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Zombies in a Time of Terror
The Development of the Zombie Film Narrative
Jasper Wezenberg
5947634
Ferdinand Bolstraat 27-3 1072LB Amsterdam
06-20924216
Thesis guide: dr. C.J. Forceville
Second reader: Amir Vudka
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Acknowledgements
First of all I would like to thank dr. Charles Forceville for being an excellent thesis guide who always
provide me with pragmatic tips, interesting insights and fast comments. Thanks to Amir Vudka for
being my second reader. I would like to thank Absaline Hehakaya and Maarten Stolz for reading parts
of my unfinished thesis and providing comments. Many thank to Saskia Mollen for designing the
awesome front cover. Thank to my colleagues Joost Mellink and Renée Janssen for covering for me.
Thanks to my friends Niels de Groot and Rufus Baas for encouraging me. Thanks to Marek
Stolarczyk, Roeland Hofman, and Marije Ligthart for being funny and supportive. Thanks to Nika
Pantovic for making nice music and providing inspiration. And finally thanks to my parents and
brother for being awesome people.
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Contents
Acknowledgements 3
Introduction 5
1. Generic difficulties 6
2. On zombie studies 12
3. The Quantitative of the dead 16
3.1 Introduction 20
3.2 Corpus and zombie movie production numbers 21
3.3 Results 23
3.3.1 Zombie invasion narrative 23
3.3.2 Shots of deserted streets 24
3.3.3 Use of news- or found footage 25
3.3.4 Speed of zombie movement 25
3.3.5 Are they dead? 27
3.3.6 Extra: funny zombies 28
4. Zombies in a time of terror: invoking images 29
4.1 REC 29
4.2 Train to Busan 34
4.3 Land of the Dead 40
Conclusion 45
Bibliography 48
Filmography 50
Appendix A 51
Appendix B 53
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Introduction
Of all the monstrous creatures that have populated the horror stories of Western culture, the zombie
may well be the most characteristic for the late 20th and early 21th century. What is it with massive
amounts of walking, flesh eating, rotting, and mindless corpses that fascinates millions of movie fans?
While it once was a monster of b-movies, nowadays zombies seem to have taken over the world. It is
as if a cinematic zombie apocalypse has been taking place the last two decades.
In film, the creation of the zombie can be traced back to the movie White Zombie (1932). It
was inspired by Haitian folklore like voodoo, in which a witchdoctor takes control of another person’s
body. The genre took a more postmodern turn when filmmaker George A. Romero released his low-
budget movie Night of the Living Dead (1968), containing undertones of social critique. Today,
Romero’s debut has become a prototype for the whole genre. In a typical zombie movie, a zombie
apocalypse takes place, which causes the dead to rise again from the grave. These animate corpses are
almost always murderous and out for human blood. After a person has been attacked by one or more
zombies, he or she then also turns into a zombie. By this mechanism the zombies spread like a virus or
a plague. Amidst this deadly chaos, the story’s protagonists are trying to stay alive and rescue their
loved ones.
What kinds of zombie narratives are there? How is the zombie genre able to reflect social
unrest? Has the genre changed much since Romero? How have zombies been studied by academics?
In this MA Thesis I will investigate the development of the zombie film narrative, hoping to find
answers to these questions.
In the first chapter I set out to create an overview of the studies that have been done on the
subject of genre in film studies. As I am dealing with a very specific genre, I must investigate
numerous theories on the existence and use of film genre. In the second chapter I will look into the
academic studies that have been done to date on zombie films, to provide me with bearings for my
own research: what has been discovered and what needs to be researched more? In the third chapter I
will present the results of quantitative research I have done on the characteristics of zombie narratives,
to show how narrative techniques in the zombie film have changed. In the fourth chapter I will do a
close analysis of three selected zombie titles, to provide us with more details the element that are
typical for the genre, and how zombie narratives function. At the end of this research I will hope to
provide an answer to the question: how has the zombie narrative developed over the years?
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1. Generic difficulties
If we want to be able to discuss and research the zombie movie as a category, we first have to delve
deeper into the structures and processes that define the generic conventions of the zombie movie.
What criteria define a specific genre and how do we use and need our knowledge of genres? In this
chapter I set out to create a general outline of the field of (film) genre studies and some of its main
scholars like Rick Altman, Barry Keith Grant and Stephen Neale. The problems and concepts
introduced here will be used in our next chapter on the genre of horror and its subgenre: zombie
movies.
The concept of genre has been important on many levels of spectating and studying film as the
work of the following scholars will prove. While for the average moviegoer, the different generic
categories may seem like a collection of clear-cut traits bundled to categorize different films, the
concept of genre is of course not without its difficulties. The meaning and use of genre within the
realms of film is the result of a complex interplay between scholars, spectators, critics and the movie
industry.
I would first like to consider the work of Rick Altman and especially his book Film/Genre
(1999), for it has been a seminal work in the study of genre within film studies. Altman starts out his
book stating that one of the first ideas about genre goes back all the way to Aristotle and his famous
work of Poetics. In his work Aristotle states that he will approaches the art of poetry based on its
essential qualities. Determined by these “essential qualities”, Aristotle describes how different forms
of poetry could be discerned from each other based on the medium, the object, and the manner of
imitation. While literary genre theory has of course evolved over the years, Aristotle’s ideas have
remained influential. The main problem with this, according to Altman (1999), is that Aristotle’s ideas
are based on various presumptions. Aristotle namely assumes that his generic categories are
“objectively present, stable phenomena, while the decision whether a certain text belonged into a
specific genre depended on the presence or absence of certain characteristic features embodied in that
text” (Forceville 2001: 1787). Altman states that Aristotle’s ideas have persevered all these year in
literary studies and thus literary genre theory has not been able to come to any definite conclusions
about what constitutes a genre (Altman 1999: 12).
Although a theoretical framework on film genre has been established since the late sixties, this
body of theories has not been without its shortcomings: the same dogmas of genre studies within the
literary field, have crept into the academic work on film genre. Altman point out multiple problematic
tendencies that have persisted within film genre studies. One of the most important things he points
out is that the focus of genre critics and scholars has been on a reduced corpus that consists of
canonical titles, to keep things neat and manageable (Altman 1999: 16). This means is that the critics
and scholars tend to pay more attention to a small number of movies and as a result reduce a genre to a
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very select group of ‘pure’ genre titles. From this strategy follows that only the titles that tick all the
boxes of a generic prototype are included. Cross-genre and titles from outside of the canon tend to get
overlooked. “[Genre critics] have systematically disregarded films that fail to exhibit clear generic
qualifications. [Also], each major genre has been defined in terms of a nucleus of films obviously
satisfying the theory’s […] assumptions” (Altman 1999: 16). He adds to that genres are treated as if
they are trans-historical, as if they are fixed in history and never change of evolve over time. For
Altman, this is clearly not the case.
Altman uses the example of the musical genre to demonstrate that genres undergo historical
development and are constantly susceptible to changes. He explains that in the earlier years, the term
‘musical’ was never applied as genre, but always used as an adjective to other genres such as
melodrama or comedy (Altman 1999: 32). It was only after films with singing and dancing became
less popular, that the term ‘musical’ started being used solely to describe a feature film. Many
examples of movie reviews from the time period are given by Altman to underline the change in
public perception of what a ‘musical’ is.
It is also an important nuance that not all films are deliberately designed to fall into pre-
existing categories. This is where Rick Altman makes the distinction between a ‘film genre’ and a
‘genre film’ (Altman 1996: 277). ‘Film genre’ refers to broader categories that can encompass a wide
scope of films, regardless of the intent with which they were made. ‘Genre films’ refers to a type of
film that self-consciously makes use of existing categories, models and expectations.
When trying to explain the functioning of genre, Altman introduces the idea of creating a
communication model for film genre. He explains that genres are communicative processes: films
belonging to a certain genre change the viewer’s perception from seeing an autonomous title into
seeing a film as belonging to a generic group. And in turn this creates a bond between multiple groups
of “part-real, part-imagined genre viewers” (Altman 1999: 169). In constructing a model for this
process, Altman draws inspiration from the classic encoding/decoding model created by Stuart Hall.
The premise of this model is that a sender communicates with multiple receivers through a medium.
And these receivers also communicate with each other. Adding to the model, Altman points out that
the receivers also interact with the medium, thereby repurposing and redefining the genre (Altman
1999: 172) communicating through the medium as can be seen in figure 1. This process is especially
evident in a cult genre like zombie movies, where the fans constantly discuss, repurpose, and redefine
the genre and its corpus. I will discuss this more in depth.
In the eighties Altman wrote an article named A Semantic/syntactic Approach to Film Genre
(1984). In this text Altman introduces a dual approach, both focused on semantics as well as syntax,
that can be used to identify individual movies as belonging to a certain genre based on textual
characteristics. The semantic approach utilizes identification based on the generic “building blocks”
(Altman 1984: 10). For example: a Western movie contains elements like prairies, cowboys and
saloons and a narrative taking place somewhere during the mid-ninetieth and early twentieth century.
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With the syntactic approach a movie is categorized based on the returning narrative structures. With
the example of the Western, we could describe its structural elements as residing “on the border
between two lands, between two eras, and with a hero who remains divided between two value
systems” (11).
Figure 1: This figure made by Altman (1999: 172) shows how not only the receiver communicates with the text (or in
this case the genre) but also with other receivers.
Concluding Film/Genre, Altman admits that he has made the same mistake as other genre
scholars before him. While a useful method for researching the relation between genre and text, it
completely overlooks how genre operates outside of the text. His earlier model namely misses the
complex relation between reader and text as described earlier, and does not account for the different
interpretations readers can give of a text or genre. Neither does it account for the role of cinematic
institutions like producer or distributors. The importance of how a genre is used by the spectator is not
to be underestimated. Altman admits to have overlooked this important aspect of genre so he proposes
an updated semantic/syntactic/pragmatic approach to address this complex relation, thud adding a
third dimension to his older model. “It is precisely this ‘use factor’ that pragmatic addresses. Whether
we are discussing literature or cinema (or any other meaning-making system), the base language(s)
surpass their own structures and meaning as they are integrated into textual uses” (Altman 1999: 210).
The work Barry Keith Grant also goes to show that a complex concept like genre cannot be
explained through a single method. Grant investigated the different means of determining the
boundaries of a genre. He distinguishes four way of defining genre based on the work of Janet Staiger
while also acknowledging and highlighting their shortcomings. The first method is called the ‘idealist
method’. It uses a standard model that privileges pure genre films over films that are more diluted in
their generic characteristics. The second method, the ‘empiricist method’, defines generic categories
based on characteristics from the existing corpus of a specific genre. The downfall of this method is its
circular nature: categories that are created are based on characteristics from existing categories which
are in turn against based on grouping certain characteristics. The third method is called the ‘a priori
method’. With this method films are selected based on predetermined characteristics they have in
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common. The problem with this method is that it can lead to purely theoretical categories. Lastly there
is the ‘social convention method’ which selects films as belonging to a genre based on public
consensus, something that probably can never be fully determined (Staiger qtd. in Grant 2007: 22). A
lot of the problems when trying to find a fixed model arise from the fact that “different genres are
designated according to different criteria. Such genres as the crime film, science fiction and the
western are defined by setting and narrative content. However, horror pornography and comedy are
defined or conceived around the intended emotional effect of the film upon the viewer” (Grant 2007:
23).
Another important genre scholar I would like to consider is Stephen Neale and his book Genre
and Hollywood(2000). In this book he describes of genre research within film studies. The first
distinction made in classical literary theory is between literature and popular writing. This is a
distinction that has persevered throughout the twentieth century in film studies as well. During the
1930s and 1940s scholars from the Frankfurt School like Adorno and Horkheimer, argued that popular
culture was aimed at turning high culture into homogeneous and mass-produced commodities. Neale
states we can see the same attitude in early film studies. He pinpoints the sixties and seventies as a
turning point for film criticism and theory. It was around this time that the famous French film journal
Cahiers du cinéma began focusing on ‘auteurism’ (Neale 2000: 10). As other critics adopted this
concept, it created the premise of the director being the creative force behind a film. Before the sixties,
comparable with the Frankfurt School, critics saw Hollywood film production as being superficial,
conservative and produced for the mass market. Auteurism provided scholars and critics with the
means to engage with commercial Hollywood cinema in a serious and productive way. Although it led
a big change, most of the attention was thus limited to directors and “individualized corpuses of film”
(Neale 2000: 11). When trying to approach the institutional aspects of Hollywood and its audience,
auteurism was not that useful. It was the American art critic Lawrence Alloway who turned the
attention to genres and categorical film cycles. Tom Ryall also explains in the following quote how
auteurism does not account for the specific characteristics of popular culture: “The auteur theory,
though important and valuable during the 1950s and 1960s for drawing attention to the importance of
the American cinema, nevertheless tended to treat popular art as if it were ‘high art’” (Tom Ryall qtd.
in Neale 2000: 12).
Neale acknowledges that a lot of research has been done on the topic of genre from the sixties
of to the nineties, but he finds, like Altman, many of the theoretical definitions on genre are restrictive
and often one-sided. “Canons of critical preference, rather than those of empirical or historical
enquiry, have often resulted in uneven degrees of attention, discussion and research” (Neale 2000: 3).
Genres are thus treated as fixed and trans-historical. Inspired by for example structural anthropology,
genres are stripped of their historical differences with critics treating genres as beyond history. Instead
of seeing genres as the outcome of a certain historical process, genres are treated as “a representational
form derived directly from a basic human capacity” (Altman 1999: 20).
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Neale tries to avoid creating taxonomic models for genre. Comparable to Altman’s
‘pragmatic’ approach, Neale explains that genre is more than a corpus of films grouped together based
on their similarities. A genre is also a system of expectations, conventions and viewing modes that the
audience bring with them to the film. To clarify this, he explains Tzvetan Todorov’s concept of
‘verisimilitude’ (2000: 32). It refers to the probability or plausibility of a genre for its audience. Each
genre has its own regime of motives that are probable and sometimes obligatory. According to
Todorov there are two basic forms of verisimilitude:
“The first is what we call rules of the genre: for a work to be said to have
verisimilitude, it must conform to these rules. [...] [The second is the relation] between
discourse and what readers believe to be true. The relation is here established between
the work and a scattered discourse that in part belongs to each of the individuals of a
society but of which none may claim ownership; in other words to public opinion. The
latter is of course not ‘reality’ but merely a further discourse, independent of the
work” (Tzvetan Todorov qtd. in Neale 2000: 32).
This may sound quite complex, but what it means is that a generic text is subjected not only to an
internal regime of rules of verisimilitude, but also to an external regime of public discourse and socio-
cultural verisimilitude. This may be called ‘realism’, though we are not literally talking about a
relation between discourse and reality. The balance between these two forms of verisimilitude differs
per genre. “Negotiating the balance between different regimes of verisimilitude plays a key role in the
relations established between spectator, genres and individual films” (Neale 2000: 35). An example of
this would be the musical genre: the defining aspect of a musical is that its characters burst out in
singing to non-diegetic music. This is something that, while not probable within public discourse, is
essential within the internal generic verisimilitude of the musical film. Because the audience knows
they are going to watch a musical, they are guided towards expecting random outbursts of singing in
the film.
