The Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse

A daily roundup of all the undead news that shambles into view… Got news tips? E-mail me at cory.casciato[AT]gmail.com.

Starting at Friday midnight GMT, Left 4 Dead will be free for 24 hours for PC players who are Steam users. I’ve already raved about this game a bit, but allow me to reiterate that this is one of the greatest zombie games ever. If you’ve avoided the temptation thus far, give in and try it. (Kotaku)

Speaking of greatest zombie games ever, Kotaku has a short interview with Dead Rising 2 producer Keiji Inafune. The big reveal is that there will be non-combat skills. Specifically mentioned is riding a motorbike in badass fashion. Some of them will help the character level up, like in the first game, but none will be photography, which should make some players happy. It’s a video interview, and it is embedded after the jump and there’s lots more in it about the first game and the upcoming sequel. (Kotaku)

The latest content release for Call of Duty: World at War includes another zombie-killing map called Shi No Numa (Zombie Swamp). I haven’t played this one because I am anti-WWII games, even if they have zombies. Enough, already. That damn war has been played to death. Still, maybe you feel differently, in which case enjoy killing some more WWII-era zombies. (Kotaku)

IFC has got ahold of I Sell the Dead, a movie about grave robbers starring Dominic Monaghan and Ron Perlman. It’s coming August 14 to theaters and on demand. Is it a zombie movie? Well, the trailer (helpfully embedded after the jump) shows some reanimated corpses, so I am going to say provisionally speaking, it counts. (Dread Central)

Special thanks to Kotaku for giving me most of my daily zombie news. You get a zombie cookie. To the rest of you, sorry for the lateness of today’s post. My life interfered.

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I wanted to draw your attention to a newish web comic called The Zombie Years. It’s a post-apocalyptic zombie story that follows a young Cuban-American named Frank who lives in Miami and so far it looks great. Here’s what you can expect from the series, in the creator’s words: “Zombie Years is a Horror Drama with lots of action and Humor, Survival tips, both real and unreal, DIY concepts, Latin American/Caribbean culture, while featuring Miami as a whole other character in the story.”

The writing is solid, the art is appealing and vibrant and the series doesn’t waste a lot of time with clumsy exposition or setup — it’s action packed from the word go, with explosions, face-shooting and hand-to-hand mayhem abounding in the few short pages available. Poking around on the site, it’s obvious a lot of thought and care has gone into the comic. The author, Juan Navarro, seems to have crafted a deep, engaging fiction and backstory and it will be exciting to see it come out in the comic over time. He’s already outlined the varieties of zombies, the timeline of the epidemic and other important details.

Really, the only complaint is that there just isn’t enough of it yet. I read the entirety of it in no time at all and now I have to wait a week for the next page. Damnation! Patience is not one of my many virtues. On the other hand, if you want to check it out, you can still get in at the more-or-less beginning, which is kind of nice in its own way.

Read it and judge for yourself at The Zombie Years web site.

A daily roundup of all the undead news that shambles into view… Got news tips? E-mail me at cory.casciato[AT]gmail.com.

The Corbin Bernsen (LA Law! Fuck yeah!) helmed zombie feature Dead Air is looking for distribution at Cannes. The movie is set in a radio station during a zombie outbreak (like Pontypool!), shares a name with one of Left 4 Dead‘s campaigns and stars Bill Moseley. Still not sold? Hit the jump below and find a teaser trailer. (Dread Central)

New details emerge about Deadlands 2:  Trapped, a microbudget zombie epic sequel to the original Deadlands: The Rising (which gives me some urgency to see the original). Details include production stills, screening dates, the troubled search for distribution and what it’s like to make a full-bore zombie epic on a $6,000 budget (spoiler: it’s hard). (Fangoria)

Are you ready for yet another upcoming entry in the Nazi zombie subgenre? This one will be called The 4th Reich and it is revealed via a feature on The Soldier, the short that inspired it. Since I believe this particular subgenre may be cursed, I am not getting my hopes up. (Fangoria)

The Dead Rising 2 feast continues as Kotaku weighs in with some speculation about possible game mechanics, such as the desire for videography instead of the first game’s still photography. (Kotaku)

Have a Wii? Never played Resident Evil? Or maybe want to play it again? You are in luck, a port is being released with all of the original’s (actually, the Gamecube remake’s) clunky controls and murderous camera angles intact! Joy. (Kotaku)

To celebrate its one-year anniversary, Lost Zombies is sponsoring a 24-hour writing challenge on May 1. (Fangoria)

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Oh, Troma, your films are so crazy. So self-consciously crazy, and so cheaply and shoddily put together with only the barest hint of competence. They always seem like the kind of thing that was conceived over a lunch of cheap booze and bad tacos, written and produced during a two-day cough syrup bender and shot over a long weekend fueled by trucker speed, Old Milwaukee and shitty weed. Case in point: Chopper Chicks in Zombie Town, a melange of wacky elements thrown together haphazardly in the vague hope that something cool will emerge.

