The Culture: Zombie genre goes deeper than simple horror, shock factor

A year ago, if you’d asked me to watch a zombie movie, I would have laughed in your face.

That was before I saw The Walking Dead.

On a whim, I decided to check out this popular AMC show everyone was raving about, and it opened me up to the infectious world of animated corpses who moan and stumble around trying to eat people. Now I’m quite fond of the genre.

For those still unconvinced that zombies are the monsters of the future, I urge you to give The Walking Dead a try. It proves that zombies are the new vampires. (But unlike vampires, they’re not particularly sexy. And zombie stories don’t cater to teenage girls.)

Before you watch, though, know this: zombie shows/movies are absolutely disgusting. If you can get past the superfluous succession of gruesome images, then you’re good to go.

The Walking Dead begins with the typical zombie premise: world destroyed by spread of incurable virus that keeps people moving and biting after they die. The first scene of the pilot is incredibly off-putting, especially for someone not used to the genre. Protagonist Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) is forced to shoot a little girl zombie in the head as she charges at him with her teddy bear.

At this point, I was ready to call it a day. But I stuck it out, and soon the characters had me hooked. The triangle between Rick, Rick’s wife, Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) and Rick’s best friend, Shane (Jon Bernthal), is the highlight of the first two seasons. Shane is especially interesting: he goes from a likable (albeit confused) character to a progressively more unhinged antagonist. You’ll keep watching if only to see what he does next.

And then there’s Norman Reedus as fan favorite, Daryl Dixon. His popularity is somewhat of a surprise, since Daryl is an uncouth, backwoods antisocial kind of guy. But the zombie apocalypse turns him into a hero. Also, he looks great with a crossbow.

So with its compelling set of characters and powerful sense of urgency perpetuated by ever approaching “walkers,” the show falls into both the action and drama categories. (There’s some humor in there too.) Overall, The Walking Dead is fantastic, even if you think you don’t like zombies.

I’m just starting to get into the whole zombie thing, so I’m definitely not an aficionado yet. However, I’ve come across some other good zombie stories worth mentioning.

Recently, I saw the adorable movie Warm Bodies. Now, if you think a love story can’t start off with a guy eating a girl’s boyfriend’s brain, then you are sadly mistaken, because Warm Bodies is a better-than-average love story, and it begins exactly this way.

The movie continues from this point to show how love can cure zombism. (Don’t think about it too much; it doesn’t actually make that much sense.)

I enjoyed Warm Bodies’ countless references to Romeo and Juliet. After all, a girl falling in love with a dead guy is the ultimate in forbidden love. So the fact that the characters are named R and Julie makes perfect sense. Also, look out for an interesting take on the famous balcony scene.

The 2004 British movie, Shaun of the Dead, is a spoof of the zombie genre. It is particularly effective because the main characters, Shaun (Simon Pegg) and Ed (Nick Frost), are too drunk/hungover to realize that they’re in the middle of an apocalypse.

This movie calls itself, “A Romantic Comedy. With Zombies.” It definitely has an element of romance, as Shaun tries to win back his girlfriend, Liz (Kate Ashfield), who dumped him at the beginning of the movie because he’s a loser and she’s tired of their boring relationship.

Shaun’s mother (Penelope Wilton) and Liz are both high priorities once Shaun actually notices he’s being attacked by zombies. He goes to rescue them, resulting in a series of hijinks and tragedies. After a while, Shaun proves himself somewhat of a hero as he deals with the crisis and tries to keep his friends and family safe.

Another interesting zombie comedy is Zombieland. This came out a few years ago, and focuses on a college-aged nerd (Jesse Eisenberg) whose many phobias have made him cautious enough to survive the apocalypse. Woody Harrelson plays Tallahassee, a trigger-happy tough guy on an epic quest for the world’s last Twinkie. These two team up with sisters played by Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin. Another highlight of the movie is Bill Murray’s cameo as Bill Murray pretending to be a zombie.

I like zombie stories because they tend to take a survivalist angle. By necessity, they unfold in a post-apocalyptic world where a small group of people are just trying to stay alive. Morals change as circumstances change, and characters are put in unlikely situations that test society’s basic principles.

There’s also the constant fear of contamination and the idea that any unlucky person could end up a zombie. There’s also the fact that a corpse you have to put down might wear the face of someone you know.

You can even find philosophical questions in zombie stories if you look for them. For example: What does it mean to be human? At what point does a zombie stop being a person? Do you give up completely on individuals who have been infected? Are they simply monsters, creatures you have to incapacitate in order to protect those who are really “alive”? Or can they be saved, as in Warm Bodies?

I didn’t understand the essential humanness of the zombie genre before The Walking Dead. I expected it to be like your average horror movie, dependent on gore and things jumping out at you. However, from what I’ve seen, zombie stories are actually about people and how the collapse of society has forced them to come together (or apart) to fight for what matters.