Altman states that the audience, and the way they make use of genres, is determining how
genres function (Altman 1999: 173). Neale on the other hand places more emphasis on the role of
institutions like Hollywood. He describes the cinematic institutions as defining in the creation and
shaping of genres. Hollywood is his main film industry of focus, but of course we can substitute
Hollywood for any large industry of film production, or cultural production for that matter, as genre is
“common to all instances of discourse (2000: 31). Hollywood must be seen as just one specific
instance of many cultural forms.
When producing and promoting a film, a ‘narrative image’ (Neale 2000: 39) is created. This is
a promotional image of the film containing information about the actors, narrative and overall
atmosphere. The ‘narrative image’ is created in public discourse by the film industry itself, journalists,
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as well as the audience. And essential part of this ‘narrative image’ is of course genre. “The indication
and circulation of what the industry considers to be the generic framework – or frameworks – most
appropriate to the viewing of a film is therefore one of the most important functions performed by
advertising copy, and by posters, stills and trailers” (Neale 2000:39). All these images that are being
brought into circulation contribute to the ‘narrative image’ and are part of the ‘inter-textual relay’
(Neale 2000: 39). These posters, advertisements, and also film credits, are not part of the films
narrative but do shape spectator expectations about a film’s narrative. A relay can also include the
screening venue, a video store and even genre studies itself (Langford 2006: 6). The ‘inter-textual
relay’ of a film contributes to, and interacts with the generic status of a film. A lot of genres are not
cinema exclusive, and the generic images created are thus part of a bigger generic movement across
media like theatre or television. The sum of these images contributes to the cultural embedding of a
genre. We must note though, that genre is only a part of the ‘narrative image’ and ‘inter-textual relay’,
as other elements like production companies, directors and stars also make up an integral part of this.
Coming back to Neale’s earlier assessment that a lot of genre definitions are too restrictive, he
goes on to counter the theories of Thomas Schatz on the confining nature of genres. According to
Schatz, genre films encompass a story and setting that are always familiar and predetermined,
resulting in one-dimensional characters. Neale explains that he agrees that genres bring a certain
degree of familiarity, but adds that Schatz’s definitions are also too narrow. While a lot of generic
protagonists exhibit typical traits conform to the genre, it does not exclude the addition of more
complex characteristics that can even be contradictory. The same goes for narrative structure: While
for example a war films always have a violent conclusion, “the path to these climaxes and resolution
vary considerably” (Neale 2000: 209). I might add that these deviations are what lead to progression,
as genres are not static but subjected to change over time. For example, the effectiveness of Night of
the Living Dead (1968 dir: George A. Romero) lay in the fact that it kept breaking with generic
conventions of the horror genre (Grant 2007: 53).
The works of the authors discussed in this chapter provides important cues on how to research
genre, as well as which pitfalls to avoid. I am therefore going to research the zombie genre in the
upcoming with multiple methods. When studying genre, it is key to not only look at the textual
elements but also be aware of the historical development of a genre, as well as the important roles both
the cinematic institutions and the audience are playing.
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2. On zombie studies
“The zombie remains, for the most part, underappreciated. Zombie films are relegated
to the last page of every horror movie guide, saved from utter obscurity only by the
dubious Zontar, the Thing from Venus. There are almost no serious studies of TV and
movie zombies, as there are for vampires in abundance. Nevertheless, the sheer
volume of zombie movies attests to their enduring cult popularity and contemporary
relevance” (Dendle 2001: 1).
While Peter Dendle wrote this in 2001, and things have changes for the better, the zombie movie still
remains a relatively understudied film genre. In this chapter I will create a compact overview of the
zombie as a cultural icon and as an object of academic research. The last few years, after Dendle,
scholar Kyle William Bishop has done a lot of the research on the genre. He has published multiple
books and articles on the phenomenon of zombies in popular culture and introduced some new ideas
on recent developments.
Bishop started his work on zombies with an article he wrote trying to find an explanation for
explosion of zombie movie production occurring around the beginning of the new millennium. The
article “Dead Man Still Walking: Explaining the Zombie Renaissance” (Bishop 2009) begins with a
short introduction of the genre, describing its (re)rise to fame in the late sixties with the movie The
Night of the Living Dead (1968). After a decline in popularity, zombies where declared as good as
dead in the nineties. Bishop now tries to prove to us that the popularity of movies like 28 Days Later
(2002) and Dawn of the Dead (2004) is not coincidental, but part of a much bigger cross-media
zombie renaissance taking place in the twenty-first century. To understand why the zombies are back,
we have to understand how the structural narrative features of the genre resonate with a modern,
mostly western, audience. Since the 9/11 attacks, Bishop supposes the American people have become
more acquainted with images of death and urban destruction. He describes the eerie similarity between
the newsreel footage of the 9/11 attacks and hurricane Katrina on the one hand and scenes from the
aforementioned movies on the other.
Bishop’s article provides a nice clear example of the relevance of zombie media and the
importance of researching it. “Although the conventions of the zombie genre remain largely
unchanged, the movies’ relevance has become all the more clear – a post-9/11 audience cannot help
but perceive the characteristics of zombie cinema through the filter of terrorist threats and apocalyptic
reality” (Bishop 2009: 24). Being a literature scholar as well, Bishop states that zombie movies can be
placed within the gothic tradition. Not only do zombie stories blend the romantic with the realistic,
they also have shown the ability to “adapt to changes in cultural anxiety over time” (Bishop 2010: 25).
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Like gothic literature, they are “a barometer of the anxieties plaguing a certain culture at a particular
moment in history” (Steven Bruhm qtd. by Bishop 2010: 24).
Before we continue to look at the relevance of zombie studies and how this thesis will fit in
with the existing research, I will investigate the origins of the zombie. Unlike other iconic horror
antagonists like vampires and werewolves which stem from European culture, zombies are the product
of fusion between old African and New World culture. This ties the zombie to colonialism, slavery
and ancient mysticism. “Zombies, in fact, made the leap from mythology to cinema with almost no
previous literary tradition. Rather than being based on creatures appearing in novels or short stories,
zombie narratives have developed instead directly from their folkloristic, ethnographic, and
anthropological origins” (Bishop 2010: 38). Before the zombie made its first leap to the big screen, it
was a product of colonial history and religious society of Haiti.
If we want to understand the cultural impact and the significance of the zombie, we must first
try and understand the culture that created it. Bishop names ethnographers Hans W. Ackermann and
Jeanine Gauthier, whom have stated that the roots and the folkloric origin of the Haitian zombie go
even further back to Benin, Zambia, Tanzania, and Ghana. Legends of witches who reanimated
corpses were imported to many islands in the West Indies when slaves were brought over. So while
the general American perception is that the zombie was created in Haiti, this research proves that the
zombie has a diverse background coming from many places of the African continent (Bishop 2010:
42).
The French government acquired Haiti, a country that was located on the western half of the
island of Hispaniola, after the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697 (Sidney W. Mintz qtd. by Bishop 2010: 43).
The French called their part of the island Saint Domingue and started a brutal regime, bringing in
slaves from the West-African coast to work on the plantations. Because of the high mortality rate, and
the fact that new slaves were brought in at a higher pace, there was a less creolized slave population.
This in turn resulted in more preserved African traditions and resistance against the French oppressor.
At the end of the 18th century, the slaves revolted against the French, which resulted in a long
revolutionary war that lead to the creation of the independent country of Haiti. After becoming
independent, the voodoo practices taken from Africa had the freedom to grow and develop without the
interfering of imperial forces. This evolved eventually into ‘Haitian Vodou’, a religion that combined
elements from African voodoo with elements from Roman Catholicism. It was in this fusion that the
first incarnation of the zombie was created. Bishop explains, “[ancient believes were] likely
transformed when abducted slaves were exposed to the Christian concept of resurrecting a body–
returned from the grave–and the ideologies of colonial enslavement–bodies lacking freedom and
autonomy. As a result of this cross-cultural fusion, Haitian zombies were born: victims of nefarious
chemical assault, lacking conscious minds and, implicitly, their souls as well” (Bishop 2015: 7).
People were transformed into mindless zombies by witchdoctors, and then sold to plantation owners to
work the fields. Zombies instilled fear because the people of Haiti were afraid of being turned into a
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zombie. The ideology of the zombie in Haitian culture is thus related to power struggles and
oppression. Bishop uses the theories of Louis Althusser to explain that the ideological institution of
the voodoo religion, in the form of the zombie threat, “can be seen working on political, social, and
economic levels” (Bishop 2010: 54).
Haiti remained politically instable throughout the nineteenth century and in 1915 the United
States occupied Haiti to restore order and install a pro-American president. The occupation lasted for
nearly twenty years, and this was the first time that the American people learned about the dark and
mysterious voodoo practices of Haiti. It was the travel author William Seabrook who brought tales of
seemingly dead people working in cane fields to the American audience, when he released his book
The Magic Island (1929).
“It seemed ... that while the zombie came from the grave, it was neither a ghost, nor
yet a person who had been raised like Lazarus from the dead. The zombie, they say, is
a soulless human corpse, still dead, but taken from the grave and endowed by sorcery
with a mechanical semblance of life—it is a dead body which is made to walk and act
and move as if it were alive. People who have the power to do this go to a fresh grave,
dig up the body before it has had time to rot, galvanize it into movement, and then
make of it a servant or slave, occasionally for the commission of some crime, more
often simply as a drudge around the habitation or the farm, setting it dull heavy tasks,
and beating it like a dumb beast if it slackens” (William Seabrook qtd. in Bishop 2010:
48).
The fascination of the American public in twenties and thirties with the Haitian Zombie can be
explained by a combination of factors. In some ways the United States resembled Haiti, as it is a
former colony, and had been relying on slavery for many years. This new post-colonial order that
existed at the turn of the century also lead to a combination of collective social guild and fear for the
post-colonial other (Bishop 2010: 60). These were the social conditions under which racist narratives
of voodoo priests taking possession of white, often female, victims became of interest to the American
mainstream public.
The first Hollywood movie featuring these Caribbean zombies was White Zombie (Victor
Halperin 1932), which was partly based on William Seabrook’s novel. The movie introduced a novel
horror plot to the audience and it was an unanticipated success. In White Zombie a wealthy plantation
owner enlists an evil voodoo master to force a woman to marry him by turning her into a zombie. In
the same vein of White Zombie, more horror films were released exploiting “racial and cultural
difference to instill its audience with the terrors of a misunderstood and menacing (post)colonial
Other” (Bishop 2010: 66): Ouanga, Revolt of the Zombies (1936), King of the Zombies (1941), I
Walked with a Zombie (1943), Zombies of Mora-Tau (1957), and The Plague of the Zombies (1966).
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All these movies used fear of the Other to create horror. Also, these movies confronted audiences with
the fear of losing autonomy; being dominated, which could also be linked to the realities of the Great
Depression. It was a time were the American working class felt enslaved by “a tedious job, a bleak
economy, or a helpless government” (Bishop 2015: 8).
The idea of losing your autonomy carried over to the science-fiction movies that were made
after the Second World War with titles such as Invisible Invaders (1959), The Earth Dies Screaming
(1964) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). Furthermore, these movies used the context of the
Cold War and fear of communism to frighten their audience. Of course these movies did not feature
any zombies but they did carry some of these themes, syntactic characteristics, as Altman would call
them, over to the sixties. Peter Dendle names The Earth Dies Screaming as an obvious inspiration to
the zombie genre of the sixties (Dendle 2001: 64). Both Bishop and Dendle hail George A. Romero as
the director who (re)invented the modern zombie genre by bringing the zombies back from the dead in
his low-budget feature film Night of the Living Dead (1968).
Romero took the Caribbean zombies and combined them with other iconic horror monsters
like the Gothic bloodthirsty vampire and the hordes of invading aliens from the fifties, to create a type
of subgenre that was completely original. These new zombies Romero created did not have any
relation to voodoo or a zombie master that controlled them. It is also typical that they come in huge
groups that outnumber the human protagonists; are hungry for human meat and move slowly. Also, if
a zombie bites a human, he or she turns into a zombie itself after some time, showing the zombie-
condition to be contagious.
Romero was influenced by the existing horror tradition, as he employed the use of fear for an
unfamiliar monstrous Other, in this case the zombie. The fear of being turned into the Other something
that vampire narratives have in common with Romero’s zombie story. The novel I Am Legend (1954)
by Richard Matheson was a mayor influence on the script of Night of the Living Dead. In this novel its
protagonist Neville becomes the last man on earth, while the rest of the world population has turned
into bloodthirsty vampires. Neville tries to survive in this post-apocalyptic world where he is
extremely outnumbered. The concept of a large group of invading monsters is also inherited from the
alien invasion movies from the fifties I discussed earlier. Romero’s zombies were in short a “synthesis
of the voodoo zombie, the alien invader, and the vampire” (Bishop 2010:112-13). Night of the Living
Dead became a horror classic and a prototype for the whole zombie film genre.
So what makes zombies so frightening and zombie narratives so effective? In answering this
question we provide ourselves with the means for further in-depth analysis of our corpus in the fourth
chapter of this thesis. What made Night of the Living Dead such an effective horror movie was the
allegoric power of its narrative. It had a direct link to American social issues of the late sixties, and
zombies formed a vessel to address “violence, death, mortality, cannibalism, invasion and infection,
not to mention sexism, racism, the collapse of the nuclear family, and even incest” (Bishop 2015: 10).
It took almost a decade for Romero to produce a follow-up, but since its release, Dawn of the Dead
16
(1978) is considered as one of the most influential films on the zombie genre. In Dawn of the Dead a
group of zombie apocalypse survivors become trapped in a shopping mall. The movie draws parallels
between the mindless, hungry zombies and us humans: creatures of habit and consumerism. Even after
the humans have died, their zombie counterparts are still drawn to the shopping mall. Romero is
effectively suggesting here that maybe humans are already part zombie, driven by modern
consumerism.
Since zombies are former living humans, being confronted with animated corpses that were
formerly people known to the protagonists creates the effect of the uncanny; the Unheimlich as Freud
called it (Bishop 2010: 95). Like vampires and ghosts, zombies are the returned dead that remind us of
our own mortality. What makes Romero’s zombies all the more frightening is the fact that while
zombies are animated corpses looking like humans, they are empty characters that cannot speak and
do not seem to possess any form of ratio. It is the constant tension between the Heimlich and the
Unheimlich that makes zombies such effective scaring machines. While they definitely look like
humans, they are in fact rotting but moving corpses, which makes them very unfamiliar and thus
uncanny, as can be seen in figure 2.
Figure 2: Graph made by Masahiro Mori (qtd. In Bishop 2010:120). A zombie does resemble a human but since it is
in essence a dead animated body, its level of familiarity is very low. It is therefore Unheimlich.
