The Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse

It’s always nice to see someone taking a fresh approach to the zombie apocalypse. In the young-adult novel The Forest of Hands and Teeth, first-time author Carrie Ryan’s tactic is setting her story so long after the rise of the dead that no one living remembers a time before – indeed, many people doubt there ever was a time before. In this genuinely post-apocalyptic world, society has reverted to a simpler way of life, much like the modern-day Amish. No lights, no phones, no motorcars – just farming, fence-mending (to keep those pesky walking dead out) and lots and lots of religion, courtesy of the Sisterhood. The sisters of the Sisterhood run things with an iron fist, maintaining order and security in a draconian manner—albeit an arguably justified one.

It is this world that our young lead, Mary, lives in. And after her father and mother both fall to the zombies, she find herself unwillingly forced into the Sisterhood. There she discovers something strange – an outsider has come to her village, but is hidden by the Sisters. Later this outsider becomes a zombie – a special one, extra ferocious and capable of running. As this unfolds, Mary’s life becomes complicated by love, obligation, her natural curiosity and need to break free of the stifling constraints imposed upon her by life in the village. And she gets her chance to break free when all hell breaks loose and the Unconsecrated, as Ryan calls her zombies, flood the village, forcing Mary to flee with her would-be lover, her betrothed, her best friend, her brother, his wife, a young boy and a dog. And in classic zombie-tale fashion, this group begins shrinking almost immediately and what limited safety they find along the way turns out to be not as safe as it seems…

Ryan shows some skill in the crucial areas of characterization and plotting. She crafts a bunch of well-realized, believable characters (especially Mary) and sets them loose in a nicely plotted, page-turning story. Of course, I did have some minor quibbles. The first-person, present-tense style (as in “I’m walking to the door, I feel its rough surface on my skin”) felt a little odd to me and was somewhat distracting, especially at first. The pacing also felt a bit off, almost as if it had initially been planned to be a longer, deeper novel but had to be cut short for some reason – perhaps a looming deadline? To be clear, it moves along at a brisk clip, but it feels like the first half or two-thirds was building to more than the final bit paid off. In particular, there were a couple of intriguing passages hinting that the Sisterhood had a much better idea of what was going on than they revealed and suggesting something of an explanation for the outsider/super-zombie character, but they weren’t followed up on, which was a bit disappointing. I’d have preferred a bit more of that and a bit less of the love quadrangle between Mary, her best friend and the brothers, but hey, I’m not a teen girl either.

Apart from those issues – and be sure, they are minor issues – this is a novel that’s easy to recommend, especially to younger readers (12 to 16, say) but enjoyable by all who love zombies. Between her fresh setting, solid characters and compelling plot, Ryan has crafted an excellent debut novel. If she chooses to stay in this world for her future works, there’s plenty of room left to explore. The ending is practically begging for a sequel and I would read it without hesitation. If she moved on to some other subject – Yeti or robots, say — I’d still be inclined to pick her next book up – she’s a good writer that seems to be headed toward being a great one.

As of the time of this writing, the most recent poll posted on this site asks “Can zombies be sexy?” and it seems synchronistically appropriate that it should be sitting there, asking its slightly unsettling question to site visitors, as I review Deadgirl, a movie about a group of high-school losers and their zombie sex slave.

Yes, you read that right. High school losers, zombie sex slave.

Technically, this is a a bit of a spoiler, but in this case I can’t in good conscience steer anyone this movie’s way without a bit of a warning. Besides, the movie’s promos reveal as much, so it’s not like I am breaking new ground here.

Deadgirl is the story of friends JT and Rickie’s discovery of a dirty, but still beautiful, girl chained naked in the basement of an abandoned mental hospital. JT instantly starts thinking about what they can do to her, while Rickie thinks of ways to free or rescue her without getting in trouble, setting up a dynamic that carries through the whole film. From there, plot complications in the form of bullies, buddies, and out-of-reach dream girls enter the picture — although, strangely, the cops or school authorities never do, even once the body count begins to mount. JT and Wheeler, another loser buddy, happily use the zombie girl as a sex toy while Rickie is utterly, uselessly emo about the whole thing — he does little more than agonize about it. Meanwhile, the deadgirl acts like any zombie would, trying its best to bite the living shit out of anyone that comes near, but held down by restraints (kinky!). The bullies lead to the showdown at the climax and, predictably, the unattainable dream-girl plays a major role, too.

