The Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse

A daily roundup of all the undead news that shambles into view… Bookmark the home page or add the feed to your RSS reader for your daily dose of walking dead. Got news tips? E-mail me at cory.casciato[AT]gmail.com.

Goddamn you Toronto for being so awesome and so far away. The Toronto International Film Festival’s Midnight Madness program has been revealed and it includes the new George A. Romero film Survival of the Dead (which is the new, apparently official title) and REC 2. Okay, who wants to fly me to Toronto to cover this? Anyone? (/Film)

And if you want a bunch of stills from the movie, a poster and a press release (including a synopsis!), how about TIFFs page for Survival of the Dead? (TIFF)

In case you forgot, Left 4 Dead 2 in incoming and some more info has been revealed in a new, exclusive preview. In summary: new boss called a Spitter with a ranged, damage-over-time, area-of-effect attack; level-specific “common” infected including “mud men” in the Swamp level; pills and first aid supposedly replaced with adrenaline and ammo packs, which is poorly explained, although adrenaline sounds to make you run faster for a while. There’s more tidbits, but that’s the big stuff. Oh, there are also three clips, one of which is embedded after the break. (GameSpy)

Some intriguing discussion of the role of zombies in fiction, and the books The Way of the Barefoot Zombie (upcoming) and Dawn Over Doomsday by Jasper Bark. (Forbidden Planet International)

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A daily roundup of all the undead news that shambles into view… Bookmark the home page or add the feed to your RSS reader for your daily dose of walking dead. Got news tips? E-mail me at cory.casciato[AT]gmail.com.

Speak Spanish? Then the existence of a making-of video for REC 2 will do more than frustrate you. Damn, I guess I should have picked Spanish over Japanese to study in school. Of course, I barely speak any Japanese, either, so it was probably a wash either way. Oh, and there’s another trailer for it coming July 10! (Bloody Disgusting)

Your zombie reading list will get a little longer come July 15, when Season of Rot, an anthology of five zombie novellas from Eric S. Brown, is released. (Dread Central)

More Zombieland set-visit reports emerge. They all seem to be from the same April day on set, which is kind of annoying.  Here’s one from Cinematical and another from SciFi Wire. Something tells me I am going to be sick of this movie well before it actually comes out…

A daily roundup of all the undead news that shambles into view… Bookmark the home page or add the feed to your RSS reader for your daily dose of walking dead. Got news tips? E-mail me at cory.casciato[AT]gmail.com.

Be on the lookout for the upcoming novel Feed, about a zombie outbreak as documented by the online community when the mainstream media ignores it. The author Seanan McGuire says, “It’s an unholy cross between Transmetropolitan and Night of the Living Dead, with a little Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on the side.” Sounds good to me. More details here. (Media Bistro)

If you’re excited to see the micro-budget English zombie flick Colin, you’ll probably also be excited to hear that Fangoria is doing a live webcast with writer/dirctor Marc Price next Tuesday afternoon, July 7, at 4 p.m. EST. (Fangoria)

First I’ve heard of the book, but here’s an interview with author E. Van Lowe about Never Slow Dance with a Zombie (damn good advice, by the way!). (Popin’s Lair)

Gangster and zombies go together like fish and chips, so The Horde should be tasty. Cops go after gangsters for revenge, but get zombies instead. Awesome. Trailer after the break. (Quiet Earth)

More details continue to trickle out about Wii zombie killers Dead Space Extraction (control scheme details) and Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles (character details). Now they need to come out, already. (Kotaku)

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A daily roundup of all the undead news that shambles into view… Bookmark the home page or add the feed to your RSS reader for your daily dose of walking dead. Got news tips? E-mail me at cory.casciato[AT]gmail.com.

