Instant Zombie Classic

I just saw Shaun of the Dead last night for the first time. While not a very scary zombie movie, it's certainly the funniest zombie film I've seen thus far. When I finally get around to starting the all-zombie portion of our DVD collection, it will certainly be an addition. So if you dig zombies, silly British humor, and good filmmaking, check out Shaun of the Dead.

Now a note about most zombie movies - generally the premise is that if one is bitten by a zombie, one will eventually die and be re-animated by the zombie disease/curse/cooties, into another zombie. But after people are first bitten, they always continue to fight off the zombies, even though they should know that they're just going to be one themselves, eventually. So why fight? I mean, you're just going to get to the point that's in every zombie film, when your best friend or brother or girlfriend is going to have to decapitate you or shoot you in the head to protect themselves. So why put them in that tough emotional situation? Once you're bitten, time to throw in the towel!

Of course, it's just instinct to keep fighting when you're attacked by the undead, so I suppose that's part of the reason. Maybe the victim also figures that maybe there's a small chance that they're starring in a zombie film in which the cure for zombieism is found at the end of the movie, and that in that case fighting and becoming a zombie later on beats being torn limb-from-limb by the undead (which is what will happen if you don't fight them off) and ending up just-plain-dead. Don't hold your breath - I've seen a number of zombie films, and that never happens. In fact, the endings are usually pretty bleak for humanity, and relatively bright for the flesh-eating legions of undead.

[Blogger's Note: the word zombie or derivations thereof appear in this post fifteen times! I tried to change it up occassionally, throwing in undead every once in a while. The I got to thinking, are there any other synonyms for zombie that I'm not coming up with? Just one, really. The only word I could find that was specifically appropriate for zombies, as opposed to ghosts, demons, or vampires, was revenant.]