Zombies continued to be popular throughout the seventies and early eighties, but Bishop
mentions Michael Jackson’s music video of Thriller as the point where zombies first turned from
effective allegorical creatures into pastiche and comedy. By the time Romero released his third zombie
movie Day of the Dead (1985), zombie comedy movies (better known as “zomedies”) like The Return
of the Living Dead (1985) and I Was a Teenage Zombie (1987) proved more lucrative. In the nineties
hardly any zombie films were made. It was not until 28 Days Later (2002) that the zombie returned to
popularity. According to Bishop it were the events of the 9/11 attacks and the social unrest that
17
followed it that called for the return of an allegorical creature capable of addressing these issues. This
of course meant the return of the zombie to the big screen. Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later showed
Cillian Murphy wandering through the empty streets of London and thereby invoking the newsreel
images of the 9/11 attacks. It was also a strong critique on the “excessive empowered military”
(Bishop 2015: 12). At the time of writing this thesis, the zombie renaissance may have slowed down a
little, but big budget zombie films are still being made. David Fincher is working on a follow up to
World War Z (2013) and last year the South Korean made Train to Busan (2016 dir: Yeon Sang-ho)
was a box office hit.
Bishop and Dendle have made a valuable point about the zombie being of scholarly interest
because of its capacity to reflect the fears of society. Bishop has done extensive research into the
cultural context in which the zombie was created, using his extensive knowledge of literary studies to
analyze a multitude of texts. What it lacks though is hard data. Bishop’s research consists of historical
research combined with a close analysis of three of Romero’s first zombie films. To seek further proof
for the zombie as society’s barometer, as well as investigate the development of the genre, we need to
have a good look at the, albeit scarce, quantitative data that has been collected.
One of the few quantitative researches on zombie films was performed by Annalee Newitz and
published in the online magazine io9. The research features a graphic (figure 3) showing on the y-axis
how many zombie movies are produced, and on the x-axis the corresponding years. Newitz has used
data from The Internet Movie Database to create the graph. The spikes in zombie movie production,
she argues, are linked to moments of social unrest in western society (Newitz 2008). This research is a
great inspiration and an interesting starting point. It shows in an effective way how Bishop’s claim that
zombie films are a reflection of social unrest, can be substantiated by doing quantitative research. It
also proves how accessible abstract data can become when it is used to create a clear graph. It does
have its shortcomings which are for the most part pointed out by the author: “Mostly we've focused on
movies from the U.S. and Europe, and we've included the living dead among zombies — so mummies
are included, but vampires and ghosts aren't” (Newitz 2008). She is somewhat vague about the origin
of the movies, not excluding non-Western movies but also not including all. Newitz also points out
that the data has to be corrected for the increase in total movie production from 1910 to 2008.
Bishop has combined multiple sources, including not only Newitz’s research, but also data
from The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia (Peter Dendle 2001) and Book of the Dead (Jamie Russel 2005)
to create a comparable graph. He does not explain the process of collection the data, but I am guessing
that he just used the filmography of both books to create the graph (figure 4). Where Newitz relates the
spikes in production to “social upheaval”, Bishop uses the peaks in his graphic to show the
developmental cycles of the genre using four phases: the “developmental peak”, the “classical peak”,
the “parodic peak” and lastly the “renaissance peak” (Bishop 2010: 14). The peaks correspond nicely
to his genealogy of the zombie movie, a genealogy I used a lot in this chapter. However, he is not
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consistent in choosing the peaks, switching between datasets to choose a peak that fits his story. Still,
it provided a nice example on how to use quantitative data to create meaning.
Figure 3: The graph made by Annalee Newitz (2008) for her quantitative research on zombie movie production. She
links spikes in the production to global social unrest.
Figure 4: The graph made by Bishop (2010: 14) where he combined data of three researches, including that of Newitz.
He uses it to point out the developmental peaks of the zombie genre.
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In the next chapter the goal is to create my own data for research. To do this I shall use
Altman’s theory of syntactic and semantic genre elements to look for similarities and differences
between zombie movies. When looking for inspiration for which semantic features I will be scoring in
my quantitative research, I can consult Bishop’s “the Taxonomy of the Dead” (Bishop 2010: 20). In
this taxonomy (figure 5) he shows us all the options for the type of zombies we have encountered over
the years in movies. In my own quantitative research I want to investigate the development of the
zombie genre, from before, and after the zombie renaissance. Since the reinvention of the genre by
Romero, zombie movies have been mostly featuring infected zombies. That is why I can use the
categories of the ‘infected’ part of the taxonomy to create a set of traits to look for in zombie films.
The categories ‘slow’, ‘fast’, ‘dead’, and ‘alive’, are the ones I will be using in my next chapter. I will
add to them more categories that address Altman’s syntactic approach. These will be categories that
focus more on the structural elements of zombie narratives.
We can conclude now, that in this chapter I have done three things. First I tried to retrace the
history of the genre, arguing that the zombie movie is indeed an acknowledged film genre or sub genre
with a diverse cultural embedding. Secondly, I have shown, using the theories of Bishop, that zombie
movies can be used as a barometer for societal upheaval of a certain historic period. This is possible
because of the allegorical possibilities of the figure of the zombie and the narrative structures used in
zombie films. Lastly I have examined the data research that has already been done on zombie movies,
so as to provide me with bearings for my own data research in the next chapter.
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3. The quantitative of the dead
3.1 Introduction
In chapter 2, I have delved deeper into the history of the zombie as a cultural symbol and the
development of zombie cinema. At the end of that chapter I outlined the few quantitative studies that
have been done on zombie movies by Newitz and Bishop. In this chapter I want to build upon their
studies, investigating the development of the zombie narrative. I will focus mostly on my own
quantitative research on zombie movies, hoping to find patterns and trends that support my claims on
the development of zombie film narrative and the way it reflects social unrest.
Bishop has stated that since the 9/11 attacks a zombie renaissance has taken place, using the
work of Dendle en Newitz to prove that the production of zombie movies has indeed increased since
2001. He has also claimed that the renewed popularity of the genre can be explained because the
images of a zombie apocalypse can be linked closely to changed social conditions after the 9/11
attacks. The modern audience is accustomed to newsreel footage showing panicked crowds, deserted
streets, extreme violence and environmental disasters. It is these images of a threatened Western
society that contemporary zombie movies closely mimic. Bishop also stated that these new zombie
films, starting with Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (2002), closely follow the narrative structure of
original movies made by zombie godfather George A. Romero, but that they have taken on new
meaning for a modern audience. Is Bishop right in in calling this new popularity a zombie
renaissance? Can modern zombie movies indeed be said to address these modern anxieties? Has the
zombie narrative changed over the years? If I want to find out if there is indeed a correlation between
contemporary social unrest and zombie movies, I need to answer these questions with my own
quantitative research.
You may ask yourself; why focus on numbers and graphics instead of analyzing the films in
question using methods like close reading? In choosing this method of research I draw inspiration
from cognitivist film studies. I am of the opinion that if I want to make any valid claims on the
development of genre and zombie films, I need to combine interpretative research with hard data.
Genre is a complex language made up films, cinematic institutions and the people that interpret and
use genre to understand and enjoy texts. Because of the multifaceted nature of genre, it is useful to
approach it from a cognitivist angle using scientific methods. In contrast to what other film scholars
like Warren Buckland have argued (Buckland 1989), I think interpretative analysis and cognitivist
film studies are not there to compete with each other. I propose to use both methods to enrich and
enhance each other.
Because there is always a limit to what one can research, I assume the position of a fallibilist,
hoping that my data will be of use for future research. A fallibilist, as cognitivist Noël Carroll
describes, “admits that she may have to revise her theories in light of future evidence or of
21
theoretical implications of later developments because she realizes that at best her theories are
well-warranted, and that a well-warranted theory can be false. There is no claim to a purchase on
absolute truth here” (Carroll 1992: 202). With this research I also hope to provide any leads for future
research. The interpretation of what this data may say about the development of the zombie narrative
will be discussed at further length in the conclusive chapter.
3.2 Corpus and zombie movie production numbers
To start out my research, I first had to define what encompassed the total corpus of zombie film. This
is immediately problematic since a multitude of studies on genre are about defining generic corpuses,
but have come to no definite conclusions. I had to make a pragmatic decision when choosing which
list is representative for the genre of zombie films. Peter Dendle’s The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia
(2001) would have been the obvious choice, since it is the most extensive list of zombie movies made
by an academic. The problem is that it is still one person’s opinion of what the zombie canon
encompasses. Both Neale and Altman have argued convincingly that if we want to research genre, we
have to look beyond the textual elements as well. I want to use a list that addresses what Altman has
called the pragmatic (Altman 1999): the complex relation between genres and the way the audience
uses them to create meaning. Since the zombie genre is very much a cult genre, the audience is a
defining factor in what constitutes its corpus. Many zombie films were low budget made box-office
flops that were later hailed by genre fanatics as cult classics. Because of the democratic nature of its
creation I have chosen to use the zombie film list from Wikipedia. This is a list that is made and
updated by people who enthusiastic about the subject: the fans. As is the case with every article on
Wikipedia, this is a list that is co-created and co-edited by anyone who wishes to contribute. But they
can only contribute on the condition that all entries are “reliably sourced” (Wikipedia: Identifying
reliable sources 30-6-2017). This leads me to conclude that, because of its democratic nature, this list
consists of titles that are labeled as zombie films by the fan and connoisseur community. The
International Movie Database, while used by a lot of film scholars for primary reference, is not as
democratically established or as transparent in its sources. But because IMDB does contain advanced
searching functions I still needed it for my research to sort my selected zombie titles. I therefore
merged the Wikipedia list with the IMDB title information. I will explain this merging process in this
chapter.
The first thing I set out to do was to create an updated chart based on the zombie film list I
retrieved from Wikipedia (see appendix B for the full list of titles that I used). Graph 1 shows on the y-
axis the amount of films produced annually and on x-axis which year. As you can see in the chart,
there is no arguing with Bishop that a zombie film explosion has occurred since the 00s with zombie
film production peaking in 2008 with thirty-two zombie films produced that year alone. There are a lot
of similarities between my graph and the graphs made by Newitz and Bishop. That does not mean that
22
it is exactly the same down to the numbers, as each researcher made his or her own choices regarding
the corpus. But it does correspond roughly with the trends and peaks of the other charts. Bishop
recognized four different peaks in the development of the genre. First there is the developmental peak
set around 1973. Second there is the classical peak set around 1980. At the end of the eighties we have
the parodic peak; the moment where the genre turned into pastiche. In the nineties the popularity of the
genre dwindled to revive again at the beginning of the new millennium. For my quantitative research I
chose to compare two decades; the eighties and the 00s. I chose these two decades because, as can
been seen in the graph, they contain most of the zombie movie production peaks that Bishop talks
about.
Graph 1: This graph show the annual film production based on the list of zombie films from Wikipedia. Although not
exactly the same, it follows most trends of the graphs by Newitz and Bishop. (c) Jasper Wezenberg.
Since it would be impossible for me to analyze all the movies produced during both decades, I had to
take a sample with a limited set of titles. I chose to analyze twenty-five titles of each decade to keep
things neat and manageable but not too limited in scope. I could not go out and just pick my favorite
titles, as this would make the research appear biased and unscientific, so I had to find an effective way
of selecting these titles. This is where The International Movie Database comes in, as it contains a
way more advanced searching engine than Wikipedia. I initially had the idea of selecting titles based
on their revenue since this would show how popular a title would have been at the time of its
cinematic release. But as I stated earlier, the zombie genre is a cult genre that encompasses titles that
sometimes did poorly at the box-office, but in retrospect got appreciated by the fans as classics of the
genre. I therefore chose to sort zombie titles based on their IMDB popularity. On IMDB, popularity is
calculated based on a title’s rating, the number of votes, and the number of page visits. Using IMDB’s
search engine I searched for horror titles using the keyword ‘zombie’ and setting the release date
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ranging from 1980 till 1989 and from 2000 till 2009. After this I took the titles from IMDB and
checked if they were also on the zombie list retrieved from Wikipedia. Only if a title is present in both
the Wikipedia list, as well as the IMDB list, I would use them for my research. In doing this I created a
list containing twenty-five zombie movies for each decade based on the Wikipedia list but ranked
according to their popularity on IMDB. The two lists, in essence, contain the top twenty-five most
popular zombie movies from the eighties, as well as the 00s. The appendices also contain all the titles
I used in this part of the research.
Now that I had my two lists, I had to decide which zombie film characteristics I was going to
investigate. Bishop has stated that the classic zombie narrative of Romero has not changed much since
it was introduced again during the zombie renaissance. So I chose categories based on the
characteristics of typical zombie apocalypse films. The categories are binary which means their
presence in the selected movies is either positive or negative (0 or 1, as can be seen in the appendix).
The categories are for the most part based on characteristics of the classic zombie movies made by
Romero like Dawn of the Dead(1979) which we also see returning in popular modern zombie films
like 28 Days Later (2002). In the following paragraph I will explain each category individually and
then show the results of my research on that category.
3.3 Results
3.3.1 Zombie invasion narrative
The first and most important category I created was ‘the zombie invasion narrative’. This style of
zombie narrative was introduced in Night of the Living Dead (1968). What it means is that the
narrative of the film is built around an expanding group of zombies that attack the protagonists. This
does not mean that the film’s narrative has to feature a zombie apocalypse were whole of society gets
overrun by zombies. It can also mean an zombie invasion on a mansion like for example in Burial
Ground: The Nights of Terror(1981). Graph 2 shows the percentage of films containing such a
narrative, compared in both decades. These results are immediately interesting and possibly even
contesting Bishops theories. What is claimed to be the archetypical zombie narrative structure only
appears to make up thirty-two percent of the most popular zombies movies from the eighties. So while
the movies made by Romero, featuring hordes of contagious bloodthirsty zombies, are now identified
as the prototype of the genre, this probably was not the case in de eighties. For example a classic film
like Re-animator(1985) does feature aggressive undead corpses but it does not follow a narrative
structure where a big group of zombies try to invade the house or the city of the protagonists.
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Graph 2: This graph shows a significant increase in the films containing a zombie apocalypse narrative from the
eighties to the 00s. (c) Jasper Wezenberg.
3.3.2 Shots of deserted streets
The category ‘zombie invasion narrative’ does not per se mean an apocalypse narrative. That is why I
created more categories made up of characteristics that are signs of an apocalypse. As Bishop claimed
images of deserted streets resonate strongly with a modern audience, I also looked for this
characteristic in my selection of zombie movies. Shots of deserted streets are a typical characteristic of
a zombie apocalypse. As most people are dying and survivors have to hide in sanctuaries. The
authorities fail to contain the zombie epidemic and the cities become empty. Graph 2 shows how there
has been an increase in the use of shots of deserted streets. Where only 16% of the zombie movies in
the eighties contained these shots, almost half of the films featured them by the 00s. This could
indicate an increase in apocalypse narratives.
