I've got a
theory about why certain
monsters in
horror cinema and
literature become
popular and
influential. It has less to do with what
monsters really scare us and more to do with what
concepts really
scare us.
Nowadays, monsters like
vampires and
werewolves just don't scare us that much anymore. It doesn't mean they're not still valuable for the skilled
horrorist, because they embody certain
fears that remain fairly
universal. But let's face it --
Fear of Sex and
Fear of Man's Dual Nature just don't have the
cachet they used to. We live in a society that is slowly turning
sexuality and
thuggery into international
virtues -- why should we fear what we want to become?
The
zombie, however, is different. It's spent the last few years going through a
renaissance of popularity, with high-profile new
movies (like "
28 Days Later," the remake of "
Dawn of the Dead," "
Land of the Dead," and "
Shaun of the Dead"), computer games (including the popular "
Resident Evil" series), and even pen-and-paper roleplaying games (Eden Studios' "
All Flesh Must Be Eaten").
What sets the zombie apart from older monsters? For one thing, it's
newer. The first important zombie movie didn't arrive on the scene until
George Romero's 1968 classic "
Night of the Living Dead". (There were a number of zombie movies in earlier decades, including "
White Zombie" in 1932 and "
I Walked with a Zombie" in 1943, but the
voodoo zombie is a much weaker and less frightening animal than the modern
flesh-eating
ghoul) For moviegoers, "
Dracula" has been around since 1931 and "
The Wolf Man" since 1941 -- there's a certain feeling that everything that can be said about vampires and werewolves has already been said (that's not true, but it's why audiences haven't been reacting well to recent werewolf and vampire movies).
But the big reason for the zombie movie's
success is that it addresses contemporary fears in a way that other
horror films have not.
1. Fear of Death - Well,
duh, I hear you say. But the death depicted in zombie movies is a lot different than death in a vampire movie. For one thing, vampires aren't really dead. Sure, their hearts don't beat, they've got cold, clammy skin, but their brains work
fine, they've got superhuman powers, they're
immortal, and they're
pretty. If that's death, sign me up, 'cause it's a better deal than I got now.
The zombie, however, looks like what death really looks like. The skin rots, the eyes stare, bugs crawl in, parts fall off. We'll all look like that someday, right? Sure, but most of us never think of that. When most of us see death, it's in a
funeral home, the body has been preserved, or the
casket lid is safely closed. We think of death in the
abstract, if we have to think of it at all. But the zombie
shambles up to the house, hammers on the door, and demands that we
stop thinking of death abstractly. "You think my rotting intestines are gross, bud? You think the maggots in my eye are horrifying? Guess what, dude? Someday, that'll be
your intestines and
your eye." And that's going to be a lot scarier to most people than the beautiful people hanging out in Dracula's castle.
2. Fear of Disease - This is pretty closely related to the Fear of Death, because disease can
bring death, especially when the disease is new, unknown, or untreatable. The
common cold doesn't scare most people, but
AIDS,
Ebola, and
cancer scare the crap out of folks. While "Night of the Living Dead" operated under the assumption that it was only the dead who rose from their graves, other movies, including "
Dawn of the Dead" and "
28 Days Later" have focused on the idea that you could get infected by the
zombie germ. Even the slightest scratch from a zombie could introduce the
contagion into your body, transforming you from a healthy, living human into a mindless, flesh-eating corpse. Do you have a choice in the matter? No, the
virus, introduced into the host body, will doom the organism. Scared yet? You should be. Maybe a zombie used that toilet before you...
This is a fear that has been used in many other modern horror stories, too. "
The Howling" and "
Salem's Lot" focus on werewolves and vampires, but they're also about what happens when you've got an
epidemic that turns lots of people into monsters.
3. Fear of Madness - So, aside from the walking-around-while-dead thing, what characterizes the movie zombie's behavior?
Cannibalism. Not a common pastime for the sane, is it? And whose flesh do they eat? Anyone's.
Stranger,
friend,
family -- it doesn't matter. When someone comes at you with a
knife, they usually get locked away, either in jail or in a mental institution. And even contemplating having your
loved ones come after you and try to kill you is deeply
frightening to most people.