Those elements include an evil scientist/mortician making zombies to work in a poisonous, radioactive mine; a gang of women bikers called the Cycle Sluts; a busload full of surly, blind orphans; a dwarf. All of these collide in the kind of secluded, small town that only exists in bad movies and, predictably, mayhem ensues. Despite the promise of the ingredients, the film manages to be pretty dull, due to the slow pacing and generally inept direction and editing. It just took forever to get anywhere, the payoff once it got there was minimal and for a zombie movie, the zombies sure took their time joining the action. I didn’t hate it, but I doubt I’d watch it again.

The scientist/mortician was Don Calfa, of Return of the Living Dead fame (played a mortician there, too). Also of note is that it is Billy Bob Thornton’s first film appearance. He gets eaten pretty quickly.

A daily roundup of all the undead news that shambles into view… Got news tips? E-mail me at cory.casciato[AT]gmail.com.

Prepare to be thoroughly underwhelmed by Japan’s first foray into zombie movies when Synapse Films releases the pointless and dull Living Dead in Tokyo Bay (here’s my review) on DVD November 24, 2009. (Fangoria)

Speaking of Japan, the popular Resident Evil series gets a new Wii update with Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles, a shooter-on-rails installment of the poplar zombieriffic franchise. The devs promise near-Xbox-360-quality graphics but from the looks of the trailer I’d say they hit something more in the realm of “best-ever original Xbox” quality. Which is still pretty good. See for yourself after the jump, where I’ve embedded the trailer. (Kotaku)

Details are beginning to emerge about Dead Rising 2 as Kotaku delivers a short feature with some words from the developers and first-hand accounts of seeing the game in action. There’s apparently a lot “more”: more zombies, more weapons, more physics, etc. And a brand-new engine to fuel it all. But Kotaku wisely and correctly asks whether the new developers are paying enough attention to the “heart” that made the first game so awesome. And there’s  a trailer (courtesy of Inside Gamer), which you will also find after the jump. (Kotaku)

For even more Dead Rising 2 details, we turn to Eurogamer who has an extensive preview up. Highlight of the said preview is the confirmation that the game will have online multiplayer functionality. No word on what kind of multiplayer, but co-op would be the obvious choice/hope. (Eurogamer)

It’s a few weeks old, but if you haven’t seen it, you can also find an exceptionally intriguing Pontypool trailer after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

The ongoing swine flu outbreak in Mexico naturally has the zombie aware wondering if this could be the first step in the inevitable zombie apocalypse. It’s got some classic hallmarks: sudden development, high death rate, government entreaties not to panic, those biohazard-y looking dust masks. So is it time to head to your secure location, board up the windows and start sharpening your machete? Not quite yet.

It’s important to remember that, as of yet, there haven’t even been any rumors of swine-flu fatalities getting up to walk around. There also haven’t been any rumors of attacks on health care workers, family of the afflicted or anyone else. Hell, they only just verified it could pass from person to person. So apart from the elements of a new, highly contagious, still-mutating sickness and visual element of biohazard masks, this isn’t looking particularly zombiesque.

Still, it’s a good thing that the zombie community is watching these developments closely. If this does turn out to be the first outbreak of the zombie virus, we won’t be caught unaware. Even if it doesn’t, it’s a good test run of our monitoring systems and a chance to look hard at our contingency plans. And, if it turns out to be a more mundane apocalypse, like a garden-variety flu pandemic, the close monitoring of the news for signs of walking dead should still impart some practical knowledge sure to be of use.

So for now, keep monitoring the news but don’t shoot the staggering, sunken-eyed, pale dude on your lawn just yet. Look for zombie-indicating new developments – warnings to isolate the infected or dead should be considered suspicious, while instructions to decapitate or burn them should be considered an undead giveaway. Reports of riots, sudden outbreaks of bitey behavior or high spikes in murder rates near infected areas are all high-probability danger signs as well. And get your bug-out bag ready if it isn’t already. It can’t hurt to be ready to head for the hills when you see the first zombies instead of stopping to pick up that last box of granola bars and an extra fire axe, right?