The movie seemed to be trying to walk a thin line between cerebral chiller and gory exploitation. Unfortunately, it failed, as those disparate elements worked to drain each other of any urgency. It wasn’t ridiculous enough to be effective exploitation; it wasn’t clever enough to be a cerebral exploration of teenage pathos. As a result, it was something of a mess. It seemed to be trying to evoke a dynamic similar to River’s Edge, the chilling, true-life story of a small-town murder and the bonds of loyalty that kept it from being reported, but it missed. Where that movie portrayed the strange, ineffable bonds between small-town dead-enders in such a way that you not only believed them, but empathized to the point where you almost understand how someone could look the other way when their buddy killed, this film leaves you wondering why any of these people would speak to each other in the first place.

Just as bad, the film just goes too far in several scenes that add nothing to the plot. In other scenes, which do add to the plot, its choice of the most predictable path drains it of momentum. No one is likable, or even particularly sympathetic, although the leads Shiloh Fernandez as Rickie and, especially,  Noah Segan as JT, are capable actors who deliver what they are asked. The problem seems to lie with the direction and, to a slightly lesser degree, the script, which go too far at the wrong moments and fail to build realistic relationships between the characters that would justify their actions.

I really wanted to like this and, for almost half of it, was inclined to do so, but by the end it had lost me completely. Part of this was the aforementioned issues; part of it was the utter lack of realistic consequences for anything that happens in the second half of the movie (basically, no one seems to notice when people start going missing, among other things…). In the end,  when the credits rolled, I was simply glad it was over.

Deadgirl/US/2008

Note: Technically, the nudity in this is not gratuitous, but integral to the plot, but the whole thing os sort of gratuitous so I tagged it with gratuitous nudity.

When the zombie apocalypse comes, the only thing standing between you and the ravenous hordes of undead is your skill in the garden.

Wait, what?

Yes, that’s the message to be gleaned from the runaway hit Plants vs. Zombies, an addictive, amusing “casual” game that offers incredible depth and longevity for its $20 asking price. Combining a friendly, cartoonish aesthetic with some easy-to-learn, hard-to-master gameplay, the whole package comes together nicely and offers plenty of fun and a few nice laughs for fans of the walking dead..

The gameplay is a variation of the popular tower defense style of real-time strategy. In brief, the player’s home is on the left of the screen. The zombies start from the right, heading left. If they manage to cross the screen and get into the house, brains are eaten and the game is over. To stop them, the player has a wide variety of (cute) weapons in the forms of plants: sunflowers fuel the army, peashooters shoot peas, walnuts provide a barrier to temporarily halt the zombies’ advance, etc. There’s a wide variety of weapons and tools available to the player, to accommodate personal preferences and to deal with specific threats.

The single-player campaign is structured to ease players into the game and it does a fine job introducing the concepts, weapons and enemies at a pace that anyone can understand. In truth, veteran gamers who already understand the underlying mechanics of real-time strategy and tower-defense type games may find the pace a little slow except in the later campaign levels. Luckily, the games survival modes are much more challenging and should offer plenty of intensity even for hardcore gamers. In addition, a large number of mini-game variations on the basic gameplay are included, many of which incorporate elements of other popular games, from popular videogames such as Bejeweled to staples such as bowling. Fleshing this out are metagame mechanics that allow you to buy new plants and tools and raise plants for cash in a Zen garden. All told, the package is full of content and should keep gamers busy long enough to get their money’s worth, and then some.

The zombies take the popular conception of zombies – slow, shambling brain eaters – as a starting point and add variation from there. The full cast of undead comprises a wide variety of silliness, some based on pop culture zombie referents, such as the obviously “Thriller”-inspired zombies, others seemingly created for gameplay purposes such as football-player zombies, Zamboni-driving zombies and dolphin-riding zombies. If there’s a complain to be made, it’s that the choice to make the enemies zombies seems largely immaterial to the gameplay. Apart from a few exceptions – the “Thriller” zombies in particular – these enemies could have been anything – aliens, Bigfoot, monkeys, whatever. Still they are zombies, so it’s not much of an issue. The plants used to defend the homestead against the walking dead are cast in the same cutesy vein as the zombies, giving the whole game a light-hearted, fun feeling. All told, if you’re a videogame fan who likes zombies and likes cute, Plants vs. Zombies should be something of a dream come true.