Graph 3: Shots of deserted streets in zombie movies during the eighties were rare. In the 00s almost half of the zombie
films contain them. (c) Jasper Wezenberg.
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3.3.3 Use of news- or found footage
Another technique that is used a lot in the zombie apocalypse context is the use of news- or found
footage. As the protagonists turn on their television or radio they can hear or see on the news how the
zombie disaster is unfolding. It also adds to a strong sense of realism. The modern western audience is
used to seeing newsreel footage of environmental disasters and terrorist attacks. Showing news images
of a zombie attack strongly invokes the real news footage. I have also included films that feature
diegetic found footage like we see in the movie REC (2007); a film shot in camcorder style, creating
the appearance of a documentary. I will analyze the use of news- or found footage more extensively in
Chapter 4. The use of news- or found footage has increased significantly from 12% to 56% (graph 4).
This could indicate that modern zombie films are more likely to invoke real news footage that is
recognizable for the modern audience. It could also indicate an increase in zombie films with a more
‘realist’ style.
Graph 4: Comparable to shots of deserted streets, we see a marked increase in the use of news- or found footage. (c)
Jasper Wezenberg.
3.3.4 Speed of zombie movement
Speed of zombie movement is a topic of some debate amongst the fans. Purists claim that running
zombies are not real zombies because that is not how Romero envisioned them. We see an increase
from 20% to 60% (graph 5), so it is hard to argue that they are not an increasingly important factor.
While Bishop claimed that the running zombies were introduced in 28 Days Later (2002), my research
shows that they were present in zombie movies before that. Still, they formed only a small part of the
zombies in the eighties, where in 00s they became the majority. Because the running, or even
26
sprinting, zombies pose more of a threat to humans, their increase could indicate an increase in
suspense in the modern zombie films.
Graph 5: While not much of a presence in films of the eighties, running zombies now seem to dominate the genre. (c)
Jasper Wezenberg.
3.3.5 Are they dead?
It seems like a stupid question to ask if ‘the undead’ are dead. But as graph 6 shows, zombie films
containing zombies that are still alive increased from almost zero to nearly 50%. Zombies used to be
supernatural corpses that became animate without any clear explanation. Modern zombie films feature
zombies that are actually alive humans contaminated with a virus that makes them rabid and hungry
for flesh. “This kind of zombie is more frightening than the traditional fantasy monster, and instead of
just being a horror movie, 28 Days Later crosses into science fiction: it could happen” (Bishop 2009:
23). This is why I chose ‘alive zombies’ as a category. I only marked this category as positive on the
condition of a clear explanation in the narrative that the zombies are still alive. For example the
narrator of Zombieland (2009) at one point explains to the spectator that the whole zombie apocalypse
started with someone eating a hamburger containing mad cow’s disease, causing him to slip in to a
rabid state but still being alive. The increase of the ‘alive zombie’ could be linked to the increased fear
for epidemics, a topic I will come back to in Chapter 4.
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Graph 6: The increase of ‘alive zombies’ could indicate an increased public fear for disease outbreaks. (c) Jasper
Wezenberg.
3.3.6 Extra: funny zombies
This is a category that did not prove to be of any use to the questions I am trying to research in this
thesis. Still, I am presenting the results here. They may be of use for future research. Graph 7 shows
the percentage of zombie comedies that have been made in the eighties and 00s. What is does prove is
that Bishop’s ‘parodic peak’ really is not that much of a peak. Only a quarter of the zombie films
made in the eighties are zombie comedies. And while zombie comedies are still very popular, there
has not been a significant increase.
Graph 7: There has not been a big increase of zombie comedies. (c) Jasper Wezenberg.
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4. Zombies in a time of terror: invoking images
“Unlike many other tales of terror and the supernatural, the classical zombie story has very specific
criteria that govern its plot and development. These genre protocols include not only the zombies and
the imminent threat of violent deaths, but also a postapocalyptic backdrop, the collapse of societal
infrastructures, the indulgence of survivalist fantasies, and the fear of other surviving humans. All of
these plot elements and motifs are present in pre-9/11 zombie films, but they have become more
relevant to a modern, contemporary audience” (Bishop 2009: 20).
Bishop states in this quote that, while the narrative structure of zombie movies has stayed the
same, zombie movies have found a new audience in a changed post-9/11 world. I mostly agree but
would like to nuance his argument. My quantitative data from Chapter 3 namely shows that while in
the eighties there was a multitude of zombie narratives, since the zombie renaissance, most zombie
stories are based on the zombie invasion narrative. This type of narrative is what probably proved
most resonant with a post-9/11 audience as Bishop argues. How has this premise shaped modern
zombie narratives? And has the genre evolved further beyond Romero’s prototypes?
In this chapter I am going to do a close analysis of a few selected zombie titles to further
investigate and expand on the findings of the previous chapter. On the one hand I hope to show how
modern zombie films utilize its audience’s post-9/11 awareness and, in the tradition of the Gothic,
form an allegory for social and geo-political unrest of the last two decades. On the other hand I will
argue that the genre is constantly reinventing itself and employing new cinematographic techniques
and narrative structures. The titles I have selected are examples of modern zombie film that utilize this
post-9/11 awareness while at the same time introducing new elements to the genre.
4.1 REC, dir: Jaume Balagueró, Paco Plaza, 2007
In this close analysis of REC, I want to show that REC employs imagery reminiscent of the famous
television documentary 9/11 (2002 dir: Gédéon,Jules Naudet & James Hanlon) to engage a post-9/11
audience. Secondly I want to investigate how directors Balagueró and Plaza combined the traditional
zombie invasion narrative of Romero with new narrative and visual techniques to create a film that
stands firmly in the existing zombie movie tradition while at the same time providing a fresh new way
to approach the genre.
The story of REC is set around a television crew consisting of cameraman Pablo and presenter
Ángela. They are shooting an item on a Barcelona fire station for the fictive television show While
You're Sleeping. While the night starts out quietly, things turn disastrous quickly when the firemen get
called away based on report of a screaming old lady. The lady, as it turns out, has been bitten by a dog
and subsequently turned into a raging rabid zombie that is hungry for human flesh. After the women
29
bites a police officer, the infection starts to spread. Local authorities respond quickly and ruthlessly by
sealing of the entire building, shutting in Pablo, Ángela, the firemen, two police officers and the
tenants together with a growing group of zombies.
Before they made 9/11, the French-American Naudet brothers, together with firefighter and
filmmaker James Hanlon, were originally shooting a documentary on a New York firefighter trainee.
Things took a turn for the worse on September 11, 2001, when Jules Naudet and Battalion Chief
Joseph Pfeifer were out on patrol investigating a report of a gas leak. Jules only accompanied Chief
Pfeifer because he needed some time to practice his camerawork; something that is proved by the
jittery camera footage we see around 00:24:23. Just when Jules and the firefighters had arrived at the
scene, a plane flew right over their heads to crash into the north tower of the World Trade Center.
From then on Jules followed the firefighter throughout the rest of the disastrous day, as they went into
the World Trade Center to try to save lives.
REC bears a striking resemblance to 9/11 by showing us handheld camera footage made by a
television crew that is following a group of firefighters at just another day at the office. By using a
handheld camera that is operated by cameraman Pabo, REC creates a very realistic faux-documentary
reminiscent of the found footage documentary of the Naudet brothers. REC also clearly draws
inspiration from the horror movie classic The Blair Witch Project (Eduardo Sánchez, Daniel Myrick
that made the found footage style popular. It should also be noted that REC is the first zombie movie
to employ this cinematographic style beating Romero to it by a year, as the latter did release his own
found footage zombie film Diary of the Dead until 2008.
One important difference between REC and The Blair Witch Project is the way in which the
camera is operated. In the latter movie the protagonists are amateur student filmmakers using small
camcorders. This results in lots of shots of the ground and a very unstable and shaky handling of the
camera. While this adds to the authenticity of the film, as it connects the camera and footage to the
diegesis, it also makes for a somewhat tiresome viewing experience. This problem is largely avoided
in REC by the fact that the narrative revolves around a professional television crew with Pablo as the
cameraman. Because they are journalists their job is to show their audience as much as they can. This
also explains why they keep the camera running constantly, even when the situation worsens. To keep
things realistic everything is shot using natural lighting. Because some parts of the building are very
dark, and sometimes the light gets switched off, this adds to the suspense of the scenes: the spectator is
sometimes literally in the dark.
The footage used in 9/11 was originally supposed to be used in a documentary about the
everyday life of firemen but it turned out that the Naudet brothers and the firemen became part of an
extremely dramatic and traumatic event. The beginning of the documentary gives us a glimpse of the
film that the Naudet brothers indented to make. A montage with a lighthearted tone shows the daily
life of the firemen. We see shots of the firemen doing drills, cooking, eating and laughing together.
We also see rookie fireman Tony Benetatos anxiously waiting for his first fire to get his hands dirty.
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REC starts out in the same way with the showing of footage of everyday life at the fire station. Ángela
interviews multiple firemen about their work and takes a tour of the station, even walking in on their
supper as they are cheeringly greeted by the laughing and socializing firemen. As the night falls
Ángela, much in the same way as Tony Benetatos, starts to wish for something to happen so she can
get into action.
Although in many ways similar the mode of narration is something that differs between both
films. 9/11 uses a voice-over and talking heads to fill in a lot of the gaps left by the footage. Since the
events unfolded totally different from what they could ever have expected, a lot of explanation is
needed, hence the talking heads. Off course when making a suspenseful horror movie, even if it is a
fake documentary, it is hard to use any talking heads as this would stand in the way of creating any
suspense. In REC Ángela fulfills the role of the narrator on a diegetic level, while at the same time
being the protagonist to the film’s story.
When the call arrives of a screaming lady in a multistory apartment building Àngela and Pablo
accompany two firemen to inspect the scene. When they get to the building, two police officers have
also arrived and they al gather in the lobby of the building to talk with the upset tenants. Things start
to go really wrong when the firemen and the police officers go up in the building to find the screaming
lady. As I already metioned, the police officer gets bitten by the zombie lady, fatally wounding him.
As the group tries to save the police officer, they carry him down the stairs in hope of evacuating him.
As they arrive at the bottom of the stairs, police sirens can be heard everywhere. It turns out that the
local authorities have sealed off the building to put everyone inside in quarantine. This scene strongly
invokes the part of 9/11 where the south tower of the World Trade Center has just collapsed at
00:50:58. Jules Naudet and the firemen were at that time in the lobby of the north tower that was filled
with debris and smoke. They use Jules’s camera light to reorient themselves and discover that chaplain
Mychal Judge has been mortally wounded by the debris. As the normal exits are now blocked because
of the collapse, they are trying to find a way out with the chaplain’s body. In the background sirens
and sound of shouting and screaming people can be heard. Photographer Shannon Stapleton later
photographed the men carrying the chaplain, a photograph that went all over the world. Judge was
later designated as the first official victim of 9/11 with the status ‘Victim 0001’ (New York Post 4-9-
2011) (see image 1).
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Image 1: The iconic photograph of Mychal Judge who gets carried out of the WTC. Photo by Shannon Stapleton.
Image 2: A handheld shot of the police officer that gets carried down the staircase. This image is in way reminiscent of
photograph made of Mychal Judge. REC: 00:14:57.
One of the most traumatizing aspects of the attacks on the World Trade Center attacks for the
firemen as well as other bystanders were the ‘jumpers’. Above the location of impact of the planes in
both towers, thousands of people were stuck facing smoke and extreme heat. Because of these
conditions some people jumped out of the tower, fatally landing on the pavements and adjacent
buildings. Before the collapse of the south tower, loud bangs can be heard every minute. The
voiceover of Jules explains those are the sounds of the ‘jumpers’ landing next to the lobby. Jules did
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not film the bodies themselves out of respect. Instead, every time a bang is heard he made close-ups of
the firemen’s faces looking around in frustration. Not long after the scene in REC where the wounded
police officer is carried down the stairs, the protagonists are standing in the lobby contemplating how
to get out of the building. At this point, while not clearly in focus of the shot, we see a body fall down
in the middle of the staircase, landing with a loud bang and everybody starts panicking (00:18:27).
One of the firemen had stayed upstairs and for a reason unknown he fell down the staircase of multiple
floors.
With the examples I have given so far I do not want to argue that REC tries to create a zombie
copy of 9/11. What I want to argue is that REC references the iconic images of the World Trade
Center attack. These images have created a collective memory with modern western audiences: a
cognitive structure. And by invoking these images REC engages these post-9/11 audiences by
referencing societal fears and traumas. Also, instead of portraying a big zombie apocalypse and
societal breakdown, REC keeps things small and intimate by creating a zombie invasion of an
apartment building. While a full apocalypse seems like something less plausible, a terrorist attack on
an apartment or public building is something a modern audience is more used to seeing on the
television.
In a scene later on in the movie (00:34:10), while the protagonists are still trapped in the
building, Ángela wants to conduct interviews with the tenants of the building. One of the tenants, a
mustachioed old man, explains how he thinks that his Chinese neighbors are the cause of the zombie
outbreak. It is unknown to him that the camera is already recording and he goes on saying that his
neighbors are not the nice kind of Chinese that practice feng shui, but the kind that screams and makes
smelly food. This scene forms a very strong allegory for the increasing xenophobia in western society
as a response to social unrest.
Finally I want to discuss the cause of the zombie plague that REC’s narrative contains and
how it diverges from the classic zombie invasion narrative. Near the conclusion of the movie Ángela
en Pablo are the only survivors left, as the rest of the group has been turned into zombies. They find
refuge in the penthouse of the building that was supposed to be vacant. The apartment turns out to be
owned by a now absent agent of the Vatican. They find a tape recorder that contains a record where
the agent explains he was looking for a cure for a demonic possession. In order to so, the Vatican
kidnapped a possessed girl to experiment on. While the girl was in the agent’s captivity the virus
became contagious and the agent left, sealing off the penthouse. After he left the virus spread
throughout the apartment building. This narrative is related to what Noël Carroll would call the
“overreacher plot” (Carroll, 1990: 118). The main character of this plot style is always a mad scientist
or a necromancer whose experimenting creates an uncontrollable monster. When Ángela en Pablo
enter the apartment they find all kinds of experimenting equipment and even a room with a chair with
straps to hold down the possessed girl. It turns out the girl is somewhere in the house and what follows
is a suspenseful chase where Pablo has to use the infrared mode of his camera because the lights are
33
out. Pablo is eventually killed, and the spectator is left unsure of the faith of Ángela. In the case of
REC the mad professor is an agent of the Vatican, which also ties the cause of the outbreak to the
Catholic church and to stories of demonic possession comparable to classic horror film The
Exorcist(1973, dir: William Friedkin).
Image 3: Shot made by Pablo inside the laboratory in the penthouse. The equipment reveals how the Vatican agent
was doing some sort of experiments on a captured girl. REC: 01:00:35.