Friday, July 10 zombies in San Francisco are protesting for equal rights. This awesome event is a promotional stunt for S.G. Browne’s book Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament. There’s a signing after the protest. (Undead Anonymous)

Fans of the zombie epic Planet Terror rejoice, because rumor has it that the complete theatrical Grindhouse experience — both films, all the trailers, etc — is coming to Blu-ray August 11 and DVD December 31. Blu-ray.com broke the story, Fangoria corroborated and expanded it via WalMart’s website (isn’t living in the future awesome?). (Fangoria)

If you are in Waco, Texas this weekend, a new, locally produced zombie movie is premiering Saturday, June 27. Check out a brief piece about the movie, called Risen, with a link to info on when and where to see it. (Waco Tribune-Herald)

Augmented reality (overlaying graphics onto real-life stuff) gets nice and zombified in ARhrrrr, a prototype game from Georgia Tech Augmented Environments Lab and the Savannah College of Art and Design. Get more details at Joystiq, find a nice clip after the break. (Joystiq via Dread Central)

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A daily roundup of all the undead news that shambles into view… Bookmark the home page or add the feed to your RSS for your daily dose of walking dead. Got news tips? E-mail me at cory.casciato[AT]gmail.com.

Check out some video of John Russo, one of the makers of the original zombie classic Night of the Living Dead, from Fangoria‘s New York Weekend of Horrors, embedded after the break. If that doesn’t fulfill your Russo jones, hit this link for a thirty-minute video containing another segment with him. (Fangoria)

Seems not everyone is happy about the announced Left 4 Dead 2. Nope, some folks are so pissed they are signing petitions and boycotting it. The complaints range from a lack of promised updates to the original and that it’s too soon, to not liking the new music and sunlight-based levels, among other things. On the one hand, I can see where they feel a little cheated since Valve usually does update stuff constantly for free. On the other hand, as a console guy myself, I’m a little more used to these kind of updates and usually willing to pay for them if I like the game. Also, bitching about the music and daylight-based gameplay? Really? (Kotaku)

What if Dante’s inspiration for the Inferno was a medieval zombie outbreak? That’s the premise behind Kim Paffenroth’s Valley of the Dead, and Zombie Command has an interview about it. (Zombie Command)

Mormons. Zombies. Some would argue that there’s no difference (I kid, I kid… Mormons are fine by me and much more polite when I tell them “no thanks” at my front door than the Jehovah’s Witnesses are). Now there’s a zombie movie called The Book of Zombie coming that looks into what the zombie apocalypse looks like, Mormon-style. It asks the question, how do you kill a Mormon zombie? Trailer after the break, official website here. (Bloody Disgusting)

New York gets Dead Snow in theaters June 19, LA on June 26. The rest of us will have to settle for VOD, but bad news abounds: the VOD presentation will be dubbed. Sucktacular. I guess the VOD crowd doesn’t like reading their Nazi zombie movies. So much more the pity, but at least the DVD release will be subbed. (Fangoria)

A few tidbits of news about a couple different movies in this blog: Bubba’s Chili Parlor (trailer after the break) is available on DVD from Amazon (Mad-Cow tainted meat makes zombies) and a few stills from The Undertakers: Road’s End (official website here) about a couple of small-town flunkies who discover an organization guarding a supernatural secret (hint: zombies). (Bloody Disgusting)

We all know that the Boston PD will tell you if zombies are coming, but what about your town? One enterprising reporter endeavored to find out (hint: New Yorkers, you are fucked). (ComicMix)

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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.

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

It’s hard to call it news, since it went online last November, but it is the slowest zombie news day ever, so enjoy this interview with World War Z and Zombie Survival Guide author Max Brooks. (Rocket Llama World Headquarters)

There’s a big story on George A. Romero in the upcoming 30th anniversary issue of Fangoria. As a strange sneak preview, the author posted a meandering outtake of him talking with Romero about the Oscars over sushi. I’ve helpfully embedded the clip after the break. (Fangoria)

Finally, there’s an intriguing short film called Arbeit Für Alle (Full Employment in English) headed for the festival circuit. It’s about a man, desperate for work, who takes a job as an entry-level zombie hunter and it looks promising. Trailer after the break. (Quiet Earth)

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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 young-adult, post-post-apocalyptic zombie novel The Forest of Hands and Teeth, about a girl who must face some scary truths, has been optioned for a film. Considering the buzz on the novel (which I will be reviewing soon!), this is pretty exciting news. (Publishers Weekly)

