ThinkZOMBIE

“Howdy, said ol’ Zed.” – SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD bites a chunk out of the classic Westerns

SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD is Romero’s latest art installation of his alpha z-mythology, what’s under the umbrella of “del muerte.”

Mr. Romero begins with a philosophical query into the nature of human behavior under stress, as I perceive it, his dead films follow through on questions of human response to disaster & duress. His observation in cinema form fits the model of modern cable news cycles. Think about the ubiquitous distant spotlight on news anchors knee-deep in the fire, flood, terror, tragedy. Slowburn zombies are the stars today, and despite the occasionally mediocre elements,

SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD could absolutely play in black & white, as an old time 1950s creature feature. Something new and something old, that’s exactly what I crave for modern horror. Romero continues legit academic scholarship in the field of the literature of the living dead. 3/5 cannibals in cowboy hats.

Supernatural sequel REC2 delivers fear in POV

Before seeing it with my own eyes, I heard rumors that REC 2 was a sci-fi sequel equivalent to James Cameron’s ALIENS. Honestly, I didn’t hear that, but I’m telling you now. Rumor this: there are plenty of pleasant similarities between REC II and the comic pulp action movie style of the followup to Ridley Scott’s ALIEN. Indeed, it didn’t disappoint. Fast-paced horror delivers in frightening pulses, and like ALIENS, certain elements of the original become amplified stylistically.

To start, I noticed the intro motion graphics for the sequel involves an animated number two squared popping over the previous logo like: [REC]2 , which struck me as oddly meaningless from a mathematical standpoint, but whateva. The sequel could stand completely on its own, although [REC 2] follows an identical internal movie clock of the previous [REC], constantly expanding on the mystery of the fast zombie disease and/or violence haunting which has rapidly overtaken an apartment complex in urban Spain. Try pronouncing ”zombie” in a Castilian accent. Sounds like “thombie.” Yeah!

Anyhoo, the original began with a small TV crew and a first response team of firemen with the unfortunate luck to reach the totally evil cursed-condos before anyone else, and thus getting locked inside by some supra-shady government organization. Here we start out with a group of SWAT-like special operative military types dude. They all have fancy helmet cameras, so that’s convenient for us.

Just like the many reboots of successful video game franchise HALF-LIFE, each time we’re shown through a new pair of eyes. REC2 start in the tightly confined space of an army transport and, like said video game, showing you various first-person-perspective camera work to get you adjusted before the real narrative begins. If you’ve seen the original, it will be especially fun to watch the narrative timing of the sequel collide with the original REC movie. Sadly, some big studio of idiots will likely poorly remake it in English like QUARANTINE, because they think Americans won’t read subtitles. Lame. I prefer the version en Español.

Auditory Terror: “Are you there, PONTYPOOL? It’s me, Radio Zombie.”

Witnessing a horror broadcast from small town radio feels like a dreamy jump in the past. Forget that! AM radio is saturated with timely terror. Unchecked hate all alive and well, manipulated by right-wing trolls to rally the uneducated troops around political failures like Sarah Palin and the Iraq invasion. PONTYPOOL steps in when the zombie genre needed a boost of lo-fi charisma, thus Infection has and will continue to remain the theoretical mode of undead communication, so long as sci-fiction and sci-fact grapple with the inevitably of our familiar human apocalypse.

Growing out of a small town in frosty rural Canada, the PONTYPOOL flavor of zombism reeks of social collapse. Communication becomes the killer means for infection: madness, murder, feeding. For all those haters claiming the genre of the comeback corpse dies an unimaginative death at every new zombie book, movie, video game. Wrong. No. Het. Incorrect. Sorry, the zombie story is continually reborn in new mythologies thanks to directors like Bruce McDonald and writers like Tony Burgess.

5 of 5 undead radio DJs. Watch it, you damn zombie!

Yesterday, my zombie troubles seemed so far away

You can make a lot of fake blood for $25K. In the movie YESTERDAY, director Rob Grant makes sure the audience get a healthy dose of old school makeup and monster FX, including but not limited to sticky red corn syrup squirting hither and thither.

Quality bloodwork means a lot on super grainy 16mm film stock. And while there’s something beautiful about cheap film, I can’t help but to think that $25,000 Canadian dollars would have gone farther shooting in an inexpensive proconsumer HD format.

Bad dialog and bad acting permeate the film. With the exception of a bullet hole POV cam, most of the shots stink of lazy photography. Two zombie feet (out of five rotten foots). View the trailer

Z-Comics + Z-Romance = Z-Love

Hello again, Internet.