As this analysis shows REC, while being in many ways a zombie film, also firmly draws
inspiration from other types of narratives of the horror genre creating a new kind of zombie film. REC
also shows its awareness of the post-9/11 collective consciousness of modern audiences. This places
the film within Bishops zombie renaissance but without the usual narrative of an apocalypse.
4.2 Train to Busan, dir: Yeon Sang-ho, 2016
Train to Busan is the most recently released zombie movie I am going to discuss in this thesis.
When it was released it broke all box office records (Variety 24-7-2-16) and it is also the first South
Korean made zombie apocalypse film. Train to Busan shows how the zombie genre is perfectly
adapting to new social changes and how the zombie narrative can be effective outside of western
countries. In this analysis I am going to show how Train to Busan references recent important South
Korean social topics, while at the same time introducing new elements to the classic zombie
apocalypse story.
Train to Busan starts out with a scene of a truck driver approaching a roadblock. After his
truck gets stopped, a shot is shown of the truck passing through what seems to appear as a
decontamination shower. After the truck is decontaminated, the driver is approached by men in white
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hazmat suits and breathing masks1. One man explains to the driver he cannot pass, saying that he has
to turn around. But after the driver complains about being late, the man agrees to let him pass just this
one time. As the driver continues he gets startled when he accidently hits a crossing deer. He stops his
car to see what has happened after which he finds the dead deer in a puddle of blood. He assumes it is
dead and gets in his truck to continue his journey. In a medium long shot we see the truck drive off
while panning to the right to bring the lying deer in the shot. All of a sudden the deer stands up and
there is a cut to a close-up of the deer’s head. It is now shown that the deer’s eyes have turned white.
Because the film is branded as a zombie, a spectator with knowledge of the genre can draw the
conclusion that the deer has turned into a zombie deer (which is a first in zombie movies) because of
the contaminated area. This suggestion also immediately creates suspense as we are now expecting
that the virus will contaminate humans as well.
These images immediately draw a parallel between a zombie outbreak and the deadly outbreak
of Middle East respiratory syndrome2 in South Korea in 2015. This was a year before this film was
released in South Korea. MERS is a virus related to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome and is highly
contagious, also having a mortality rate higher than 30% (World Health Organization 2017). The
outbreak in South Korea started when a contaminated man traveled back from the Middle East to
South Korea and was reported to have caught MERS on the 20th of may 2015 (The Wall Street
Journal 8-6-2015). The outbreak eventually led to the contamination of 186 people while 36 have
died. As of yet there is no cure for the virus, so the South Korean government tried to halt the virus by
disinfecting public locations. The opening scene of Train to Busan bears a striking resemblance to the
photos of the disinfection process of different public transport vehicles (see image 4, image 5, and
image 6). The audience is immediately reminded of newspaper photographs of the MERS outbreak
even before the main characters have been introduced.
Image 4: Shot from the opening scene were government workers decontaminate the truck. Train to Busan 00:01:10
1 A hazmat suit provides its wearer protection from biological agents.
2 It is also known as MERS
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Image 5: “Workers disinfect a Korean Air aircraft at Incheon international airport. South Korea reported a fourth
death from Middle East Respiratory Syndrome prompting Seoul’s mayor to declare “war” on the virus. Photograph:
YONHAP/AFP/Getty Images” (The Guardian 5-6-215).
Image 6: “A worker disinfects a subway train carriage in Seoul. Photograph: Yonhap/AFP/Getty Images” (The
Guardian 5-6-215).
After this introduction the opening credits start to roll and the main narrative starts. We are
introduced to Seok-woo and his daughter Soo-an. Seok-woo is portrayed as a young fund manager and
workaholic who lives and works in Seoul. His daughter complains he never has time for her and how
she misses her mother, from whom Seok-woo has divorced. Because it is her birthday she want to take
the train to Busan to visit her mother. Seok-woo reluctantly agrees and they board the train the next
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day. When the train leaves the station Soo-an sees a man being jumped on by a zombie on the
platform. As it turns out, a girl with a fever also got on the train. After a short while the girl starts
getting convulsions and turns into a zombie. She starts to bite the passengers and zombie epidemic
spreads throughout the train. The passengers that are still healthy and alive manage to isolate the
zombies in a few wagons of the train, as they discover the zombies are not able to open doors.
The passengers are made aware of the developments in the rest of the country through
watching the news footage that is shown inside the train. Of course in the previous chapter I argued
that the use of newsreel footage is a typical characteristic of zombie movies since the zombie
renaissance. It is used to signal the apocalypse and to show that society is breaking down, as the
authorities cannot contain the zombie crisis. On the newsreel footage shown in the train the
government is clearly disclosing wrong information as they label the zombies as rioters. They also
state that people must remain calm and have confidence the authorities will solve the problem (image
7). At the same time the train passengers start watching YouTube videos of zombie attacks that totally
contradict the government’s claim that everything is under control. These statements are in some way
comparable to the statements released by the real South Korean government when MERS epidemic
started in may 2015. When the news of the epidemic broke, the Government refused to disclose the
names of the hospitals affected by the virus (Korea Herald 2-6-2015). This in turn caused public
outcry and has led to an increased distrust of the government in South Korea. This reference will
probably resonate more with the Korean audience than the audience in Western countries.
Image 7: Newsreel footage of a press officer encouraging the citizens of South Korea to have faith in the government.
Train to Busan 00:30:01.
Another theme presented in Train to Busan is the immorality of big corporate businesses and
the people that work for them. This is shown through multiple elements and scenes in the movie. The
first element being one of the main characters: Seok-woo. At the start of the movie the audience
already learned about him that he is a fund manager at a big corporation and that he is more concerned
37
with his work than his family life. Later on in the movie, after the newsreel scene I just discussed,
there is a scene where Seok-woo and Soo-an are looking for a place to sit in the crowded wagon. Just
as Soo-an has found a chair for herself an old lady walks by. As a kind gesture Soo-an offers the old
lady her chair to sit in. After this happens, Seok-woo takes here apart explaining to her that in times of
crisis, you cannot go and help others: you have to look out for yourself. The same happens when the
train first stops at Daejeon Station. The city authorities have supposedly created a sanctuary, but Seok-
woo learns through a telephone call from a colleague that everyone entering the city will be
quarantined. Seok-woo arranges for him and his daughter to be picked up by this colleague so they can
bypass this quarantine. As soon as Soo-an finds out about his plan she wants to take other passengers
with them. Again Seok-woo explains to her that she has to stop caring for others and take care of
herself. As the story progresses Seok-woo even discovers to his devastation that he may himself have
contributed to the cause of the zombie outbreak. At 01:24:11 he receives a call from his colleague,
who explains to him that their company funded a biological organization responsible for the zombie
virus. His colleague then asks Seok-woo to comfort him by telling him it is not his fault and that he
was only doing his job. Seok-woo does so. Of course the morale of this plot twist is that individualism
and corporate greed can lead to disastrous things. As the story progresses Seok-woo develops into a
more compassionate character that sacrifices everything for his daughter.
Other humans are sometimes as big of a threat as the zombies, as Bishop has also argued. It
will then come as no surprise that the main antagonist in Train to Busan is also a character with a
corporate background. Yong-suk is the CEO of a major business corporation named Stallion Express.
He is also a passenger on the train and, being a somewhat one-dimensional character, he is mostly
concerned with his own survival. During a scene at the beginning of the film, Yong-suk is already
portrayed as being a bully when he makes condescending remarks about a homeless man that also
boards the train. When the train later on stops at Daecheon station, the train conductor wants to go and
look for survivors, but Yong-suk keeps insisting they keep moving and leave the survivors. Near the
end of the film Yong-suk develops into a very aggressive man that uses other people as bait for the
zombies, to ensure his own survival. Eventually he gets bitten and also turns into a zombie.
Both these examples of corrupt and crooked businessmen can be related to a recent scandal at
the top of major South Korean multinational Samsung. At the beginning of this year, the acting
president of the Samsung Group was arrested on allegations of paying bribes to a close friend of the
now impeached president Park Geun-hye. These bribes were meant to secure a fusion between
Samsung and another company. President Park was impeached and arrested based on allegations of
corruption (Trouw 11-1-2017). Both examples show recent headlines have been dominated by South
Korean corruption scandals and illegal links between the government and the business world. Train to
Busan seems to be a clear reflection of the current distrust of both institutions.
Lastly I would like to take a look at the innovations Train to Busan offers to the classic
zombie narrative. In many ways Train to Busan is a typical example of a zombie movie made after the
38
zombie renaissance. Many of the characteristics identified by Bishop can be found in the movie. It
contains a fast spreading zombie invasion, a collapse of modern society, failing authorities, danger
from other humans and a storyline of survival. It pays tribute to the movies made by Romero while at
the same time introducing new elements to the classic zombie narrative. What is most unique about
Train to Busan is of course the fact that it situates a zombie story on a train. Instead of being fortified
in a mansion or a shopping mall, the protagonists are on a train that moves through a collapsing
country. In that way Train to Busan can also be related to the tradition of train suspense stories that go
all the way back to The Great Train Robbery (1903 dir: Edwin S. Porter). The paradox of being stuck
on a moving vehicle together with monsters gives the story an extra layer of suspense. The
protagonists are stuck in the limited space of the train, which forces them to confront the zombies face
to face. Image 5 and image 6 that I discussed earlier also create a close tie between contamination and
public transport, as the images show, respectively, a plane and a subway wagon being disinfected.
The zombies themselves are of the modern and fast type, like those introduced in 28 Days
Later. Zombies can be seen running, jumping, and climbing, making them even more dangerous than
before. As can be seen in the scene at Daecheon station, the zombies also seem to be able to climb on
top of each other to form one big moving mass of multiple zombies, thereby creating an almost
unstoppable force. The same phenomenon occurs near the end of the movie, as a huge group of
zombies grabbing hold of the train, slowly bringing it to a halt (image 8). Another new characteristic
that is introduced in Train to Busan is the fact that the zombies do not seem to be able to see much in
darker conditions. After Seok-woo and a small group of cut-off passengers discover this, they come up
with a plan to move through a wagon full of zombies to reach the other passengers again. Every time
the train goes through a tunnel, they move a few meters before hiding from the zombies. Doing this,
they slowly make their way through the wagon safely, finally rejoining the other passengers after a
suspenseful scene.
Image 8: A growing group of zombies is grabbing hold of the train, thereby slowing it down. Train to Busan 01:39:26.
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In this analysis I hope to have shown how a zombie narrative can be used, not only to create a
thrilling suspenseful movie, but also to address social unrest outside of the western world. Train to
Busan is an Asian film that appropriates the zombie narrative and relates it in an effective way to
South Korean social unrest and political scandals. It stands in the tradition of the zombie renaissance
while at the same time introducing new elements to the classic zombie invasion story.
4.3 Land of the Dead, dir: George A. Romero, 2005
Land of the Dead is the only American zombie film featured in this chapter’s triple analysis. I selected
the titles in this chapter based on the fact that they are using new narrative and cinematographic
techniques to innovate the genre while still being a barometer for society. This led me to selecting two
films made outside of the US and that had not been discussed yet in academic research on zombie
movies. But it was the godfather of zombie cinema himself, Romero, who provided fresh new ideas to
the genre in 2005. Instead of dwelling on his own legacy, he uses Land of the Dead to further explore
new possibilities for zombie narratives.
Land of the Dead begins with small snippets of news radio broadcasts that describe the
outbreak of the zombie epidemic preceded by a title saying “some time ago”. As has been discussed,
the use of news material to signal the apocalypse has been typical of zombie movies since the zombie
renaissance. We hear quotes like “unburied human corpses are returning to life and feeding on the
living”, “do not try to leave your homes”, “everyone who dies will become one of them”, and “they’re
not your neighbors and friends, not anymore”. There also some quotes in French and Russian that may
hint at the idea that the zombie outbreak is worldwide. All these quotes indicate to the spectator that he
or she is indeed watching a zombie genre film and the story will start when the apocalypse has already
commenced.
After the introductory credits there is a cut to a crane shot of a deserted village (another
typical element that I used as category in the previous chapter). An off-key sounding tuba is heard, and
as the shot keeps panning right, a group of zombies is shown holding instruments. While they are not
really playing their instruments, it looks as if they are trying to do so (image 9). Next we see a shot of
a boy and a girl zombie holding hands. Then there is a cut to a big zombie who is holding a petrol
hose, looking as if he is a petrol pump attendant (image 10). After this shot, we see one of the
protagonists, Riley, spying on the zombies together with a buddy. His buddy remarks “it’s like they’re
pretending to be alive” and Riley comments “isn’t that what we’re doing, pretending to be alive?”
With this scene Romero immediately compares humans to zombies, as he did before in Dawn of the
Dead. With this scene he also immediately introduces the concept of zombies having a memory of
their previous life, almost as if they are not totally dead.
The story of Land of the Dead, while not exactly specified, is set some time (possibly years)
after the zombie apocalypse. Surviving humans have created strongholds and scavenge abandoned
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villages for food and supplies. Riley is one of these scavengers and he is contracted by a man named
Paul Kaufman. Kaufman is the leader of a sanctuary in the former city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
While the poor people and minorities have to live on the outskirts of the city, Kaufman has set himself
up with other rich upper class people in a luxury high-rise building named Fiddler’s Green. While still
dangerous, the zombies are not a direct threat anymore, because of an electric fence and high security
around the sanctuary.
Image 9: A group of three zombies still holding their instruments, pretending to play. The zombies seem to remember
their previous life. Land of the Dead 00:03:08.
Image 10: The zombie named Big Daddy pretending to work at a petrol station. Land of the Dead 00:03:44.
In Land of the Dead Romero is introducing a new kind of zombie, one that that appears to
remember parts his previous human life. The zombie that is operating the petrol station, called Big
Daddy, is especially clever. Big Daddy seems to have sympathy for his fellow zombies, and is
increasingly frustrated by the killing of other zombies. Riley and his colleagues are used to distracting
the zombies with fireworks before they go on a supply raid. In an early scene of one these raids it is
shown how Big Daddy has learned to ignore the fireworks and tries to communicate with the other
zombies to do the same. By introducing all these new zombie characteristics, Romero creates
sympathetic zombie protagonists, something totally original in the genre. Land of the Dead contains a
subplot of a zombie uprise against the humans led by Big Daddy.
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Romero also uses these sympathetic zombies to express social critique. Land of the Dead
was released during the height of the reign of the Bush administration in 2005. It was also a year after
the public disclosure of tortures of Iraqi prisoners that took place in the Abu Ghraib prison by
American soldiers. The American soldiers had taken pictures of themselves happily posing next to
tortured naked prisoners (image 11). Personal photographs of the soldiers also showed how prisoners
were used for target practice (image 12) and sometimes hung upside down for hours on end. There
was an international outcry when the first of these photographs were shown on the American
television program 60 Minutes 2 (The New Yorker 10-5-2004). Romero invokes theses images in
scenes where the humans use the zombies to make fun of. The zombies are chained by the neck so that
people can pose for a photograph (image 13). There are scenes with zombies being used for target
practice and being hung upside down to shoot at (image 14 & image 15). While the zombies are
dehumanized by the humans, Romero is employing new focalization techniques to humanize the
zombies while drawing a link to real life events.
