When Hell is Full... the Dead Will Mill Around!

There have been plenty of zombie movies over the past few decades. I really enjoy a good zombie movie. They play on your fears (if you are afraid of the elderly), they make you anxious and paranoid, and they are one of the few genres of movies that are better with a sad ending. Time for an analysis of this ever important subject.

1- The Anatomy of a Zombie Movie

There are alot of things that make a good zombie movie. Of course, like in all things dealing with something you eat, just because you have the right ingrediants doesn't mean it's going to taste good. Zombie movies almost always involve a bunch of strangers joining together to fight the onslaught of undead. These people are usually trapped in some small building, although usually not for the entire movie... just for part of it. Amongst these people, there are the following personalities: the skeptic, the hero, the scared girl, the cocky bastard, and perhaps a token black guy. These groups of people tend to be fairly diverse, and at least a couple of them are uncommonly attractive. Usually there are at least two people weilding shotguns, and there is usually one guy that wants to double cross them (yeah, like he would ever make it on his own). Now, as the movie progresses these people have to change emotionally. And no one can get saved. The government always has to be just a hair away from saving them, or if they actually get saved, the vehicle carrying them MUST explode or become overrun with zombies. There needs to be alot of tension, alot of anxiety. You can know where the zombies are, but there always needs to be more that are hidden. Zombies are slow, so a good zombie movie doesn't rely on the "startle" method, it instead confuses the audience as to where zombies actually are in the house/mall/laboratory/city/etc.. Last but not least: gore. There needs to be lots of gore.

2. Some of the Best Zombie Movies

-Night of the Living Dead (original) This is what really started it all. Just a small cabin in the middle of nowhere, a small group of folks with shotguns and a girl that wouldn't talk, zombie limbs groping through every window... good stuff. People laugh nowadays when they talk about this movie, but have they ever seen it? It's truly a fantastic movie from a cinematic standpoint. It was before George Romero started doing schlocky Stephen King movies. The movie was purposely filmed in black and white, and has a totally surprise ending. A true classic! Did I mention that most of it was filmed at ST.VINCENT'S? It's no coincidence that they are all zombies over there on that campus. heh heh.

-Dawn of the Dead (original) Yet another great George Romero movie. And yet another zombie flick filmed in Western PA. It was about a group of ragtag people trapped in the Monroeville Mall. This movie was groundbreaking for a few reasons: it was extremely gory. At its time it was the goriest movie ever made, earning an NC-17 rating if I remember correctly (by remember I mean "read correctly" since I wasn't alive in the 70's...) and was severely censored for American theaters. It also had a staggering amount of social commentary in it... zombies + malls = society.

-28 Days Later Okay, so this doesn't exactly feature our normal take on zombies... since they were actually people infected by the "Rage" virus (a virus that strikes Catholics when they accidentally eat meat on a Friday during Lent). But this movie was really a frightening piece of flesh. Not to mention the whole movie was filmed with a digital camera and I actually didn't MIND it. Another great thing about this movie was that it wasn't afraid to kill off everyone... even the most beloved characters. But let me tell you, there are better endings than the one originally shown in theaters. Check out the DVD.

-Dawn of the Dead (remake) Yeah, remakes usually suck (thanks Van Sant for making the new Psycho blow chunks) and I was really skeptical of this flick going in to it. But man, this movie kicks butt. Probably the three best things about this movie are: the direction, Ving Rames, and the first 15 minutes. The director (a new guy in town named Zack something) really rocked this puppy hard. The movie had alot of style, alot of cool Hitchcockian-camera angles, and some great moments of humor and suspense. Ving Rames is a badass. The first 15 minutes of the movie are truly mind blowing, all coming together with a perfect Johnny Cash song. If you haven't seen this movie yet, I would catch it before it leaves the theaters!

3. Bad Zombie Movies

-Resident Evil I love Resident Evil videogames. I have been playing them since gradeschool, and they still haven't gotten old. I figured, this movie has to be good... it is being written/directed by the guy that did the Mortal Kombat movies! Wow, that should never be a reason to be excited about anything. Let this be a lesson to us all. This is probably one of the worst movies I have ever seen, period (with the exception of The Musketeer). The acting is awful, the zombies are silly, and it is a retarded storyline that has little to do with the actual videogame. The sequel is coming out in the near future, perhaps it will be better.

4. Zombie Movies that Need to be Made

-Dinner Date of the Dead
-Dodgeball of the Dead
-Night of the Living Former Presidents
-The Dead Die Another Day
-I Forgot My Hat

This reminds me of the time I first learned what a zombie was... I had asked my parents one evening as a young child (6 or 7 maybe?). Night of the Living Dead was going to be on TV and I had no idea what a zombie was. Well, my mom, trying to be cute, decided to do an impression of one. So she started staggering towards me, moaning and flaling her arms around. For some reason I forgot that my mom was alive, thought she was a zombie, and smacked her glasses off of her face. She got pretty angry and smacked my "doopah". If that method worked on all zombies, these movies would suck.

Posted by MikeRubino at April 8, 2004 1:44 AM