Take a whole lot of enthusiasm for the zombie genre and a complete and utter lack of talent or skill in any of the disciplines needed to make a movie, stir well and you will get Deadlands: The Rising. The debut feature from director/writer/producer/star Gary Ugarek, D:TR is a run of the mill zombie apocalypse tale. Bioweapon is used, the dead walk, society crumbles. Ho hum. The story is not only utterly pedestrian, it’s executed poorly. For example, I do not need interminable scenes of dudes shooting guns at bottles. This does nothing for me, or for the movie.

As apparent as it is that Ugarek loves zombie movies, it is also painfully apparent he has no idea how to write, act, direct or produce one. The movie is technically shoddy, the makeup is perfunctory, the acting is … well, the best actor is the wild-eyed, scenery-chewing redneck that tries to organize a shelter full of refugees to prepare for the onslaught of zombies. And despite being the best here, he is, by all standard measures, one of the worst actors I have ever seen. Everyone else is just listless and boring; at least he’s good for a laugh. The whole thing meanders, and even at a brief 63 minute runtime, it still feels slow. It’s not the worst zombie movie ever made (I still give that nod to Zombie Night) but it’s also pretty much without merit as entertainment, much less art.

Deadlands: The Rising/US/2006

In Zombie Honeymoon we get a sad and horrific tale of zombification told from a point of view sympathetic to the zombie. While on his honeymoon, Danny is attacked by a zombie that emerges from the surf, pukes black ooze into his mouth and expires. Danny dies, reanimates in the hospital and begins eating people shortly thereafter – much to the chagrin of his newlywed Denise. She sticks by him even as the body count rises, but it’s a hard lot (indeed) and before long she’s questioning her decision.

The premise of this movie, while not completely original, is at least a lot fresher than the typical zombie apocalypse/siege. Unfortunately, the execution is pretty weak. The relationship between the leads seems believable, but incredibly shallow – it’s hard to imagine she’d stick by him if he got a parking ticket, much less when he starts eating people. The actors playing the leads just aren’t really likable enough to generate any sympathy, so you end up hoping they’ll get caught, or he’ll eat her or something bad will happen to them. Of course, the people getting eaten aren’t terribly likable either, so it’s kind of a wash.

The zombie makeup is passable if unremarkable, but it doesn’t really get used a lot until the last third when the decay sets in. And by that point, you’re pretty much ready for it to end, or for more people to go zombie or for anything to happen besides the sudsy, melodramatic and unbelievable relationship dynamic that drives the whole thing. The pacing is glacial, and remarkably little happens for most of the movie. There are a few murders and a little bit of gore, but not enough to keep things moving. It’s a made-for-cable movie, and probably worth sitting through if you came across it some late, sleepless night when there’s nothing else on — it might help fight insomnia, but it’s not really worth much beyond that.

Zombie Honeymoon/US/2004

This movie was viewed as part of my second annual Zombie Movie Marathon Month — see the initial reaction piece here.

The French may make great wine, but I have yet to see any evidence they can make a decent zombie movie. The best thing that can be said for Jean Rollin’s The Grapes of Death is that it is much better than his other undead attempt, Zombie Lake. Considering Zombie Lake is one of the worst films ever, that’s the very definition of damnation by faint praise. The other thing that can be said for it is Brigitte Lahaie naked. Of course, the woman made porn, so it’s not like this is your best chance to see that.

The Grapes of Death is about a nasty pesticide blend that poisons a batch of wine so thoroughly that everyone who drinks it becomes a rotting, sore-covered maniac/zombie. The film begins with our heroine on a train. A rotting dude gets on the train, kills her friend, and kicks off an interminable series of painfully slow pursuit sequences. Each is the same: our girl runs; meets up with another woman; the other woman gets killed and naked; repeat. Okay, near the end she meets up with some dudes who don’t get naked but do get killed. Wow, what a plot!

The languid pace strips any tension out of the already meager formula, leaving us with a cheap, sleazy and boring exploitation flick. At least the naked scenes are more or less evenly distributed and all the girls are hot, but a few gratuitous nude scenes and some tainted wine are all this zombie movie has to offer.

The Grapes of Death/France/1978

This movie was viewed as part of my second annual Zombie Movie Marathon Month — see the initial reaction piece here.

It’s probably a bit of a stretch to say that Plan 9 from Outer Space is the worst movie ever made – not in a world with Uwe Boll and Troma films. Still, it’s not difficult to see how director Ed Wood’s disasterpiece earned that reputation. This is a bad movie. At points, it is so bad it’s good. But for the most part, it is just bad.