Image 11: Iraqi prisoners stacked on top of each other with the American guards happily posing behind them.
(Wikipedia).
Image 12: Iraqi prisoner after being used as target practice for the American guards. (Wikipedia).
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Image 13: At an underground party, zombies are chained by the neck and used to go on a photograph with. Land of
the Dead 00:26:00.
Image 14: A chained zombie is being used as target practice at and underground party. Land of the Dead 00:26:08.
Image 15: Zombies hung upside down with bags over their heads and with bulls eyes on their bodies. Land of the Dead
00:34:02.
A colleague of Riley named Cholo dreams of gathering enough money so he can move into
an apartment in Fiddler’s Dream. In a scene where Cholo pays Kaufman a visit to ask if he can move
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into an apartment, Kaufman explains to him that he would not fit in, implicating his Hispanic
background would not fit in with the other tenants. At the end of the film Cholo has turned into a
zombie and comes after Kaufman to take his revenge. As soon as Kaufman recognizes Cholo he calls
him a ‘spic’ before shooting him in the chest. As ‘spic’ is a derogatory term for a Hispanic person, this
scene proves Kaufman’s reason for not admitting Cholo earlier was based in Cholo’s ethnic
background. It soon becomes clear to Kaufman that Cholo is now a zombie, after which Cholo attacks
him, aided by Big Daddy. Kaufman’s character (skillfully played by Dennis Hopper) is the film’s
symbol of the xenophobic attitude of the American government. “Kaufman, the ‘Donald Rumsfeld’ of
the Fiddler’s Green tenants board, has created a dystopian society in which the wealthy live in stylish
opalescence while the masses barely eke out a pitiful existence on the streets” (Bishop 2010: 193). The
electrical fences used to keep the zombies out can nowadays even be re-interpreted today as a symbol
of American president Donald Trump’s plans to construct a fence between the American and the
Mexican border to keep foreigners with Hispanic roots out.
This analysis shows that it took the return of George A. Romero to once again introduce new
elements to the genre zombie films. While the premise of most zombie movies is the presence of
undead irrational zombies, Romero sought to reverse the roles between humans and zombies even
more than in Dawn of the Dead. By creating a conscious and sympathetic zombie protagonist, Romero
has been able to critique and reflect American society of the Bush era.
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Conclusion
In answering the question ‘how has the zombie movie as a genre developed?’ I looked at the genre
from multiple angles before doing my own research. Because I am researching the functioning of the
zombie film genre, I first needed to investigate prominent theories on film genre.
Stephen Neale describes how film studies have evolved over the years, and how in the sixties
the focus on the auteur was the foremost way to consider a film title. Although this led to new and
productive ways to approach film, a focus on auteurs did not consider how the institutional aspects of
especially Hollywood cinema functioned. This led to the invention of genre studies for film. Genre
studies has come a long way but Neale thinks the main problem that is still plaguing genre studies is
its emphasis on “[c]anons of critical preference” (Neale 2000: 3) and thus a cherry-picked corpus.
Rick Altman adds to this that genres are often treated by scholars as trans-historical instead of part of
an evolving process. Neale explains that if you want to research genre, you have to investigate the
institutional conditions. For example posters, advertisements and even screening venues are part of a
film’s ‘inter-textual relay’. And because these factors all contribute to and shape the spectators’
expectations, they can contribute to the generic status of a film.
In 1984 Rick Altman tried to create a model that recognized the importance of the textual
elements that account for the generic status of a film. What he proposed was a ‘semantic/syntactic
approach to genre’. The two terms stem from semiotics. In short “the semantic approach [...] stresses
the genre’s building blocks, while the syntactic view privileges the structures into which they are
arranged” (Altman 1984: 10). While an effective method for accounting the generic elements of a text,
it does not account for the often-complex ways the audience interacts with generic texts and genres as
a whole. He later updated his approach in calling it “semantic/syntactic/pragmatic approach to
genre”(Altman 1990: 207). With this pragmatic dimension Altman tries to recognize how “multiple
users of various sorts – not only various spectator groups, but producers, distributor, exhibitors,
cultural agencies, and many others as well” (Altman 1990: 210) engage with generic texts.
After establishing a base for analyzing genre I went on to delve deeper into the history of
zombie films and the way they have been studies by scholars like Peter Dendle and William Kyle
Bishop. The origins of the zombie can be traced back to colonial history and the Caribbean islands. A
fusion of African and new world culture led to the creation of the zombie: a dead body reanimated and
under the control of a voodoo witch doctor. In the 1920s there was an increase in interest in Haitian
culture stirred amongst others by the travelogue The Magic Island (1929) written by William
Seabrook. Hollywood picked up on this increased interest and turned the folklore of the zombie in into
a blockbuster story with White Zombie (1932). Many films of this kind followed but interest waned
after the forties.
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Peter Dendle describes how director George A. Romero combined elements of the early zombie
movies together with the alien invasion films of the fifties to inspire his horror debut Night of the
Living Dead in 1968. Dendle also describes how Romero was very much inspired by the post-
apocalyptic novel I Am Legend (1954). Almost all scholars agree on the fact that Romero single
handedly invented the new zombie genre. Bishop also states that this new style of zombie films can be
placed in the tradition of Gothic fiction. An important feature of works of the Gothic is their ability to
form an allegory on the anxieties of society. In other words zombie films are a reflection of their times
and reflect the social context in which they are released.
In 2009 Bishop wrote an article to try to account for the sudden explosion of zombie movies in
the first decade of the new millennium. It was Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (2002) that spearheaded
the zombie revival that Bishop has baptized (pun intended) the zombie renaissance. The only way that
he could explain this new popularity was because of the way western society has changed since the
9/11 attacks. The modern audience has gotten used to newsreel images of war, terrorist attacks and
ecological disasters. In other words, the modern audience has the apocalypse on its mind, and,
according to Bishop the zombie films are a clear expression of these anxieties.
I decided to take these claim to the test when conducting my own quantitative research. Do
these apocalyptic zombie films have indeed increased in number since the new millennium? I decided
to test the most popular zombie films from the eighties and the 00s for semantic and syntactic
elements that reflect the anxieties of modern audiences. These included an invasion narrative; fast
zombies; the use of newsreel footage and shots of deserted streets amongst others. What came out of
the investigation was that almost all elements saw a significant increase from the eighties to the 00s,
especially the ‘zombie invasion narrative,’ which increased from 32% to a staggering 88%. We can
agree with Bishop that this data leads to the conclusion that indeed the interest in apocalyptic zombie
films has increased. Bishop also stated that the narratives have stayed the same over the years and that
the socio-political changes have led to the re-appreciation of the genre. My data clearly contradicts
that the zombie narratives have stayed the same by showing how a multitude of zombie narratives
have condensed over the years into the narrative of the zombie invasion. This then raises question
about the way the genre has evolved over the years. The data may suggest that what is now considered
as the zombie genre by scholars and critics was not the same in the eighties. Romero did indeed invent
a new zombie narrative that has become the prototype for the majority of the modern zombie movies.
But this does not automatically mean that scholars should not investigate the zombie movies that were
not inspired by Romero’s zombie apocalypse. My data shows there was more to the genre than zombie
invasions. It may be a bit bold to accuse zombie scholars of cherry-picking titles in the style of the
Romero narrative, but maybe the development of the genre needs to be reconsidered and further
researched. It may be so that we can discover something along the lines of Altman’s research on the
musical film. Altman discovered how in the earlier years, the term ‘musical’ was never applied on its
own, as a noun, but always used as an adjective to other genres such as melodrama or comedy. It was
46
only after films with singing and dancing became less popular, that the term ‘musical’ started being
used solely to describe a feature film. Altman has warned us to avoid thinking of genres as being
trans-historical. My findings suggest that this teleological way of thinking has also been applied to
zombie films, simplifying what the genre may have constituted in earlier years.
To round off my research I decided to take a look at the present and the future by analyzing
three recent zombie titles. On the one hand these titles clearly display what Bishop called the Gothic in
the zombie renaissance: a reflection of societal fears in a post-9/11 western society. On the other hand
my analysis showed how these movies employ new narratives and cinematographic techniques to
evolve the genre beyond the prototype of the classic Romero movies. Zombie films are constantly
evolving and, like other genres, are firmly grounded in the societal context of their production,
reflecting fears, and engaging with their users. For now it seems the genre has not yet exhausted its
use, and the dead probably are going to keep on walking the earth for a while.
47
Bibliography
Altman, Rick (1996). “Cinema and Genre”. The Oxford History of World Cinema. Ed. Geoffrey
Nowell-Smith. Oxford: Oxford UP. 276-285.
Altman, Rick (1999). Film/Genre. London: British Film Institute.
Author unknown (2017). “Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV)”. World
Health Organisation. 29-6-2017. <http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/mers-cov/en>.
Author unknown (11-1-2017). “Topman Samsung Verdachte in Politiek Schandaal Zuid-Korea”.
Trouw. 28-6-2017. <https://www.trouw.nl/home/topman-samsung-verdachte-in-politiek-schandaal-
zuid-korea~af39e13b>.
Bishop, Kyle William (2009). “Dead Man Still Walking: Explaining the Zombie Renaissance”.
Journal of Popular Film and Television 37.1: 16-25.
Bishop, Kyle William (2010). American Zombie Gothic: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Walking
Dead in Popular Culture. Jefferson NC: Mcfarland.
Bishop, Kyle William (2015). How Zombies Conquered Popular Culture: The Multifarious Walking
Dead in the 21st Century. Jefferson NC: Macfarland.
Carroll, Noël (1990). The Philosophy of Horror or Paradoxes of the Heart. New York: Routledge.
Carroll, Noëll (1992). “Cognitivism, Contemporary Film Theory and Method: A Response to Warren
Buckland”. Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism Spring: 199-219.
Dendle, Peter (2001). The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia. Jefferson NC: Macfarland.
Grant, Barry Keith (2007). Film Genre: From Iconography to Ideology. London: Wallflower Press.
Hersh, Seymour M. (10-4-2004). “Torture at Abu Ghraib”. The New Yorker. 29-6-2017.
<http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/05/10/torture-at-abu-ghraib>.
International Movie Database. 1990. Amazon.com. 29-6-2017. <http://www.imdb.com>.
Ji-hye, Shin (2-6-2015). “Korea Mulling Disclosure of MERS-affected Hospitals”. The Korea Herald.
28-6-2017. <http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20150602001071>.
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Kil, Sonia (24-6-2016). “Korea Box Office: Runaway ‘Train to Busan’ Smashes Records”. Variety.
29-6-2017. <http://variety.com/2016/film/asia/korea-box-office-train-to-busan-smashes-records-
1201821937>.
Kwaak, Jeyup S. (8-6-2015). “South Korea MERS Outbreak Began With a Cough”. The Wall Street
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1433755555>.
Langford, Barry (2005). Film Genre: Hollywood and Beyond. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP.
McCurry, Justin (5-6-2015). “South Korea declares 'war' on Mers virus as death toll rises”. The
Guardian. 29-6-2017. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/05/south-korea-declares-war-
on-mers-virus-as-death-toll-rises>.
Neale, Steve (2000). Genre and Hollywood. London: Routledge.
Newitz, Annalee (2008). “War and Social Upheaval Cause Spikes in Zombie Movie Production”. io9
gizmodo. 1-3-2017. <http://io9.gizmodo.com/5070243/war-and-social-upheaval-cause-spikes-in-
zombie-movie-production>.
Russel, Jamie (2005). Book of the Dead. Surrey: FAB Press.
Walker, Joe (4-9-2011). “Tribute to 9/11 victim Father Judge: jacket, helmet placed in NYC Fire
Museum”. The New York Post. 23-6-2017. <http://nypost.com/2011/09/04/tribute-to-911-victim-
father-judge-jacket-helmet-placed-in-nyc-fire-museum>.
Warren Buckland (1989). "Critique of Poor Reason". Screen vol. 30, no. 4.
Wikipedia (25-6-2017). “Abu Ghraib Torture and Prisoner Abuse”. Wikimedia Foundation. 29-6-
2017. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse#Media_coverage>.
Wikipedia (22-6-2017). “List of Zombie Films”. Wikimedia Foundation. 29-6-2017.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_zombie_films>.
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< https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources>.
49
Filmography
28 Days Later. Dir. Danny Boyle. Fox Searchlight Pictures. 2002.
Day of the Dead. Dir. George A. Romero. United Film Distribution Company. 1985.
Dawn of the Dead. Dir. George A. Romero. United Film Distribution Company. 1978.
Dawn of the Dead (remake). Dir. Zack Snyder. Universal Pictures. 2004.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Dir. Don Siegel. Allied Artists Pictures. 1956.
I Was a Teenage Zombie. Dir. John Elias Michalakis. Horizon Films. 1987.
Land of the Dead. Dir. George A. Romero. Universal Pictures. 2005.
Night of the Living Dead. Dir. George A. Romero. The Walter Reade Organization. 1968.
REC. Dir. Jaume Balagueró, Paco Plaza. Filmax International. 2007.
The Earth Dies Screaming. Dir. Terence Fisher. Twentieth Century Fox. 1964.
The Return of the Living Dead. Dir. Dan O’Bannon. Orion Pictures. 1985.
Train to Busan. Dir. Yeon Sang-ho. Next Entertainment World. 2016.
White Zombie. Dir. Victor Halperin. United Artists. 1932.
World War Z. Dir. Marc Forster. Paramount Pictures. 2013.
Zombieland. Dir. Ruben Fleischer. Colombia Pictures. 2009.
50
Appendix A: The top-25 zombie scoring lists
Graph 8: Excel scoring sheet for top-25 zombie films from the eighties. (c) Jasper Wezenberg.
51
Graph 9: The continued excel scoring sheet. This part contains the top-25 zombie movies from the 00s. (c) Jasper Wezenberg.
52
Appendix B: The full Wikipedia zombie film list
This list was used to create my zombie movie production graph.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_zombie_films
Title Director Year Notes
Patient Zero Stefan
Ruzowitzky
2017
Cell (film) Tod Williams 2016
The Girl with All the Gifts Colm
McCarthy
2016
I Am a Hero Shinsuke Sato 2016
Miruthan Shakti
Soundar
Rajan
2016 First Tamil zombie film
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (film) Burr Steers 2016
Resident Evil: The Final Chapter Paul W. S.
Anderson
2016
Seoul Station Yeon Sang-ho 2016
Train to Busan Yeon Sang-ho 2016
Zoombies Glenn R.
