much anything and retain some credibility. Comedy - no sweat. Action - it's a cinch. Romance - we're stretching it, but no problem. Musicals - if you like. Drama - you got it. I literally cannot think of any genre where Zombies would not fit in. Obviously, I'm not saying every movie needs to involve Zombies (even I might grow tired of that) but if the addition of Zombies does not automatically label a movie as "horror" or "gore-fest" then I envisage the Zombie gracing our screens for decades to come. Video games are a more difficult kettle of fish, just because of the mind-numbing volume of horror/action Zombie games that exist, though the same diversity laws still apply and there have been some truly amazing Zombie games experimenting with different formats in recent years.
The flipside of this coin is that we get too many 'nicer' Zombie films like Shaun of the Dead, Maggie or FIDO. Zombies are creatures of horror and that must never be forgotten; Night of the Living Dead shocked the world with terrifying beasts unlike anything seen before, and, if Zombies are to slip into obscurity, doing so through a similarly impressive horror film would be the most fitting of ends. There must be a balance, a perfect symphony between terror and relief, full-frontal fear followed by a period of calm, allowing the memory of the nightmare to fade, interspersed with less-disturbing outings to maintain interest before, wham, hitting the unprepared viewers with the maximal fear punch once again.
Conclusion
The future for Zombies is a perilous one but I remain stubbornly optimistic that these rotting corpses can continue to walk the streets of fantasy for a long time to come. Things definitely appear to be on a downslope at the moment - The Walking Dead is decaying rapidly, 2017 and the early months of 2018 saw no real blockbuster Zombie titles released and Resident Evil, the mega-game franchise that marked a major stepping stone for Zombies, has even momentarily turned its back on the dead. All is not lost however, there is still time to stave off the Zombie un-apocalypse - we just need the ideas to bring them forward; not to just blindly add them as a generic horror foe but to use them as a baseline, weaving a story, plot or theme around these re-animated dead.
The outlook is bright and grows ever stronger, particularly for horror; the previously maligned scare genre finally getting the respect it deserves. Horror movies such as Get Out and The Shape of Water have wowed movie critics enough to win academy awards. The nostalgic tales of returning classics including IT and Jigsaw have shown that audiences are not afraid to pay for a good scare. The Walking Dead has - hopefully - restarted its upward trend by showing just how dangerous a single Zombie in the wrong place can be in the 13th episode of season 8, Do Not Send Us Astray. Horror books continue to be written by incredibly talented writers like Stephen King. In fact, to keep Zombie fans satiated, the unfinished "epic" book from legendary George A. Romero, The Living Dead, is being completed by a stand-in writer and released. More Zombie TV shows have been teased, as spin-offs to The Walking Dead, with the possibility of one taking place in an ultra-cool frozen landscape. The video games market continues to grow in all sorts of directions with many stand-out Zombie games on the way including the gorgeous Days Gone, climactic The Walking Dead: The Final Season and massively open-ended State of Decay 2.
DESCRIPTION:
In this epic article - truly one of my favourites - I explain the cataclysmic situation Zombies find themselves in, balanced on the precipice between life and death. There is hope for the future as Zombies continue to infect our culture but also, if we are not careful, dark horizons which could spell doom for the undead.
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DATE UPLOADED:
30/03/2018