A daily roundup of all the undead news that shambles into view… Got news tips? E-mail me at cory.casciato[AT]gmail.com.

The march of new zombie movies continues unabated as Condition Dead 3D emerges. The zombie action flick will be directed by Patrick Lussier (director of the recent My Bloody Valentine 3D remake) and produced by Joel Soisson (The Prophecy, Pulse). (Bloody Disgusting)

If Craigslist postings selling props from Zombieland are to be believed (and personally, I believe everything on Craigslist is 100 percent true), Bill Murray is in the upcoming Zombieland. (Bloody Disgusting)

The sequel to the awesome Spanish first-person zombie flick REC (cleverly titled REC 2) will be out October 9, 2009 according to the countdown on the official site. If you are in Spain, this is good news; the rest of us will have to wait until it gets exported to wherever we are. (Horror-Movies.ca)

More zombie comedy in the shape of Zombie Ed. This one is about a loser who becomes a zombie, told from said zombie’s point of view. The poster sucks, the synopsis is poorly written and my faith in this movie is hovering between slim and nonexistent. Yet I will, without a doubt, watch it anyway once it is out. I am sick that way. (Dread Central)

It’s kind of old news (hey, I wasn’t doing a daily news post then…) but word is Nazi-zombie snoozefest Outpost is slated for a sequel. Color me not particularly excited. (Quiet Earth)

One of my good friends who shares some of my love for the walking dead and is far, far more educated than I am sent me a short piece by Jacques Derrida on zombies. Derrida is a fancy-pants French philosopher and the father of deconstruction (yeah, I have no idea either). Here’s his take on the zombie:

Zombies are cinematic inscriptions of the failure of the “life/death” opposition. They show where classificatory order breaks down: they mark the limits of order. Like all undecidables, zombies infect the oppositions grouped around them. These ought to establish stable, clear and permanent categories. But what happens to “white/black”, “master/servant” and “civilized/primitives” when white colonialists can also be the zombie slaves of black power? Can “white science/black magic” remain untroubled, if what sometimes works against a zombie is white magic, the Christian religion, the power of love or superior morality? How certain is the opposition “inside/outside”, if the zombie’s internal soul is extracted and an internal force becomes its inside? Is there any security in opposing “masculine” to “feminine” and “good” to “evil” when the zombie is desexualized and has no power of decision?

The zombie is therefore fascinating and also horrific. It poisons systems of order, and like all undecidables, ought to be returned to order. In zombie movies, this return to order is difficult. For a classic satisfying ending, the troubled element has to be removed, perhaps by killing it. But zombies are already dead (while alive) you can’t kill a zombie, you have to resolve it. It has to be “killed” categorically, by removing its undecidability. A magic agent or superior power will have to decide the zombie, returning it to one side of the opposition or the to the. It has to become a proper corpse or a true living being. There are other endings, less final. The zombie might be ineradicable, they might return. Perhaps undecideability is always with us. If not figured in the zombie, then something else: ghosts, golems or vampires, between life and death

Found in Introducing Derrida by Jeff Collins. See, even fancy smart dudes love zombies.

A daily roundup of all the undead news that shambles into view… Got news tips? E-mail me at cory.casciato[AT]gmail.com.

The collaborative, animated Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated, a reimagining of the 1968 classic that changed zombies forever, has entered post-production and has a spiffy new web site and trailer. I posted the trailer earlier today, just scroll down. (Fangoria)

If you live in or will be visiting the Rio Grande Valley part of Texas, and want to be in a zombie movie, then a guy named Jose Sanchez totally wants to hear from you. The auditions are  happening April 27 and 29, full details including contact info can be found here. (Twitter @Zombie_Skool)

Actress Anna Friel says she is down to do a Pushing Daisies zombie movie to go with the comic. Not that it’s actually happening, but if it does, she’d do it. (Twitter @Zombie_Skool)

That’s all for today! I’ll be moving all weekend, so Monday’s post will be from the new and improved zombie HQ. See you then!

The newest trailer for the multimedia animated Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated shows off some of the inasne variety of animation styles via a few familiar scenes. I like the sock puppets, myself.

After the jump, you’ll find the Chanbara trailer… Read the rest of this entry »