Beyond the Big Two Week: 28 Days Later. Selena Life Before The Outbreak

[superfangirl1]

Comments

[espanolbot]

Part of me does wonder how much the Walking Dead was influenced by 28. What with the "waking up in a hospital" scene, the Selene/Michonne similarities, the concept that the survivors might be more dangerous than the actual zombie-ish things...

[stolisomancer]

I believe Kirkman has said that the "waking up in the hospital" sequence predates 28 Days Later, but only because he had the book in planning stages for most of his life.

The idea that the humans are the ones you have to watch out for is a consistent zombie-movie story beat going all the way back to the original 1968 Night of the Living Dead, particularly with its shock ending. It exists to some extent in all of Romero's movies, even Diary of the Dead, although that one's more about cameras and the perception of reality. Basically, any good zombie movie knows that the humans are the problem right from the start.

[janegray]

I've never seen the original 1968 Night of the Living Dead. What was the shock ending? I'm curious.

[espanolbot]

Sole survivor is mistaken for a zombie by a wandering group of vigilante zombie slayers, who then burn him in a heap with the rest of the actual zombies.

[stolisomancer]

Everyone who dies in the movie after the first sequence, except for Karen, is killed by either the mistakes or cowardice of another human. The hero is both the only black guy in the movie and the only survivor, and he's killed at the end by a bunch of white guys who assume he's a zombie. In 1968, this was somewhat revolutionary.

More people nowadays are familiar with Tom Savini's 1990 remake with Tony Todd, where the female lead has a much stronger character and role, and the racial subtext isn't as strong. It's pretty much the same for the purposes of this discussion, though; almost all of the on-screen deaths come at the hands of other humans doing something stupid or cowardly.

[pyynk]

Due to an error with the copyright filing, the entire movie is up on YouTube. It's definitely worth the watching.

http://www.youtube.com/movie?v=1DPvrwHIb08&feature=mv_sr

[mastiff]

Re: "survivors might be more dangerous than the actual zombie-ish things"

In the end, zombies are boring. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE zombie movies and comics and books and everything else, but there's really not a lot you can do with them. Their motivations aren't complex, there's no real real end-game to zombie stories, there's not a lot you can do with them. They bite people, then the victims bite people. There's no grand plan to foil. So zombie stories will ALWAYS need the confilct between survivors to propel the narrative.

[stolisomancer]

It's not really that zombies are boring. If they are, you're doing it wrong, or you're giving your protagonists too much slack.

It's mostly that the modern zombie movie is very heavily influenced by George Romero's work, and in every movie he's done, the zombies are a vehicle for social commentary. In Night, it's racism; in Dawn, it's consumer culture; in Day, it's isolation. Land of the Dead has a class warfare thing going on, Diary is mostly about how you perceive reality, and even Survival of the Dead's plot is about the cycle of revenge. Thus, we've got this idea in our heads that a good zombie movie cannot be about the zombies, and sadly, that's mostly been borne out by post-Romero contributions to the genre.

[espanolbot]

Most monsters can be used as a metaphor for something or other, Frankenstein's Monster - fear of parenthood/playing God, zombies - consumerism/communism, vampires - capitalism/various sexual things, Werewolves - puberty etc. etc.

Not entirely sure what mummies are meant to represent though. Criticism of colonalism?