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.
You must login to post a comment.