Why are zombie films still so popular?

H

harmonica44

Even on here there are multiple threads about people who wanna make them. Not just indies, but Hollywood still constantly comes out with 1 at least every 2 years or more. And I met a guy who wants to negotiate a remake of Resident Evil as his first feature film. But zombies are so cliche. You think that by now, the song has already been long sung. I can only see a zombie movie being entertaining if they come up with a story so different it's revolutionizing, but I am still yet to see that. So why is it so popular though? Not only is it very cliched, but zombies have always been the... shall we say, the handicaps of movie monsters. They are just not deep in character or smart, on the levels of other great villains. I don't get it.
 
Last edited:
Sort by date Sort by votes
Zombie movies play to our most primal fears of death and oblivion as well as our worries of contagions and disease, and in purely Freudian sense, our repressed cannibalistic fantasies. And it's also cool watching their heads explode when you blast them with a 12 gauge.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Zombies are a metaphor for the villains or social ills that plague us in real life and hence are relevant to the times in which we live e.g. Dawn of the Dead is actually about mindless consumerism, 28 Days Later (although not proper zombies) is about the inevitability of nature thwarting man's urge to play God (see also: "Jurassic Park is not really about dinosaurs"), Walking Dead is about mankind's tendency towards self destruction, etc.

Obviously I'm talking about clever, well-thought-out zombie-based plots, not trashy shock-horror zombies-for-the-sake-of-zombies flicks, to which I wouldn't give the time of day.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Why are there so many vampire films? Or buddy cop films. Or songs about rainbows?

Really, I agree with most of the posts above. There is a school of thought that horror movies should be about the protagonist, rather than the monster. Clive Barker has often talked about this. Odd given that he created some of the most iconic film monsters in the last 30 years (Pinhead definitely sits in the same class with Jason and Freddy. Candyman less so, though the story is REALLY good), but if you look at the first Hellraiser, the focus is never on the cenobites. They aren't even named. Frank and Julia are the real antagonists; the cenobites are a force of nature. A storm during which the story takes place. Exactly like a good zombie film. Again, just one school of thought.

Also, to expand upon SiCurious' line of thought, zombie films are very closely related to post-apocalyptic films. As long as we are afraid of the world (or society ending), there will be zombie films. Doubly so because in a zombie film, the end is Our Fault. Zombies are recognizably human, and a fate that awaits everyone in those films (not everyone is turned into a werewolf, etc, etc). Zombies are dead people, and all people die.

It's not a subtle metaphor (rotting flesh rarely is), but it's a powerful and visceral one, pun intended. That's why a good zombie film rarely explains where the zombies came from. To use the above Dawn of the Dead example, Q:"why did the world fall apart?" A:"rampant consumerism" Asking where that came from COULD be interesting, but usually out of the scope of most zombie films (and can completely derail the metaphor if not done right).
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I think everyone would agree that this is a question that has a lot of answers. And as Josh says the same can be said about a whole bunch of different types of films.

I would say that SiCurious is perhaps being a little idealistic about any zombie movie. Of course there are zombie movies with pretensions and there are zombie movies who are using the genre to express something different but I think harpsichoid hit the nail on the head: zombies give us disposable carnage.

I find it difficult to play the video game Grand Theft Auto without thinking to myself 'isn't there something wrong with a society that promotes a game where the object seems to be to shoot pedestrians?'. With zombies you can kill them in the most obscene ways without any of that moralistic guilt. It also almost always comes with a perverse kill (parent killing child, child killing parent...etc.) that's shocking up front but which we allow our minds to justify because 'they're zombies'.

It's probably an interesting psychological question but that's my interpretation. Obviously there are stacks of different reasons.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I think Zombies seem to have that quality where there always seems to be a different spin on it. In the modern era we are seeing Zombie films like Resident Evil, I am Legend, ect, where the basis is either experiments or our science backfiring on us in some way, and in today's rather paranoid world of the Med and Pharm professions, it's an accessable fear to use, hence the popularity today (my .00002 anyway :) )
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Zombies personify/anthropomorphize man's struggle against unrelenting forces of nature, specifically a raging fire that threatens to destroy our village.

20110525MonsterTriangle.jpg


Frankenstein's monster represents the mindless power and brute strength monster of mob mentality.
Think French Revolution from the vantage point of the Dauphin of France.
The Bolshevik Revolution from the vantage point of Czar Nicholas II.

Vampires represent the sexy power in opposition to the brute force of stupid monsters.


Monsters are metaphors for external conflicts.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0 Downvote
I think one of the appeals of the zombie movies is currently the world is so messed up that there's little fantasy in all of us to see the slate wiped clean and have the world boiled down to the simple, bare essentials. Also, we like to put ourselves in the character's position and wonder how we would do.

Scott
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
SiCurious said:
Zombies are a metaphor for the villains or social ills that plague us in real life and hence are relevant to the times in which we live e.g. Dawn of the Dead is actually about mindless consumerism, 28 Days Later (although not proper zombies) is about the inevitability of nature thwarting man's urge to play God (see also: "Jurassic Park is not really about dinosaurs"), Walking Dead is about mankind's tendency towards self destruction, etc.

Obviously I'm talking about clever, well-thought-out zombie-based plots, not trashy shock-horror zombies-for-the-sake-of-zombies flicks, to which I wouldn't give the time of day.
Click to expand...

True, but you don't need to use a worn out cliche, as a metaphor for playing God or consumerism. Cause the cliche itself could lessen the effect since it's worn out. I agree that if I had to pick the best one though, it would be the Dawn of the Dead remake.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
NickClapper said:
I think everyone would agree that this is a question that has a lot of answers. And as Josh says the same can be said about a whole bunch of different types of films.

I would say that SiCurious is perhaps being a little idealistic about any zombie movie. Of course there are zombie movies with pretensions and there are zombie movies who are using the genre to express something different but I think harpsichoid hit the nail on the head: zombies give us disposable carnage.

I find it difficult to play the video game Grand Theft Auto without thinking to myself 'isn't there something wrong with a society that promotes a game where the object seems to be to shoot pedestrians?'. With zombies you can kill them in the most obscene ways without any of that moralistic guilt. It also almost always comes with a perverse kill (parent killing child, child killing parent...etc.) that's shocking up front but which we allow our minds to justify because 'they're zombies'.

It's probably an interesting psychological question but that's my interpretation. Obviously there are stacks of different reasons.
Click to expand...

Well personally I would rather have the moralistic guilt. It would give the movie the depth. If I'm going to see that kind of carnage, I want the guilt, cause it would hit harder.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I never really liked Zombie movies. There is only a few that I really liked. Shawn of the Dead, Zombieland, and The Crazies were my favorites. I am normally more interested in vampire movies then zombies.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top