Prior to George A. Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead, zombies were vegetarians. As a matter of fact, the living dead on film used to do nothing more than stumble about Hollywood’s back-lots and obey their masters’ orders (see: I Walked With A Zombie, or White Zombie for further clarification). Following Romero’s reinvention of the animated corpses however, zombies became dangerous, flesh-eating monsters. You have to admit, they are a bit more terrifying when they’re after your brains.
My fascination with zombie movies began in the sixth grade, when I purchased a VHS copy of Romero’s original film and successfully managed to scare the shit out of myself one evening. In the years following, I sought out every zombie film I could find, examining and breathlessly beholding many oddities that came my way. By the ‘90s, however, my obsession with zombie movies started to wane. There were very little contributions to the realm of good horror films as it was — while the undead efforts that emerged turned the genre into nothing more than a shallow parody of itself.
I can honestly say that I am a jaded zombie fan. Sure, there have been a few films that have caught my attention since the ‘90s, including Michele Soavi’s Dellamorte Dellamore (better known as Cemetery Man in the US), and Edgar Wright’s Shaun Of The Dead, the latter of which was more of a comedy than anything.
Sadly, though, viewers and filmmakers alike must have forgotten that zombies movies don’t have to be funny to be effective. People started to joke about a zombie apocalypse. Hey, it’s inevitable, isn’t it? I think there’s something in that Bible book about the dead shall rising when the end is nigh, or something like that. Sure enough, as the genre started to rise once again in the 2000s. In all honesty, it almost looked as if the end was nigh: indie filmmakers cranked out one retarded direct-to-video flick after another; students (and some really bored kids) videotaped inane short films to post of YouTube; and MySpace applications appeared to bog down computers with spam.
Sigh. It appeared that the zombie genre had — pardon the pun — wound up eating itself to death.
Needless to say, when people started to tell me how much I would love the horror-comedy Zombieland, I became skeptical. “Can anything ever top The Return Of The Living Dead as the quintessential zombie horror-comedy?,” I asked myself. After watching Zombieland, I can honestly say that the answer to my question is “No.”
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