The movie is the story of a half-baked alien plot to resurrect the dead to convince Earth people of the existence of aliens, or take over, or both (it’s kind of unclear) and to stop them from discovering how to make sunlight explode and thereby destroy the universe (yes, really).

This story is told in voiceover, through lots of exposition by the characters and with a few weak action scenes. We do get some dead people wandering around – one of them, Tor Johnson, is actually even kind of menacing – and occasionally attacking people, but we get a lot more talking: poorly written, terribly acted, interminable talking. And then the occasional terrible effects sequence, including the pie plate on fire that serves as the movie’s climax.

If you love bad films for their badness, there are a few laughs here. If you are interested in film history, especially zombie film history, it’s worth seeing. But don’t expect much in either case or you’ll be disappointed.

Plan 9 from Outer Space/US/1959

This movie was viewed as part of my second annual Zombie Movie Marathon Month — see the initial reaction piece here.

A gothic romance that essentially repackages Jane Eyre on a tropical island, I Walked with a Zombie is the story of a series of overlapping love triangles – the nurse, the ill woman and her husband; the ill woman, her husband and his brother; and, to a certain degree, the brother, the husband and the nurse. It’s the triangle between the ill woman, her husband and brother that results in her illness (actually, her zombiism, to be precise), but the weird, stilted affair between the nurse, the zombie woman and the husband is what drives the plot.

The zombies here – there are two, a native zombie and the zombie woman at the center of the plot – are old-school voodoo zombies. They don’t eat people, nor even act particularly menacing unless ordered to by their masters – except in one inexplicable case early on that implies the zombie woman sees the nurse as a threat. They just walk around with empty expressions, unresponsive to stimuli. Not terribly exciting for fans raised on Romero’s gore-splattered hungry dead, but probably quite creepy by the standards of their day. The movie’s treatment of the native people and the voodoo religion and practices is surprisingly respectful, for its time.

The relationships at the core of this movie may be sudsy and melodramatic but they have a certain old-school charm. Despite not a whole lot happening, it moves along at a decent clip, the acting is excellent for the era (a little stagy by today’s standards, but still quite good) and it’s beautifully shot. The direction creates a nice moody atmosphere and conveys the sense of doomed love well. It’s interesting to see how the standards of horror have changed – only the atmosphere and sense of despair/doom remotely qualify this as a horror movie. The movie may be unbearably talky and slow by today’s standards, and it is certainly not what zombie fans typically look for in a zombie movie, but I Walked with a Zombie is a good, perhaps even great, movie.

I Walked with a Zombie/US/1943

This movie was viewed as part of my second annual Zombie Movie Marathon Month — see the initial reaction piece here.

The zombie apocalypse comes to reality TV in the BBC miniseries Dead Set. The premise is that the cast of reality show Big Brother, locked away in a house isolated from the outside world, are among the few survivors of a plague of flesh-eating zombies. They don’t even quite realize what is up – they think the producers are “testing” them – until one of the remaining crew gets into the house, followed shortly by one of the zombies. From there, the story follows a fairly predictable – or classic, if one prefers – curve as some are bit, a supply run is undertaken, more survivors make their way to the compound and finally, things unravel spectacularly.

Haters of speedy zombies might want to tune this one out – these bastards can move. The show gets credit, though, for not setting the characters into a situation where this speed would make escape impossible without cheap editing tricks as many fast-zombie films do. There are no scenes  where they’re surrounded … then cut, and they’re a few steps ahead all of the sudden, for example. The zombies look great, with creepy, white-irised eyes and lots of apparent wounds – everything from torn flesh to missing limbs.

The show uses a lot of cuts and angles to keep the gore from being too excessive for mainstream consumption but considering that this was on TV (pay TV, if I understand correctly, but still) the gore factor is remarkably high. It comparable, gore-wise, to something like Dexter in the U.S. – plenty of grue, but not so much as to classify it as a truly gory show for those that revel in such.

The creators clearly know and love their zombie lore. There’s at least one direct nod to each of George A. Romero’s first three zombie movies, including direct quotes from Night of the Living Dead (“They’re coming to get you Barbara”), parallel dialog from Dawn of the Dead (a character suggests the zombies are attracted to the studio where they’re holed up by some sort of “primitive intuition” and opines that the place used to be “like a church to them”) and a visual quote and parallel dialog from Day of the Dead where an obnoxious character gets torn apart by a mob of zombies while spouting curses at them the whole time. It’s not just Romero, either – at one point a character says another has “a face like a Manchester morgue” (clearly a reference to The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue aka Let Sleeping Corpses Lie).