And what's even worse? When your family stops recognizing you. They've gone so damn
crazy that they don't even show any recognition when they try to kill and eat you. They won't stop attacking you, they won't recognize you, you can't talk sense into them, so what's your only recourse? You've got to
kill them. And if they're crazy for trying to kill you, aren't you crazy for trying to kill them?
And you know what's even worse? If you get bitten, and you lose your mind, too, and start attacking and eating your friends and family.
Insanity is scariest when you have to worry about it setting up shop in your own head.
The zombie's fascination with "
BRRAAAINSS" (which didn't really get started until "
The Return of the Living Dead" in 1985) is part of this. A person who becomes a zombie loses his or her mind in the process, so their quest for living brains serves a twofold purpose: first, it indicates that even the zombie recognizes its madness and wants, in a
twisted way, to get a healthy brain again; second, it drives the zombie-madness meme home to the audience -- even if you don't get zombified, the health of your brain is still in danger, and you can lose your mind just from simple contact with the
walking dead...
4. Fear of Mutilation - I considered calling this "Fear of
Cannibalism", but it's a much broader fear. Eating another person is a
cultural taboo almost worldwide, so that helps make it
scary, but running just under the surface of our fears of
cannibals is a fear of
getting hurt. When we watch a movie in which someone gets hurt, it scares us because we identify with the character we see on the screen. It's scary for us to see someone who's had a chunk bitten out of his leg, because we're afraid of how bad it'll hurt if someone bites a chunk out of
our leg. And zombie movies are all about letting us watch people get mutilated and then walk around displaying their mutilations as they inflict more mutilations on other people.
5. Fear of Betrayal - Every zombie movie I've ever seen includes a scene where someone is attacked by a close friend or family member who has been turned into a zombie. It's an almost certain bet -- if two characters are introduced who are
best friends,
lovers,
newlyweds, or directly related to each other, by the end of the movie, one of those characters will be shambling after the other one and trying to eat his or her brains. This isn't just good drama -- this directly jabs a particularly potent personal
terror of many people: the fear of being
deserted or
betrayed by someone you love and trust. And since this fear has its most
primal roots buried in our
childhoods (What child has never gotten lost in a grocery store or been dropped off for their first day of kindergarten and worried that they'd never see their parents again?), the most common relationships in zombie movies seem to be those of parents and children, with brothers and sisters running a close second. If the bonds of
love are so easily broken, is there anything else in the world that's safe?
6. Fear of Isolation/Being Besieged - This is not really the kind of thing you'd expect, but it's a major feature in almost every important zombie movie. "
Night of the Living Dead" is set in a
farmhouse under siege from zombies. "
Dawn of the Dead" is set in a
shopping mall under siege from zombies. "
Day of the Dead" is set in a
military base under siege from zombies. "
Army of Darkness" is set in a medieval castle under siege from zombies. "
28 Days Later" includes zombie sieges of
residences,
high-rise apartments, and isolated
army bases. Even "
Shaun of the Dead" includes scenes where
isolated bands of humans are besieged by hordes of zombies.
It's obvious why it's scary -- the zombies keep coming, the doors and windows are crudely and inexpertly barred, and eventually, they'll get through and kill us all. But this seems to be a fairly recent addition to the world of horror. Sieges occurred in
horror movies in the past -- Dracula ran a minor assault to get into the Seward household, and the
space carrot besieged the Antarctic base in "
The Thing", but the sieges in zombie movies generally seem more
hopeless and frightening. What changed to make sieges like this scary from 1968 on when they weren't scary before '68? I don't know for sure, but I'm going to cheat and say "
Cultural Changes."
As
modern life has become more complicated, we've had to come to terms with the fact that our dominant place in the universe is far from assured.
The West is not the Dominant Cultural Monolith it used to be,
mankind's abuse of the
environment makes our own
survival less certain, and even
astronomy shows us that our entire
solar system is about as far from the
center of the universe as you can get.
Our lives are also growing more
impersonal. Banks and the government identify us by our
identification numbers, and our employers push us to become
faceless drones in cookie-cutter cubicles. We're becoming more zombie-like every day, our personalities and
individuality buried by
corporations and
governments that would seem to prefer mindless zombie-
consumer