Alternative Cinema is having a sale, and one of the titles is a zombie movie called Feeding the Masses. The rest is mostly exploitation and sleaze stuff. (Cinesploitation)

On May 19, an illustrated history of the zombie in pop culture called Zombie Holocaust will be released. (Fangoria)

There’s an exclusive interview with the makers of Invasion of the Not Quite Dead, an indie zombie flick that seeks to raise its funding via the Internet, at Fangoria. (Fangoria)

Can’t get enough on upcoming zombie flicks Pontypool and Dead Snow? Bloody Disgusting has an image gallery of each for you. (Bloody Disgusting)

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

Another slice of classic literature gets an injection of zombies. This time, H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds becomes War of the Worlds Plus Blood, Guts and Zombies courtesy of Eric S. Brown. Hm. I think this idea has officially crossed the line from clever to stupid (it is a fine line…). (Fangoria)

If you have been looking at all the zombie video games coming out and saying, “Yes, but I want a kid-friendly, cartoonish zombie game. You know, for kids!” then you are in luck because a cel-shaded zombie game called Zombie Wranglers is on its way! (Destructoid)

Insane bikini-clad zombie-slayer girl video game turned movie Onechanbara is getting a sequel. It’s to be called Chanbara Beauty THE MOVIE vorteX (what?) and you can find pictures and words about the stars here. Hint: they are hot, Asian and scantily clad. (Kotaku)

World’s best print horror mag Fangoria has a piece on zombie master George A. Romero in its upcoming 30th anniversary issue (lots of other stuff too). (Fangoria)

If the somewhat scholarly Zombie Movie Encyclopedia wasn’t quite the right zombie movie guide for you, then Glenn Kay’s Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide may be a better fit. Kay chronicles more than 300 zombie movies and TV episodes from the original 1932 White Zombie to the 2008 feature Diary of the Dead.

Kay’s book takes a more laid back, film-fan approach to the genre than Dendle did, making it an easier book to read straight through. Interestingly, he starts off with a lengthy and fairly detailed history of  Haiti that seems a little out of place considering the tone of the rest of the book. Still, it’s an interesting read that offers some insight into the origins of the zombie myth in our culture and a little history never hurt anyone, right? Kay organizes the book by era, breaking it into roughly decade-sized chunks. This organization makes it easy to follow the development of the genre, lending the book some of its linear readability, but it necessitates a trip to the index to find a particular film you may have heard referenced by name without knowing the era it is from. Kay doesn’t offer a lot of detail about what criteria he uses to select a film as a zombie film, and although he clearly takes an expansive view of what is or isn’t a zombie, there are few, if any, selections that will upset anyone but total purists.

Most of the entries are given a third to half a page of discussion, with more important works (Romero’s films, for example) receiving as many as several pages and lesser works covered in one or two paragraphs. He rounds up lots of minor films with a mere mention in end-of-chapter lists. Though he doesn’t cover video games with their own entries, he does discuss their impact on the genre at several points. Each movie that gets a full entry is also rated, but he uses an obscure set of symbols to denote their rankings, making them a pain to use. A simple one-to-four star rating system would have been preferable to trying to remember what a zombie figure with a stick through its midsection denotes. Like any review, some of his takes seem spot on and others earn a puzzled “WTF? Is he serious?” He does a good job justifying his positions, for the most part, so at least you’ll know why he likes that turd you hated so much.  He wraps the book with a chapter on the 25 greatest zombie movies of all time, a list that is sure to cause some contention among serious fans. For what it is worth, I agreed with about half his list, the rest ranged from debatably justifiable to sheer insanity.

As a bonus, Kay has included Q&A format interviews with various directors, special effects people, extras, etc. These are fairly interesting, but seem slightly out of place and don’t really add much, in part because none of them is particularly insightful. In addition to a generous amount of black-and-white photos of film posters (many of them foreign) and production stills, there is a nice full-color set of images in the center that adds to the visual appeal of the book. The index, appendices and bibliography are a little anemic, but most readers won’t even notice. All in all, it’s a nice, casual reference work that is worthy of consideration from any fan.