For
the past several decades movies have been made about zombies.
They are one of my favorite monsters. Probably the best zombie
movies are those made by George Romero. They include "Night of the Living Dead",
"Dawn of the Dead"
and "Day of the Dead".
He is currently working on the next installment in this zombie series, "Land of the Dead".
All these films have one thing in common. Slow zombies. There are other
films out there, "Return
of the living Dead", "28
Days Later" and the like that have a bad thing, fast zombies.
As
far as I'm concerned, there is only one kind of zombie. The slow
zombie. Fast zombies are major predators. They could be
replaced with tigers or anacondas or some other carnivore and the film
would be little different. Slow zombies are different. They
are like a glacier or lava flow, slow, but inexorable. Nothing
can stand in their way forever. They never stop coming, because
if you kill one, others show up. They are predators as well, but
they are not cheetahs, they are army ants. They slowly move,
destroying everything in their path.
As
far as I'm concerned, slow zombies are far, far creepier than fast
zombies. They are creepier because of their shambling search for
human flesh is less a matter of planning and more of basest
instinct. They don't scheme, they don't plot. They just
keep coming until you kill them, run out of bullets and grab the
machete, or you finally end up cornered... The fact that
you are faster than them but they never, ever have to stop for anything
makes them creepy. The fact that they can't be reasoned with
makes them creepy. The fact that they are human, but are not
human at the same time makes them creepy.
Anyway,
the slow zombie movies are always about the non-zombie humans, and how
they cope with the situation, It's kind of like the scene in "Das
Boot" when the sub is trapped at the bottom of the Mediterranean and
the crew is wondering what will happen next.
If
you feel the need to protect yourself from the zombie scourge, you need
this: