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Romero, 1968

Everyone who knows me in real life knows how I feel about zombies.  In recent years (and by recent years, I mean about the last seven; I’m not sure who still remains convinced that zombies, pirates, or ninjas are still cool and original, but whoever they are, they’re wrong) the zombie world has been oversaturated.  We let ourselves get to the point where books like The Zombie Survival Guide or Pride and Prejudice and Zombies are actually allowing people to make a living.

Also not funny: demotivational posters

Let me repeat that, America is currently battling an enormous, seemingly insurmountable problem with unemployment, but there are people out there making their living by writing some of the least imaginative, least funny books I’ve ever read.  And I’ve read a lot of books that are neither imaginative nor funny.

"I went to the woods to piss off English students 150 years from now"

To drive this point further home, let me remind you that Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is seriously just Pride and Prejudice with zombies artlessly thrown in.  Ladies and gentlemen, Seth Graham-Smith is rich because for some reason we keep paying for what reads like the laziest, most sophomoric message board post of all time.  Why do we do that to ourselves?

Shown: not art.

Now, my problem with zombies, or, more importantly, the people who won’t shut up about them, is not that they aren’t original, it’s that people act like they’re funny or cool when, in fact, they’re actually terrifying.  Zombies are an important part of our popular imagery.  I like to think of them as the opposite of ghosts.  Ghosts represent a mind without a body, and perhaps the fear that

1.  We will fail to do anything of real import while we still have the capacity

or alternatively,

2.  All of the downtrodden of world history are still floating around out there, and they’re pissed.

Pictured: vengeance?

Now the thing about ghosts is that they can easily be turned into a positive force, simply by making a movie about the disembodied spirit of a nice person.  Zombies have not yet managed to secure this ability in popular culture.

All zombies are douchebags

This makes perfect sense.  Ghosts are a mind without a body, zombies are a body without a mind.  Ghosts represent sorrow and loss, zombies represent brute force and cruelty.  When George Romero made Night of the Living Dead people were horrified, but, in fairness, not necessarily by the idea of zombies (zombies had been around in popular culture for decades, but they were voodoo zombies, not the undead), but by the idea of cannibalism.  Night of the Living Dead (1968) was a runaway hit, and is still one of the most important horror films of all time, and, I’ll admit, one of my favorite movies.

Cinematic gold

It is one of the earliest examples of how a little originality can be scarier and more thrilling than enormous budgets and outrageous special effects.  It also has some important social messages.  Most of the people in the film aren’t killed by zombies, they’re killed by other people.  I don’t think you need me to explain what Romero was doing there.  Then, of course, at the end he invites the viewer to compare this fictional zombie apocalypse with the civil rights movement.  The guerilla police force tears the noble hero we’ve come to respect to shreds and then burns him.  Romero insists this isn’t supposed to be reminiscent of a lynching, but I mean, come on.

You're not fooling anyone

The movie, which is the slow-moving, laughable grand-daddy of modern zombie flicks, is really about two things:

1.  The red scare (if you don’t remember where the zombies came from, you should watch it again)

2.  The civil rights movement

The idea of zombies was scary and insightful, reminding us of two things that we, as a society, had mismanaged to the point that they now appeared to have the ability to kill us all.  If the theme could be summed up in one sentence:  The commies want to kill us, but we’re stupid and cruel enough that we’ll tear each other to pieces before they get the chance.

Not cool, not funny, not original, not insightful.

Now every college town in America has an avid Humans versus Zombies community.

In case of zombie apocalypse, we will not have time for group photos in the town square.

Guys, I just want to remind you all that zombies are scary.  Really really really scary.  They are stupid, brutish, and want to kill and eat you for no reason.  If you thought The Strangers  was a scary movie, zombies are worse.   The point of The Strangers is that there might be people out there who will kill you for no reason.  In a zombie apocalypse, there are millions of people who want to kill and eat you for no reason.  The zombie apocalypse is not awesome or epic.  It’s scary.

Boyle, 2002. Still haunting my dreams in 2011.