They fail, however, at putting across a message as well as Romero or even Let Sleeping Corpses Lie – those films are admittedly heavy handed, but clear in what they have to say. Apart from the very obvious and zombie-film standard message inherent in the fact that it’s the failure to work together that causes nearly all of the problems for the survivors, this seems to be vaguely condescending toward and condemnatory of the reality-TV generation and surveillance state, but what the exact message is – if any – is unclear. It would have added depth to the proceedings if made a little clearer – or streamlined it if jettisoned all together. It’s also entirely possible that the difficulty in transmission stems from subtle but deep differences between British and American culture that leave me somewhat in the dark as to some of the targets here.

Despite that minor quibble, the writing, direction and acting are all up to the task – Jaime Winborn is particularly good as Kelly, and Andy Nyman turns in an impressive, scenery-chewing performance in the role of the bastard lead producer, Patrick. The only real complaint is the pacing is a bit off – things start off slow before catching stride, then drag a bit in the third and fourth episodes and seem a bit rushed in the fifth and final episode. Still, considering how well the creepiness, jump scares, drama and laughs all work overall, this is a minor issue. Falling short of greatness, Dead Set has to settle for being very good – but in a genre as heavily weighted to the terrible end of the scale as zombie film is, very good is high praise, indeed.

Dead Set/U.K./2008 – Made for TV

Zombies, as a rule, are more at home in film and video games than in literature. There’s no grand literary tradition stemming back hundreds of years, or even decades for that matter, as there is with vampires. The truth is, the vast majority of zombie novels are utter shit. Even among the good stuff, there’s no single great work, apart from very recent works from Max Brooks arguably, to point to as sterling examples of the form. Well, folks, in a decade or two that will change as David Wellington’s Monster Island becomes recognized for the masterpiece that it is.

Monster Island‘s story revolves around two characters, Dekalb and Gary. Dekalb is a former UN weapons inspector leading a mission to retrieve a stash of priceless drugs for a Somali warlord in exchange for a place for himself and his daughter in the new world order. Gary is a rather unusual zombie – a zombie who can still think, thanks to a clever plan devised while he was still alive. The paths of these two intersect fairly early on, with devastating consequences for Gary, then split, taking a number of fascinating individual twists and turns before meeting again for a satisfying climax. The surprises on each characters path are so integral to the story and so inherently satisfying it would be a travesty to spoil any of them, but suffice it to say that both must face dire circumstances in pursuit of what they desire, circumstances that change them and their initial goals.

Both characters are exquisitely wrought and developed throughout the story. Wellington manages to make them both sympathetic, even as they do terrible things. Making a zombie sympathetic to any degree isn’t an easy task, but Wellington isn’t your average hack horror writer. Surrounding these two characters is an excellent supporting cast, on both sides, alive and dead. Not surprisingly, since most of Gary’s companions are mindless dead, the bulk of secondary characters that get attention interact with Dekalb, from the teenage soldiers accompanying him in his mission to the survivors they meet in New York City.

The cause of the zombie plague is not revealed, but it appears to be supernatural for a number of reasons (again, revealing those reasons would spoil some excellent surprises). The average zombie is very similar to the zombies of George A. Romero’s Dead series – slow, nearly mindless (due to brain damage from asphyxiation as the person dies but before the zombie rises, it is explained) and always hungry. These zombies eat anything alive though – not just people, but animals, plants, even grass. And when they do, it fills them with vitality in undeath, healing wounds and giving them strength to go on. If they don’t eat, they slowly wither away and rot like normal dead things (well, normal dead things don’t walk, but you know…).

This is one of the finest zombie stories ever told, in any medium. It’s written in a spare, deft style that manages to pack maximum impact into minimal verbiage. There’s rarely a single word wasted throughout the story, from taut action sequences to tender, human moments to mind-blowing metaphysical revelations. Wellington’s mythology is well-developed, fully compatible with the popular view of the zombie and yet strikingly original in the realm of zombie fiction – I can’t wait to see how it develops in the two sequels. His characters are believable, his settings are real and his prose is gorgeous. This is an essential book for zombie fans – don’t pass it up.

You can read it online at the Monster Island website or purchase it from fine booksellers everywhere.