Done with the Undead?

I'm finally caught up with The Walking Dead, and during my watching I found myself thinking a horrible thought. I'm getting tired of these zombies getting in the way of the story. What?!

As a whole, I know our culture is getting burned out on zombies and vampires. Zombies have had a steady climb over the years, while vampires exploded with shows, movies, and books riding the coat tails of Twilight. And just like they were popularized, it seems that zombies have started dwindling while vampires have practically bottomed out.

But I never thought I could get sick of zombies. I love their ever-present threat, their resilience, and the overall vibe of the genre. Even goofy movies like Shaun of the Dead or Zombieland can't ignore the fact that zombies epitomize all the chaos and ruin that we love in post-apocalyptic fiction. So what happened, and can it be fixed?

The zombie genre seems to be a reflection of itself. It started off slow, grew in popularity, went down, came back, died off a bit, then nearly overwhelmed us. While there hasn't been a good zombie movie in ages, video games, fiction, and our culture have fully embraced them.

20 minutes from my house is a themed restaurant called Zombie Burger. You can buy a crate of supplies to help you survive a zombie apocalypse. I mean anywhere you look, people will latch on to anything zombie themed. And as I sit here writing this, I realize I'm in no way tired of the idea of zombies.

It's the entertainment that seems to be lacking. People have tried to make them more relevant, most notably by making "rage zombies" that have a limitless supply of adrenaline. Doing so has made them a more plausible threat, but I also feel like it takes away from that latent threat that's always simmering within a countless horde of zombies. At the same time, ______ of the Dead movies haven't had a popular release since Dawn of the Dead nearly 10 years ago. Games like Dead Rising are popular because they let you mow through hundreds of zombies without breaking a sweat, and not because the game recaptures the true horror feeling of the classic zombie movies.

I've thought about how to make zombies relevant in fiction for many years, but I haven't been able to come up with much. If they're slow, they become predictable and eventually serve as a backdrop to a story about people. If they are changed, it's merely a gimmick that doesn't feel like the zombies we want to see. I think the biggest problem is that we've jumped the shark when it comes to horror.

The zombies that terrified me were the ones that made the survivors feel claustrophobic. When I first watch the 1968 Night of the Living Dead, I immediately started looking at my house in terms of survival. Would I have enough supplies to survive? Could I board up the windows? Would my house withstand hundreds of bodies pressing up against it? What's my exit strategy?

But filmmakers couldn't keep trapping people in a claustrophobic house with no real way to escape. So we went to the woods, the mall, a backwoods town, a strip club, we trekked across America, around the world... we kept going bigger and bigger, and the only thing that kept us watching or reading was the idea of the zombies we fell in love with long ago. But zombies don't work in open spaces. They're stupid and easy to avoid, and if a person has room to maneuver they can survive. It's when survivors are confined, and survival isn't a matter of outsmarting the undead. It's pure, primal survival that determines who becomes a snack.

That's when we see people become monsters who would sacrifice others. That's when the weak-willed characters have to prove themselves worthy of living. That's when a lack of supplies or a tipped-over lantern becomes a real threat, because the only way out is a deadly fight through a horde of rotting flesh.

There are only a handful of movies, games, and books that I feel have captured that feeling. Even using fast zombies has worked, because it's all about the setting. World War Z (the book) was one of the few books I've read 3+ times because so many of the stories in it capture that terrifying claustrophobia. 28 Weeks Later had an outbreak in an overpopulated military city, which to this day makes me uneasy. Left 4 Dead had its moments, but the most terrifying level in the game ended with the survivors holding out in a house that was a clear nod to Night of the Living Dead.

In the end, I just want zombies to feel scary again. The Walking Dead really does try to make them scary by making it impossible to guess where they'll come from next. Anyone who dies will turn. They don't need to breathe, so they can lie trapped in the mud or water for months. They are attracted to sound, so people need to be on the alert any time they are remotely vulnerable.

But despite the shows best efforts, this season has proven that zombies just can't be scary for long. They're one of the most shallow monsters out there, making it increasingly difficult to break new ground. Can anything be done? I don't know, but I'm certainly not ready to see my favorite genre put down for good.



See you tomorrow!

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