jordan, i've said it to octo before, but i really love hearing you talk about things you like. you were apologetic for talking through ghostbusters when we watched it at your place earlier this year, but i learned tons about it that i'd never noticed before.
and even when i'm not learning new stuff from your ravings, even when the thing you're saying is something i've already considered, you're an ace-hand at organizing your thoughts.
the other reason i think the takeover is so efficient is the familiarity aspect:
fending off a zombie attack isn't just a physical matter. it requires overcoming the reflex not to kill people, a daunting shift by itself. but it goes beyond daunting when the zombie is someone you know.
i recently took a few moments to consider whether i'd be up to the task of fighting off octo if he were a zombie. i imagined a ferocious struggle. octo is a strong dude and, zombified, i'd have to contend with his unbridled strength -- he wouldn't hold back because we were once friends.
i imagined, perhaps, part of his face torn off. maybe his eye dangling from a socket from his own final struggle against a zombie onslaught. maybe even self-inflicted wounds around his mouth from chewing so ravenously.
but mostly i imagined the fury in his eyes -- or, in his eye, i guess, if we're not counting the one dangling from its socket (which would probably still be furious in a lolling, uncontrolled, zuni warrior kind of way).
perhaps these memories wouldn't have time to surface. i'd see the attack coming and as a pure defense reflex, i'd fight him off and consider the gravity of the struggle later. these are the people that survive in these conditions. the ones who don't consider; who simply think, "fight" and then "run like hell" -- actually it'd be an even smaller group: people who think "fight/run like hell" and who have luck on their side.
people often ridicule the girl in the campy horror movie for not getting up and running when she's tripped and the bad guy is chasing her. "get up!" they scream at their tv's, feeling smug and safe on their couches. well, duh, douchebag, she can't get up because she can't feel her legs. all she can feel is her heart wedged somewhere up in her throat, hammering and hammering.
that's such a vital part of the zombie equation, that we die because we can't imagine that our attackers would ever hurt us. they are, after all, our friends and we love them.
Yeah, you're exactly right. You can see early signs of the "survival instinct" in the heroes of these movies or books. I'm thinking of Mark Petrie in 'Salem's Lot, who keeps his wits about him in two crucial early situations that show him to have the balls to win the game (Danny Glick at the window; tied up in the Marsten House). Ditto Ripley in Alien (which is pretty much a splendid illustration of any horror concept anyone wants to bring up): She keeps her head when Dallas has flipped and is demanding that she let them into the ship with the infected astronaut. ("That's an order Ripley! You hear me?")
Alien's a good illustration in general because each character displays their primary trait when they face the Alien: Dallas = "bad decisions" = turns the incorrect direction in the vents and walks right into the Alien; Kane = "too brave" = sticks his face in the egg; Brett = "stupid" = lets the cat go, and then loses his life chasing it onto B-deck; Parker = "headstrong" = dives at Alien and is quickly dispatched; Lambert = "panicky" = freezes while facing the Alien and gets it ("Lambert! Get OUT OF THE WAY!"); Ash = evil robot = doesn't count; Ripley = "hero" = acts quickly, and, as you point out, Marc, acting quickly for her means that at the right moment she runs like hell (twice) but also means that she gathers her will and attacks. (I didn't say "heroine" because it's well known that the script doesn't specify genders and states explicitly that all seven roles may be played by men or women.)
Thanks for the kind words, by the way. Remember that I'm seeing all these movies for the very first time (except Night of the Living Dead which I saw with a raucous college audience), so this is my first flush of enthusiasm for the concept.
As octopunk pointed out in his review, Ana (Sarah Polley) makes the grade because she grabs the car keys while tumbling away from her zombie husband's arms and across the bed to the bathroom. She also locks the bedroom door, but she has a moment's "legs like water/heart in mouth" confusion when she doesn't unlatch the bathroom window (at first). I figured that was there so that the audience could scream, "The LATCH! Girl, get THE LATCH, fool!" (from their comfortable, relaxing theater chairs).
The first ten minutes of Dawn of the Dead (2004) is an absolute masterpiece of horror. (And the title sequence isn't too shabby either, as I and others have said). Spielberg performs similar wizardry in the first half hour of War of the Worlds (and is dealing with vastly more difficult and complex filmmaking issues to master, but then, he's Spielberg, and he can make the lightning and the mechanical monster exploding from from beneath the street look as effortless and matter-of-fact as two actors in zombie makeup).
I even appreciate the basic "sex=death" horror equasion in the opening of Dawn, in that Ana and her husband miss the Special Bulletin on television because they're screwing in the shower.
By the way, I've written a great deal about 2004 Dawn of the Dead without once mentioning that I watched the UNRATED version!