Miller
2016
Dead 7 Nick Carter 2016
Diao Chan Vs Zombie Ma Le 2016
The Burning Dead Rene Perez 2015
Flesh of my Flesh Edward
Martin III
2015
JeruZalem Doron Paz
and Yoav Paz
2015
Maggie Henry
Hobson
2015
Night of the Living Dead: Darkest Dawn Zebediah de
Soto
2015
53
Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse Christopher
B. Landon
2015
Vere Vazhi Ille M.S. Prem
Nath
2015
Z Island Hiroshi
Shinagawa
2015
The Rezort Steve Barker 2015
Don't Grow Up Thierry
Poiraud
2015
Kampung Zombie Billy Christian 2015 First Indonesian zombie film
Phi Ha Ayodhaya (The Black Death) Chalermchatri
Yukol
2015 Thai film, mixture of zombie
film and historical epic
Extinction Miguel Angel
Vivas
2015
Freaks of Nature Robbie
Pickering
2015
Army of Frankensteins Ryan
Bellgardt
2014
Burying The Ex Joe Dante 2014
The Dead and the Damned 2 Rene Perez 2014
Dead Within Ben Wagner 2014
Dead Snow: Red vs. Dead Tommy
Wirkola
2014
Doc of the Dead Alexandre O.
Philippe
2014
Goal of the Dead Thierry
Poiraud and
Benjamin
Rocher
2014
Life After Beth Jeff Baena 2014
Night of the Living Dead Chad Zuver 2014 remake
Ojuju C.J. Obasi 2014
REC 4: Apocalypse Jaume 2014 parallel stories to REC
54
Balagueró
Reichsführer SS David B.
Stewart
2014
Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead Kiah Roache-
Turner
2014
Zombeavers Jordan Rubin 2014
Zombie Fight Club Joe Chien 2014
Bath Salt Zombies Dustin Mills 2013 drug turns people into flesh-
eating zombies
Cargo Ben Howling
& Yolanda
Ramke
2013
The Dead 2: India Howard J.
Ford &
Jonathan Ford
2013
The Dead Inside (2013 film) Andrew
Gilbert
2013
Evil Dead Fede Alvarez 2013 reboot
Germ Z J.T. Boone 2013 infected humans
Go Goa Gone Raj Nidimoru
and Krishna
D.K.
2013 publicized as India's first
"zom-com"
The Last Days on Mars Ruairí
Robinson
2013
Miss Zombie Sabu 2013
Open Grave Gonzalo
López-Gallego
2013
Pro Wrestlers vs Zombies Cody Knotts 2013
The Returned Manuel
Carballo
2013
Stalled Christian
James
2013
Warm Bodies Jonathan
Levine
2013
55
World War Z Marc Forster 2013
The Zombie King Aidan
Belizaire
2013
Zombie Massacre Luca Boni and
Marco Ristori
2013
Zombie Night (2013) John Gulager 2013
Dead Sands Ameera Al
Qaed
2013
KL Zombi Woo Ming Jin 2013 Malaysian film
Run! Oudom Touch 2013 First Cambodian zombie film
Zombie Hood Steve Best 2013
Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies Richard
Schenkman
2012
The Amazing Adventures of the Living
Corpse
Justin Paul
Ritter
2012
The Battery Jeremy
Gardner
2012
Cockneys vs Zombies Matthias
Hoene
2012
Dead Before Dawn April Mullen 2012 half-zombie, half-demon
Decay Luke
Thompson
2012
Detention of the Dead Alex Craig
Mann
2012
Evil Head Doug
Sakmann
2012 Adult parody of The Evil Dead
A Little Bit Zombie Casey Walker 2012
Night of the Living Dead 3D: Re-Animation Jeff
Broadstreet
2012 prequel to Night of the Living
DE3D
ParaNorman Sam Fell &
Chris Butler
2012 described as a "zombie movie
for kids"
Portrait of a Zombie Bing Bailey 2012
REC 3: Genesis Paco Plaza 2012 parallel stories to REC
56
Resident Evil: Retribution Paul W. S.
Anderson
2012
Resident Evil: Damnation Makoto
Kamiya
2012 animated
Rise of the Zombies Nick Lyon 2012
Sick: Survive the Night Ryan M.
Andrews
2012
Zombie 108 Joe Chien 2012 First Taiwanese zombie film
The Kirishima Thing (Kirishima, Bukatsu
Yamerutteyo)
Daihachi
Yoshida
2012 The male protagonist is an
admirer of George Romero’s
zombie film and try to shot a
student zombie film with his
schoolmates
The Zombinator Sergio Myers 2012
Bled White Jose Carlos
Gomez
2011
The Cabin in the Woods Drew
Goddard
2011 Zombies only peripheral to
plot.
Caustic Zombies Johnny
Daggers
2011
DeadHeads Brett Pierce &
Drew T.
Pierce
2011
Dylan Dog: Dead of Night Kevin Munroe 2011
Fading of the Cries Brian A.
Metcalf
2011
First Platoon Chris Gabriel 2011
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides Rob Marshall 2011
Pop Punk Zombies Steve Dayton 2011
Quarantine 2: Terminal John Pogue 2011
Remains (Steve Niles' Remains) Colin Theys 2011
Schoolgirl Apocalypse John S. Cairns 2011
State of Emergency Turner Clay 2011
57
War of the Dead (Stone's War) Marko
Makilaakso
2011
Zombie Apocalypse Nick Lyon 2011
Zombie Ass (Zombie Ass: Toilet of the
Dead)
Noboru Iguchi 2011
The Zombie Diaries 2 Michael
Bartlett &
Kevin Gates
2011 sequel
The Zombie Farm Ricardo Islas 2011
Zombie Undead Rhys Davies 2011
Beverly Lane Joshua Hull 2010
Big Tits Zombie (Big Tits Dragon: Hot
Spring Zombie Vs. Stripper 5)
Takao Nakano 2010
The Dead Howard J.
Ford &
Jonathan Ford
2010
The Dead and the Damned Rene Perez 2010
Devil's Playground Mark
McQueen
2010
Die-ner (Get It?) Patrick
Horvath
2010
Horrorween Joe Estevez 2010
Island: Wedding of the Zombies (Ada:
Zombilerin Düğünü, The Zombie Wedding)
Murat Emir
Eren, Talip
Ertürk
2010
Juan of the Dead (Juan de los Muertos) Alejandro
Brugués
2010 Cuba's first zombie movie
L.A. Zombie (Gay of the Dead) Bruce
LaBruce
2010 Adult film
Pushin' Up Daisies Patrick
Franklin
2010
Rammbock Marvin Kren 2010
Resident Evil: Afterlife Paul W. S.
Anderson
2010
58
Sint (Saint, Saint Nick) Dick Maas 2010
Survival of the Dead George A.
Romero
2010 fifth sequel to Night of the
Living Dead
They Walk Charles House
II
2010
The Dark Lurking Greg Connors 2010
Autumn Steven
Rumbelow
2009
Blood Creek (Creek, Town Creek) Joel
Schumacher
2009
The Book of Zombie Scott
Kragelund,
Paul
Cranefield,
Erik Van Sant
2009
Broken Springs (Broken Springs: Shrine of
the Undead Zombie Bastards)
Neeley
Lawson
2009
The Crypt Craig
McMahon
2009
Dark Floors Pete Riski 2009
Dead Air Corbin
Bernsen
2009
Doghouse Jake West 2009
Eat Me! (The Eaters) Katie Carman 2009
Evil: In the Time of Heroes (To Κακό 2:
Στην Eποχή Tων Hρώων)
Yorgos
Noussias
2009 sequel to "To Κακό"
Gallowwalkers Andrew Goth 2009
George: A Zombie Intervention J.T. Seaton 2009
The Horde (La Horde) Yannick
Dahan &
Benjamin
Rocher
2009
Mutants (2009 film) David Morlet 2009
Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated Mike 2009
59
Schneider
The Night Shift Thomas
Smith
2009 Based on a 2009 short film of
the same title.
Pontypool Bruce
McDonald
2009 zombie appears like infected
human
REC 2 Jaume
Balagueró &
Paco Plaza
2009 sequel to REC
The Revenant D. Kerry Prior 2009 combination of zombie and
vampire
Silent Night, Zombie Night Sean Cain 2009
The Sky Has Fallen Doug Roos 2009
Tormented Jon Wright 2009
ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction Kevin
Hamedani
2009
Zombieland Ruben
Fleischer
2009
Zombie Women of Satan Steve O'Brien
and Warren
Speed
2009
Zone of the Dead (Зона мртвих, Zona
Mrtvih, Apocalypse of the Dead)
Milan
Konjević &
Milan
Todorović
2009
Colin Marc Price 2008
Dance of the Dead Gregg Bishop 2008
Day of the Dead Steve Miner 2008 remake
Descendents (2008 film) (Solos) Jorge Olguín 2008 billed as first-ever Chilean
zombie film
The Dead Outside Kerry Anne
Mullaney
2008
Dead Snow Tommy
Wirkola
2008
Dead Space: Downfall Chuck Patton 2008 animated film based on Dead
60
Space video game
Deadgirl Marcel
Sarmiento &
Gadi Harel
2008
Deep River: The Island Ben
Bachelder
2008
Demon Resurrection William
Hopkins
2008
Diary of the Dead George A.
Romero
2008 fourth sequel to Night of the
Living Dead
Edges of Darkness Jason Horton
& Blaine Cade
2008
Flick David
Howard
2008
Grave Mistake Shawn
Darling
2008
I Sell the Dead Glenn
McQuaid
2008
Insanitarium Jeff Buhler 2008
Last of the Living Logan
McMillan
2008
Make-out with Violence Deagol
Brothers
2008
Ninjas vs. Zombies Justin
Timpane
2008
Outpost Steve Barker 2008
Plaguers Brad Sykes 2008 alien orb turns people into
zombies
Quarantine John Erick
Dowdle
2008 remake of REC
Reel Zombies David J.
Francis
2008 third installment in Zombie
Night series, mockumentary
Resident Evil: Degeneration (Biohazard:
Degeneration)
Makoto
Kamiya
2008 animated
61
Sexykiller (Sexykiller, morirás por ella) Paco Cabeza 2008
Splinter Toby Wilkins 2008
Stag Night of the Dead Neil Jones 2008
Trailer Park of Terror Steven
Goldmann
2008
Uniform SurviGirl I (Seifuku Survivor Girl,
Seifuku sabaigâru I)
Hiroshi
Kaneko
2008
Virus Undead Wolf Wolff
and Ohmuti
2008
Yoroi Samurai Zombie (Yoroi: Samurai
Zonbie, Samurai Zombie)
Tak
Sakaguchi
2008
Zombie Strippers Jay Lee 2008
28 Weeks Later Juan Carlos
Fresnadillo
2007 sequel to 28 Days Later
American Zombie Grace Lee 2007
Beneath the Surface Blake Reigle 2007
Black Swarm (Night of the Drones) David
Winning
2007
Brain Blockers Lincoln
Kupchak
2007
Brain Dead Kevin Tenney 2007
Days of Darkness Jake Kennedy 2007
Dead Moon Rising Mark E. Poole 2007
Dorm of the Dead Donald
Farmer
2007
Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a
Plane
Scott Thomas 2007
Forest of the Dead Brian
Singleton
2007
Forever Dead Christine
Parker
2007
I Am Legend Francis
Lawrence
2007 infected humans
62
I Am Omega Griff Furst 2007 remake of the Last Man on
Earth
The Mad John Kalangis 2007
Planet Terror Robert
Rodriguez
2007
REC Jaume
Balagueró &
Paco Plaza
2007 original
Resident Evil: Extinction Russell
Mulcahy
2007
Undead or Alive Glasgow
Phillips
2007
Undead Pool (Attack Girls' Swim Team
Versus the Undead)
Kôji Kawano 2007
Urban Decay Harry Basil 2007
Wasting Away (Aaah! Zombies!!) Matthew
Kohnen
2007
Zibahkhana (Hell's Ground) Omar Khan 2007 Pakistan's first zombie movie
Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! Jason M.
Murphy
2007
After Sundown Christopher
Abram &
Michael W.
Brown
2006
Automaton Transfusion Steven C.
Miller
2006
Black Sheep Jonathan King 2006 zombie sheep
City of Rott Frank Sudol 2006
Dead and Deader Patrick
Dinhut
2006
Fido Andrew
Currie
2006
Forbidden Siren (Sairen) Yukihiko
Tsutsumi
2006 live-action adaptation of
Siren video game series
63
Gangs of the Dead (Last Rites) Duane
Stinnett
2006
Horrors of War Peter John
Ross & John
Whitney
2006
Mulberry Street Jim Mickle 2006
Night of the Dead (Night of the Leben Tod) Eric Forsberg 2006
Night of the Living Dead 3D (Night of the
Living DE3D)
Jeff
Broadstreet
2006
Pathogen Emily Hagins 2006 documentary Zombie Girl:
The Movie covers the making
of this movie
The Plague (Clive Barker's The Plague) Hal
Masonberg
2006
Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead Lloyd
Kaufman
2006
The Quick and the Undead Gerald Nott 2006
Shadow: Dead Riot Derek Wan 2006
Slither James Gunn 2006
Special Dead Thomas L.
Phillips and
Sean
Simmons
2006
Wicked Little Things J.S. Cardone 2006
The Zombie Diaries Michael
Bartlett &
Kevin Gates
2006
Zombie Night 2: Awakening David J.
Francis
2006 sequel
Zombie Self-Defense Force (Zonbi jieitai) Naoyuki
Tomomatsu
2006
Zombie Wars David A. Prior 2006
All Souls Day Jeremy
Kasten
2005
64
Beneath Still Waters Brian Yuzna 2005
Boy Eats Girl Stephen
Bradley
2005
Day of the Dead 2: Contagium Ana Clavell &
James Glenn
Dudelson
2005 Unofficial sequel to Day of the
Dead.
Dead Men Walking Peter Mervis 2005
Die You Zombie Bastards! Caleb
Emerson
2005
Die Zombiejäger Jonas
Wolcher
2005 Sweden's first zombie feature
film
Doom Andrzej
Bartkowiak
2005 Based loosely on the 1994
video game
Evil (To Κακό) Yorgos
Noussias
2005
Hood of the Living Dead Eduardo
Quiroz & Jose
Quiroz
2005
House of the Dead 2 Michael Hurst 2005
Land of the Dead George A.