Lot’s of zombie in recent days. First off, I’m reading a delightful novel Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament by S. G. Browne. Think first-person zombie Fight Club. Details of steady decay are illustrated with humor and winks o’ plenty. It reads like a classic, as if the book were written years ago despite frequent references to modern technologies.

Whether you’re a hardcore zombie freak or a fair weather zombie friend, you’ll totally dig Breathers. If you’re a preteen girl, you’ll most likely enjoy the angst-ridden romantic tension and profound friendships between zombie friends and lovers.

Also, zombies cameo like mad in web comics…

Z-Props to Tim Rickard of Brewster Rockit.

Where’s Zombie Waldo?

…it looks like he’s on his way to eat your Carebears tattoo and bleed all over your “Thug Life.”

Strangely enough, Waldo is anatomically quite unique, as he only contains three internal ribs!

No doubt, Waldo of the Living Dead would look great airbrushed onto the hood of a Bitchin’ Camero.

Ah, poor life choices.

Z-Props to: ugliesttattoos.com

The Road: disaster porn & unzombies

Watching THE ROAD entertained me on a purely exploitation film, pulp comic, dirty magazine level. Cormac McCarthy, like 1930s radio drama THE SHADOW, knowz what evilz be lurch’n da hards o’ dah menz. If only some wise person would reboot the original radio series, detective stories in LOLCat speak.

Anyway, THE ROAD has zombies…of a sort. More like pseudo zombies. Unzombies. Ugly, messed up, malnourished humans in the fallout of an unspecified apocalypse. No food. Everything is tainted and covered in ash – very much in a SILENT HILL manner. In the face of the devastating societal madness that comes with human extinction, cannibalism becomes more and more reasonable.

This gets to the heart of what I love about the zombie narrative. Mass disaster = humanity under stress. Especially after the collapse, after the pain of the initial shock, right into the survival and acceptance as you navigate a new kind of existence. Watching any disaster movie, for me, involves the hypothetical question of my own survival potential.

Could I live with zombies clawing outside my door every night? Sure, at first. With time, would madness wash over me until I give up at high tide and throw myself to the hordes of undead?

In most cases, I come to the conclusion that I ain’t the hardy survivor of my post-humanity fantasies. Guess I better team up with some skilled zombie killers when the time comes.

Zombie/alien food pyramid

I imagine aliens must know what they are doing if they are capable of controlling and consuming the whole zombie race, though I can’t imagine that a decomposing monster would taste very good. Aliens must have a futuristic spice rack of herbs and seasonings to prepare the undead properly. Is there an alien cooking channel?  Surely there’s an alien equivalent of Anthony Bourdain, some snarky but talented tentacled chef who shows the other aliens how best to serve a cannibal corpse at important alien get-togethers. You know, when the alien in-laws arrive during the stressful alien holidays demanding perfectly steamed zombie fingers and lightly fried zombie toes.

What scares me about the intergalactic food pyramid is that plants and vegetables are left untouched by aliens, leaving the immune carrots, beets and collard greens to evolve into giant sentient carnivores. After sprouting arms, legs and their own form of plant-to-plant communication, monster veg will reduce major cities to rubble, overwhelm the zombie population (which is incapable of battling giant grapefruit and fanged asparagus), and thus the alien vs. vegetable wars begin!

Z-Props to FFFFound & young zombie-killer Lucinda.

Graph of super-zombies, spooky religion & choose your own fictional afterlife

I always had a hunch that Jesus McChrist was a super-zombie. Spear him in the side and crucify him, but he’ll just come back to life. Except Jason, Myers and the other super-zombies won’t show up to your party, daring you to stick your finger in their wound holes. Pretty gross, Son of God!

If you choose to live in superstitious fear of a resurrected monster, I would personally pick a more realistic mythology…like zombies. Honestly, the old and the new testaments both read like poorly compiled horror anthologies. And how silly and uncreative is the concept of hell? Oooh, a fiery pit of endless torment straight out of my worst imaginings: Like watching a never ending romantic comedy? Or getting trapped in a Walmart without exits? Or being forced to listen to a hateful & narcissistic televangelist drone on about who does and doesn’t hold the golden ticket to heaven? No thanks, I’d rather be a mindless cannibal.

Z-Props to Blag Hag

ZOMG. Zombie meat loaf… YUM!

Try a delicious zombie hand! The nails and bones are made of onion. How mouth-watering is that?

Eating zombies hasn’t occurred to me since SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD. Don’t bite that Z-Boy, you don’t know where he’s been.

Z-Props to NotMartha.org and special thanks to my corpse bride, Clee.