Halloween Haunts: I Don’t Get Zombies by Kristina Stancil
Zombies.
I don’t get the fascination.
Aside from George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, a few scenes of Shaun of the Dead, Warm Bodies, and a handful of children’s movies where zombies play a role I have not had much interest in zombies.
It is certainly has a wide fan base….especially in AMC’s The Walking Dead. Even though at least two of my friends (including my bff who is the whole reason I watched an ep) are diehard fans and after one won tickets to go to the season premier party and was extremely upset at not being able to make the trip to Atlanta.
I’ve seen a person cry over the deaths of characters and lust after one of the main characters. It’s a television show about staying alive while zombies are trying to kill them. To the person in question the characters on the show are more real to her than the people she associates with in real life. She is certain the world will end in a zombie apocalypse. This certainly isn’t the norm but an interesting psychological experiment.
Death is almost a certainly for at least a few characters when zombies are the primary antagonist.
I guess I don’t see the fascination of brain eating monsters with no purpose except to kill and eat brains. It’s why some of the elements of Warm Bodies made sense to me. There were two different kinds of zombies. Those who ate brains to survive and those skeleton monsters who were the evil creatures out to destroy the world. The ones who ate the brains received the memories of those they fed on and it was because of a virus and they could be changed.
This feeds into what my singular interest is with zombies: the occult and criminal justice portion. In voodoo, there are allegedly rituals that can turn people into zombies. There is also a drug that is being used to rob tourists mostly in South America. People have no memory of what they have done but they are completely pliant while under the intoxicating effects of the drug.
I actually asked my bestie, Kristen what her fascination is with zombies. She explained it from a point of view that I could understand. She said she thinks “Back in the day zombies were just people coming back from the dead for reasons people never knew, but newer zombies are usually somehow “man made” zombies (Idk if that term makes sense but look at 28 days later and that’s what I mean), so it could happen now. With the way we play God, we could f&*k things up and end up the walking dead. I think that’s what fascinates people.”
I could see this as I love I am Legend where vampires are created by a virus leading to some zombie fans to lay claim to Richard Matheson’s Bram Stoker Award Winning novel for “Best Vampire Novel of the 20th Century.”
As we enter into the Halloween season perhaps its time to give the zombie genre another chance.
TODAY’S GIVEWAY: Kristina is offering a free digital copy of Blood Reign’s first antho, Silent Scream. Comment below to enter or e-mail membership@horror.org with “HH Entry” in the header.
KRISTINA STANCIL is a supporting member of the Horror Writer’s Association currently serving as the Chair for the Horror Curriculum Committee and was interviewed as the HWA’s August 2013 Fresh Blood new member. Kristina currently working on her Master’s in Humanities, Creative Writing concentration at Tiffin University and on her first paranormal novel, The Terror Twins. She is the owner of Thrillerz 13 Entertainment which specializes in promoting horror and paranormal entertainment. At this time she is ranked #12 on Examiner.com’s Entertainment Reporters for the New Orleans market for her weekly horror column, “Supernatural Saturday Night.” In the coming weeks Thrillerz 13 will be holding open submissions for their monthly literary ezine and their annual anthology.
Kristina, interesting article — thanks. Re. Richard Matheson and I AM LEGEND, George Romero has freely admitted its influence on NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (in which he actually never used the word “zombie,” referring to the risen dead as “ghouls” — I think the zombie identification came specifically from Fulci’s film ZOMBI II, which also added a Caribbean connection as a nod to the original Haitian/voodoo myth). As far as I can tell, the brain eating aspect came later in a non-Romero film called RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, done as a black comedy and including in its highlights references back to the Romero film, being the breakout film for scream queen Linnea Quigley (later known for playing the lead in HOLLYWOOD CHAINSAW HOOKERS), and ending with the nuking of Louisville Kentucky (a little Midwestern inside joke, never mind). However the Romero “zombies” are still functionally vampires at base in that (1) they bite you, (2) you become one, (3) you now have the compulsion to bite new victims, and (4) special means must be used to destroy them. (Though there is one difference, in Stoker’s DRACULA he had to transfer a small amount of his blood back to the victim for them to be “turned.”)
Great article! I agree 100% and it’s nice to see someone echo my sentiments!
I think the Walking Dead is the best TV show ever made in the history of the world. Whether one agrees or not, the difference between Walking Dead and many other zombie stories is zombies are not the bad guys. Humans are the bad guys. The dangers to the core group are from other humans, not the zombies.
Zombies and vampires have both been overdone lately. Time for a new fad. 🙂
what about Vompies or Zampyres? Something new?
I have written a zombie tale in the Roms, Bombs and Zoms anthology where zombies can be controlled by computer chips in a world of the future and they are using that to be a cure. Back in the day I used to be scared of zombies. You couldn’t kill something that was already dead. There was no reason to them. They just kept coming. Now it’s like facing the fear by writing about them.
Thinking about the whys-I think some people want a simpler life than we have now. The modern world is far too complex and for some, a zombie apocalypse would be just the thing to make it back to basics. No more bills, no more shuttling to a job…none of it. Just survive and decapitate a few annoying biters. Not bad and it does make life less complicated in a way. lol.
So here’s to the zombies. Love em or hate em, they are sort of a utopia vision for some and a dystopian for others. Me, I just like writing about them. It’s fun.
Richard Matheson was the best and I love his work. 🙂
Happy haunting!
Dana Wright
Great post, Kristina. I am also ambivalent where zombies are concerned. Too often I find them funny rather than scary but, like you, I loved Legend. Maybe it’s because I love pretty much everything Richard Matheson ever wrote!