Romero
2005 third sequel to Night of the
Living Dead
Livelihood Ryan Graham 2005
Mortuary Tobe Hooper 2005
Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis Ellory
Elkayem
2005
Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the
Grave
Ellory
Elkayem
2005
The Roost Ti West 2005
Severed: Forest of the Dead Carl Bessai 2005 not to be confused with
Forest of the Dead
The Stink of Flesh Scott Phillips 2005
Swamp Zombies Len
Kabasinski
2005
65
Tokyo Zombie Sakichi Satō 2005
Zombiez John Bacchus 2005
Bone Sickness Brian Paulin 2004
Choking Hazard Marek Dobes 2004
Curse of the Maya (Dawn of the Living
Dead, Evil Grave: Curse of the Maya)
David
Heavener
2004
Dawn of the Dead Zack Snyder 2004 remake
Dead & Breakfast Matthew
Leutwyler
2004
Dead Meat Conor
McMahon
2004
Ghost Lake Jay Woelfel 2004
Graveyard Alive: A Zombie Nurse in Love Elza Kephart 2004
Hide and Creep Chuck
Hartsell &
Chance
Shirley
2004
Die Nacht der lebenden Loser (Night of the
Living Dorks)
Mathias
Dinter (de)
2004
Oh! My Zombie Mermaid (Â! Ikkenya
puroresu)
Naoki Kubo 2004 mermaid is not a zombie, but
it has a zombie character
Resident Evil: Apocalypse Alexander
Witt
2004
SARS Wars Taweewat
Wantha
2004
Shaolin vs. Evil Dead (Shao lin jiang shi, Siu
lam geung see)
Douglas Kung 2004
Shaun of the Dead Edgar Wright 2004
They Came Back Robin
Campillo
2004
Vampires vs. Zombies (Carmilla, the
Lesbian Vampire)
Vince
D'Amato
2004
Zombie Honeymoon David Gebroe 2004
66
Zombie King and the Legion of Doom
(Zombie Beach Party, Enter … Zombie King)
Stacey Case 2004
Zombie Nation Ulli Lommel 2004
Battlefield Baseball (Jigoku Kôshien) Yūdai
Yamaguchi
2003
Beyond Re-Animator Brian Yuzna 2003
Blood of the Beast Georg
Koszulinski
2003
Corpses Are Forever Jose Prendes 2003
Exhumed Brian Clement 2003
The Ghouls (Cannibal Dead: The Ghouls,
Urban Cannibals)
Chad Ferrin 2003
Gory Gory Hallelujah Sue Corcoran 2003
House of the Dead Uwe Boll 2003
Undead Michael
Spierig &
Peter Spierig
2003
Zombie Night (2003) David J.
Francis
2003
Zombiegeddon Chris Watson 2003
Zombie Planet George
Bonilla
2003
28 Days Later Danny Boyle 2002 Infected humans
Deathwatch Michael J.
Bassett
2002
Necropolis Awakened Garrett White 2002
Resident Evil Paul W. S.
Anderson
2002 first in Resident Evil series
Ritual (Tales from the Crypt: Ritual) Avi Nesher 2002
Biohazardous Michael J.
Hein
2001
Children of the Living Dead Tor Ramsey 2001
67
Meat Market 2 Brian Clement 2001
Plaga Zombie: Zona Mutante Pablo Parés &
Hernán Sáez
2001
Route 666 William
Wesley
2001
Stacy Naoyuki
Tomomatsu
2001
Zombie Chronicles Brad Sykes 2001
The Dead Hate the Living! Dave Parker 2000
Junk (Shiryo-gari) Atsushi
Muroga
2000
Machine Head Michael
Patrick,
Leonard
Murphy
2000
Meat Market Brian Clement 2000
Versus (Vāsasu) Ryuhei
Kitamura
2000
Wild Zero Tetsuro
Takeuchi
2000
I, Zombie: The Chronicles of Pain (I,
Zombie)
Andrew
Parkinson
1999
Violent Shit III: Infantry of Doom (Zombie
Doom)
Andreas
Schnaas
1999
Zombie! vs. Mardi Gras Will Frank &
Karl DeMolay
1999
Bio Zombie (Sun faa sau si) Wilson Yip 1998
Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island Hiroshi
Aoyama &
Kazumi
Fukushima
1998
Plaga Zombie Pablo Parés &
Hernán Sáez
1997 First-ever Argentine zombie
horror film and part of the
Plaga Zombie film series.
Premutos: The Fallen Angel (Premutos – Olaf Ittenbach 1997
68
Der gefallene Engel, aka Premutos: Lord of
the Living Dead)
House of the Damned Sean
Weathers
1996
Uncle Sam William
Lustig
1996
Legion of the Night Matt Jaissle 1995
Voodoo Rene Eram 1995 Voodoo cult
Zombie Holocaust (Female Mercenaries on
Zombie Island)
Gary Whitson 1995
Cemetery Man (Dellamorte Dellamore) Michele Soavi 1994
Shatter Dead Scooter
McCrae
1994
Ed and His Dead Mother Jonathan
Wacks
1993
Ghost Brigade (The Lost Brigade) George
Hickenlooper
1993
My Boyfriend's Back Bob Balaban 1993
Ozone J.R.
Bookwalter
1993 drug turns people into
zombies
Return of the Living Dead 3 Brian Yuzna 1993
Weekend at Bernie's II Robert Klane 1993
Zombie Bloodbath Todd Sheets 1993
Zombie Genocide Andrew
Harrison,
Khris Carville,
& Darryl
Sloan
1993
Army of Darkness Sam Raimi 1992 third film in The Evil Dead
franchise
Braindead (Dead Alive) Peter Jackson 1992 First zombie movie from New
Zealand
Pet Sematary Two Mary Lambert 1992
69
Waxwork II: Lost in Time Anthony
Hickox
1992
Battle Girl: The Living Dead in Tokyo Bay
(Batoru gâru)
Kazuo
Komizu
1991
Black Demons (Dèmoni 3) Umberto
Lenzi
1991 unrelated to Demoni films by
Lamberto Bava
Bride of Re-Animator Brian Yuzna 1991
Chopper Chicks in Zombietown Dan Hoskins 1991
Netherworld David
Schmoeller
1991
Night of the Day of the Dawn of the Son of
the Bride of the Return of the Revenge of
the Terror of the Attack of the Evil, Mutant,
Alien, Flesh Eating, Hellbound, Zombified
Living Dead Part 2: In Shocking 2-D
James Riffel 1991
Nudist Colony of the Dead Mark Pirro 1991
Teenage Exorcist Grant Austin
Waldman
1991
Zombie 5: Killing Birds (Uccelli assassini) Claudio
Lattanzi
1991
The Boneyard James
Cummins
1990
Frankenhooker Frank
Henenlotter
1990
Maniac Cop 2 William
Lustig
1990
Night of the Living Dead Tom Savini 1990 remake
Voodoo Dawn Steven
Fierberg
1990
Beverly Hills Bodysnatchers Jonathan
Mostow
1989
C.H.U.D. II: Bud the C.H.U.D. David Irving 1989
The Dead Pit Brett Leonard 1989
Night Life David 1989
70
Acomba
Pet Sematary Mary Lambert 1989
The Vineyard James Hong 1989
Dead Heat Mark
Goldblatt
1988
The Dead Next Door J.R.
Bookwalter
1988
The Discarnates (Summer Among the
Zombies, Ijintachi tono natsu)
Nobuhiko
Obayashi
1988
FleshEater (Zombie Nosh) Bill Hinzman 1988
Maniac Cop William
Lustig
1988
Return of the Living Dead Part II Ken
Wiederhorn
1988
The Serpent and the Rainbow Wes Craven 1988
Waxwork Anthony
Hickox
1988
Zombi 3 (Zombie Flesh Eaters 2) Lucio Fulci &
Bruno Mattei
1988
Zombie 4: After Death (Oltre la morte,
Zombie Flesh Eaters 3)
Claudio
Fragasso
1988
Evil Dead II Sam Raimi 1987
I Was a Teenage Zombie John Elias
Michalakis
1987
Killing Spree Tim Ritter 1987
Prince of Darkness (John Carpenter's Prince
of Darkness)
John
Carpenter
1987
Redneck Zombies Pericles
Lewnes
1987
Revenge of the Living Dead Girls Pierre B.
Reinhard
1987
The Video Dead Robert Scott 1987
Zombie High Ron Link 1987
71
Deadly Friend Wes Craven 1986
Night of the Creeps Fred Dekker 1986
Raiders of the Living Dead Samuel M.
Sherman
1986
The Rape After Ho Meng Hua
& Moon-Tong
Lau
1986
The Supernaturals Armand
Mastroianni
1986
Zombie Brigade Carmelo
Musca &
Barrie
Pattison
1986
Zombie Nightmare Jack Bravman 1986
Day of the Dead George A.
Romero
1985 second sequel to Night of the
Living Dead
Re-Animator Stuart Gordon 1985
The Return of the Living Dead Dan
O'Bannon
1985
Warning Sign Hal Barwood 1985
Bloodsuckers from Outer Space Glen Coburn 1984
Mutant John Cardos 1984
Night of the Comet Thom
Eberhardt
1984
Surf II Randall Badat 1984 drink turns people into
zombies
Hysterical Chris Bearde 1983
One Dark Night Tom
McLoughlin
1983
Wilczyca (The Wolf, She-Wolf) Marek
Piestrak
1983 dead woman comes back as
an undead werewolf
Zeder (Revenge of the Dead) Pupi Avati 1983
Creepshow George A. 1982
72
Romero
I Was a Zombie for the F.B.I. Marius
Penczner
1982
Mansion of the Living Dead Jesús Franco 1982
La Morte Vivante (The Living Dead Girl) Jean Rollin 1982
Oasis of the Zombies Jesús Franco 1982 French-Spanish co-
production
The Beyond Lucio Fulci 1981 second film in The Gates of
Hell trilogy
Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror Andrea
Bianchi
1981
Dawn of the Mummy Frank Agrama 1981
Dead & Buried Gary Sherman 1981
The Evil Dead Sam Raimi 1981
Frankenstein Island Jerry Warren 1981
Hell of the Living Dead (Night of the
Zombies)
Bruno Mattei 1981
The House by the Cemetery Lucio Fulci 1981 third in The Gates of Hell
trilogy
Kiss Daddy Goodbye (Revenge of the
Zombie)
Patrick Regan 1981
Kung Fu Zombie (Wu long tian shi zhao ji
gui)
Hwa I Hung 1981
Zombie Lake Jean Rollin 1981
Alien Dead Fred Olen Ray 1980
The Children Max
Kalmanowicz
1980
City of the Living Dead Lucio Fulci 1980 first in The Gates of Hell
trilogy
Don't Go in the House Joseph Ellison 1980
Erotic Nights of the Living Dead (Sexy
Nights of the Living Dead)
Joe D'Amato 1980
73
The Fog John
Carpenter
1980 called ghosts in the film
Frozen Scream Frank Roach 1980
Nightmare City (City of the Walking Dead) Umberto
Lenzi
1980
Toxic Zombies Charles
McCrann
1980
Zombie Holocaust (Zombi Holocaust) Marino
Girolami
1980
Zombi 2 (Zombie Flesh-Eaters) Lucio Fulci 1979 an unlicensed sequel to
Zombi (the Italian title of
Dawn of the Dead)
Dawn of the Dead George A.
Romero
1978 sequel to Night of the Living
Dead
Les Raisins de la Mort (The Grapes of Death,
Pesticide)
Jean Rollin 1978
Shock Waves Ken
Wiederhorn
1977
Black Magic 2 (Gou hun jiang tou, Revenge
of the Zombies)
Ho Meng Hua 1976
The Cross of the Devil John Gilling 1975
Night of the Seagulls Amando de
Ossorio
1975
Garden of the Dead John Hayes 1974
The Ghost Galleon Amando de
Ossorio
1974
The House of Seven Corpses Paul Harrison 1974
Let Sleeping Corpses Lie Jorge Grau 1974
Sugar Hill Paul
Maslansky
1974
Curse of the Living Dead (Les
Démoniaques)
Jean Rollin 1973
The Hanging Woman (Return of the
Zombies)
José Luis
Merino
1973
74
The Hidan of Maukbeiangjow (Invasion of
the Girl Snatchers, Kaspar and Prudence
Laugh Till It Hurts at The Killers of the
Zombie Plot: A Musical)
Lee Jones 1973 aliens possess corpses
Horror Express (Pánico en el Transiberiano,
Panic on the Trans-Siberian Express)
Eugenio
Martín
1973
House of the Living Dead (Doctor Maniac) Ray Austin 1973
The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires Roy Ward
Baker
1973
Return of the Blind Dead Amando de
Ossorio
1973 second film in Ossorio's Blind
Dead series
Vengeance of the Zombies (La rebelión de
las muertas)
León
Klimovsky
1973
A Virgin Among the Living Dead Jesús Franco 1973 main character has visions of
zombies
Baron Blood (Gli orrori del castello di
Norimberga)
Mario Bava 1972
Blood of Ghastly Horror Al Adamson 1972
Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things Bob Clark 1972
Deathdream Bob Clark 1972
Horror Rises from the Tomb Carlos Aured 1972
Messiah of Evil Willard
Huyck &
Gloria Katz
1972
Tombs of the Blind Dead Amando de
Ossorio
1971
The Astro-Zombies Ted V. Mikels 1968
Isle of the Snake People (La muerte
viviente)
Juan Ibáñez 1968
Night of the Living Dead George A.
Romero
1968 First film to depict zombies as
reanimated cannibalistic
cadavers
The Plague of the Zombies John Gilling 1966
Terror-Creatures from the Grave (5 tombe
per un medium, Cemetery of the Living
Massimo 1965
75
Dead) Pupillo
The Earth Dies Screaming Terence
Fisher
1964
The Horror of Party Beach Del Tenney 1964
I Eat Your Skin (Zombies) Del Tenney 1964
The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who
Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up
Zombies
Ray Dennis
Steckler
1964
The Last Man on Earth (L'ultimo uomo della
Terra)
Ubaldo
Ragona
1964
War of the Zombies (Rome Against Rome) Giuseppe Vari 1964
Monstrosity Joseph
Mascelli
1963 Shown on MST3K as Atomic
Brain
Santo vs. the Zombies (Invasion of the
Zombies)
Benito
Alazraki
1962
Tales of Terror Roger
Corman
1962
The Curse of the Doll People (Munecos
infernales)
Benito
Alazraki
1961
The Dead One (El Muerto) Barry Mahon 1961
Doctor Blood's Coffin Sidney J. Furie 1961
The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake Edward L.
Cahn
1959
Invisible Invaders Edward L.
Cahn
1959 aliens possess corpses
Plan 9 from Outer Space Ed Wood 1959
Teenage Zombies Jerry Warren 1959
Voodoo Island Reginald
LeBorg
1957
The Woman Eater Charles
Saunders
1957
Zombies of Mora Tau Edward L.
Cahn
1957
76
Creature with the Atom Brain Edward L.
Cahn
1955
Zombies of the Stratosphere Fred C.
Brannon
1952
Valley of the Zombies Philip Ford 1946
Zombies on Broadway (Loonies on
Broadway)
Gordon Dines
& Gordon M.
Douglas
1945
Voodoo Man William
Beaudine
1944
I Walked with a Zombie Jacques
Tourneur
1943
Revenge of the Zombies Steve Sekely 1943
Bowery at Midnight Wallace Fox 1942
King of the Zombies Jean
Yarbrough
1941
The Ghost Breakers George
Marshall
1940
The Devil's Daughter (Pocomania) Arthur H.
Leonard
1939 semi-remake of Ouanga
Revolt of the Zombies Victor
Halperin
1936
White Zombie Victor
Halperin
1932 Believed to be the earliest
zombie film
Hood of the Dead Snoop Dogg TBA
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