Summary
Like the original 1978 Dawn of the Dead, a handful of survivors of a worldwide zombie plague barricade themselves inside a shopping mall. Trapped by endless hordes of extraordinarily nimble and fast-moving zombies, they start to run out of food, patience, and hope. Their plight is compelling, but the new breed of leaping, running zombies featured here lacks both the pathos and the humor of George Romero's shuffling, decaying army of consumers. Between the amped-up zombies, the copious fast-paced violence, and the daring escapes, this felt like more than half an action movie to me (fortunately, it's a good action movie).
Warning! Spoilers ahead!
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Barbara's Rant
I just can't get behind the new, better, faster zombies that seem to be all the rage these days. Well, I guess there's just this movie and House of the Dead that I've seen, but if watching movies has taught me anything it's that movies love to imitate other movies, so I expect to seem more of this new breed of super-zombies soon. I think that the new terminology is in order to distinguish them from the classic modern model, as created by George Romero in Night of the Living Dead, which we may classify as "Romero zombies". As Barbara Jo mentions in her House of the Dead rant, there is also an earlier conception of zombies classified as "voodoo zombies". Voodoo zombies, unlike Romero zombies, must by animated individually by a practitioner of voodoo or some such dark art. As such, they are considerably less of a global threat than Romero zombies, which re-animate on their own. It is this inevitable spread of the zombie virus that makes the Romero zombie such a fascinating movie subject. They play to such a rich set of fears -- of contagion, of isolation, and most importantly of drowning in the endless, hungry, unescapable sea of humanity that covers this planet. Have you ever been an outsider witnessing a large group of people chanting or singing or moving all as one? However laudable you might find that group's aims, there's something a little scary about it, isn't it? Of course, the spread of the super-zombies is the same as that of the Romero zombies. So what's the harm in making them capable of physical coordination and mental focus impossible for a Romero zombie? I'm so glad you asked!
Consider the distinctive shambling, dragging walk of the Romero zombie. Its slow, awkward movements appear to be almost painful to the zombie itself, as if the abused corpse of the person it once was is being jerked into unwilling action. By showing us the tremendous unnatural force needed animate this poor body torn from its rest, the Romero zombie becomes a sad and pathetic figure as well as a terrible enemy. Even as it devours its own mother without a glimmer of recognition, we can still see the tragic remains of the loving daughter it once was.
With the super-zombie, all of that is lost. After the human host's death, the super-zombie literally springs up, all bodily ailments cured by the zombie transformation. Its vastly increased agility, speed, and strength suggest a fiendish delight in its new powers, with no hint of its former human existence. There's nothing there to engender pity or sympathy; there's only an enemy that must be destroyed, which is frightening but a lot less interesting. Frankenstein's monster is terrifying and fascinating because he's sympathetic, not in spite of it. In fact, now that I think about it, there's a lot of him in the Romero zombie; the unnatural creation of life, resulting in an ugly, sad mockery.
This is not to say that super-zombies or other non-human threats aren't scary. In addition to some cracking good action, this movie does deliver some scares and its vision of the collapse of civilization as the zombies spread was horrifying. And of course Alien is one of my favorite movies, and that monster is impossible to feel sympathy for. I just think that the Romero zombie is a fascinating balance between gore and emotional horror; a deeply compelling mixture of human and monster, familiar and alien.
Whew. I've been told I take these things a bit too seriously.
On a lighter note, how funny was that target practice scene? Being challenged to pick off the Burt Reynolds zombie with a high-powered rifle almost made the apocolypse look like fun. When I first saw the pregnant woman, I was wondering if they were going to go for a farcical zombie baby, but they decided to play it straight (and depressing). Not that it could have compared to Dead Alive, anyway.
BARBARA MAY
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