I can't make a comparison between the two versions (obviously) but the one I watched has a "director's introduction" in which he points out that in "the unrated world" they can do anything they want, and that there's consequently more gore and more character material (and I think it's about eight minutes longer).
I think it fits in perfectly with the whole zombie ethos (and this thinking is confirmed by George Romero's "career-killing" move of absolutely refusing to make an MPAA-rated zombie movie, so all four of his are unrated).
It's like 9/11 (even though that hadn't happened yet in 1978) (and the comparison can presumably be forgiven): when something this bad happens, you don't know what's going on and you see all kinds of bad shit you weren't ready for. I think these are crucial elements of any zombie story; the actual "zombie rules" (if you will):
1. No explanation 2. No MPAA rating 3. de rigeur end of the world
The first clues in Dawn of the Dead (2004) that something's wrong:
1) In the first scene, the doctor talking to Ana (Sarah Polley) says, "Am I missing something? Why did Dr. Cho order a head x-ray when the patient was bitten on the hand?" (She consults the chart and explains that the patient was "in a bar fight" and was "communicative when admitted.")
2) As Ana approaches the nurse's station, a barely-audible voice on the P. A. system says, "Security to Admitting."
3) The computer tells Cora, the triage nurse, that the aforementioned patient is in the Intensive Care Unit. ("From a bite"? Ana asks skeptically. Cora can't explain.)
4) Ana finishes her conversation with Cora and walks out, passing a patient on a gurney being wheeled into the emergency room -- in restraints.
5) The paramedic taking a catnap in the back of the ambulance wakes up and is told, "Let's go—we're starting early."
6) Driving home, Ana switches past a radio station on which a newsreader says "—confirmed that it is not an isolated—"
7) In the shower with Lawrence, her husband, Ana misses the "SPECIAL BULLETIN" that comes on the television, interrupting a [Zack Snyder-directed] car commercial.
Then she goes to sleep, and, when she wakes up, well...things have changed.
i missed the "security to admitting" part. reading the list, i think that one's my favorite. i picture it like this, patient is wheeled in acting all sick. everything's fine so far. sick guy gets immediate attention because he looks just awful. sometime in the middle of the ordeal he turns and begins snapping at the doctors and nurses. there's more immediate alarm than normal -- this isn't a druggie thrashing on the table after all, it's a dead guy. but in the early part of the struggle, the doctor is probably thinking, "boy, we've gotta get this guy locked down. nothing we can't manage though."
then a nurse gets bit, and it's a horrific bite. deep tissue damage, lots of blood, "and on top of that, we still haven't gotten the zombie tied down. shit, we better call in security."
security walks down to ER thinking, "probably someone on drugs flipping out." not really in a superlative hurry. security is speechless when they walk in and see all the blood and shouting. it's still shouting right now, no screams yet.
that comes when the nurse that got bit comes back to life. now instead of 10 against 1, it's 9 against 2 and the situation has gone from grave to critical.
this all happens within 10 minutes of sarah polley getting in her car.
and it's happening everywhere -- every time i think i've plumbed the depths of the horror on-screen, that thought comes in like the cigarette after that 6th whiskey sour -- in ERs all over the city this is happening.
this may be the decisive layer of all of this: the people who first had to confront the zombie menace are the caregivers. the hospitals and ambulances and police stations are the first places hit. so when the menace hits the populace at large, we're already screwed because our ordinary crisis response has been disabled. worse because, as jordan put it, now they're playing for the other team.
imagine how awful it must have been for the first vanguard of terrified family members bringing sons and daughters and parents and grandparents to the hospital, only to discover that the situation is worse there than it was at home.
I'm glad you mapped all that out, notmarc, because I continue to have some doubts in the back of my mind about the premise change (zombie-bitten people only) and the spread of the zombies. (And I love your scenario; it's close to what I was picturing but it's much more detailed and the details are all good.)
But what I mean is, if it doesn't start with the "recently deceased," how does it start? It's a chicken-and-egg problem; you know what I mean? In the DVD commentary, Zack Snyder says, "there's some controversy about the 'recently deceased,' like in Night of the Living Dead, but how far back does it go? Would you have Abraham Lincoln walking around? And how would those older corpses even move without muscles and stuff?' ('Yeah, this is a documentary,' the producer insists. By now I'm laughing because all I can think is, 'Is this the end of zombie Shakespeare?')" All of this directly contradicts Day of the Dead where denuded bloody skeletons are moving around and it's determined that you don't even need your entire brain to function as a zombie.
If if doesn't start in graveyards, morgues etc. then it either spreads or it starts simultaneously in different locations around the globe, right?
I guess we have to write the whole thing off to an ignorance that's never appeased. Remember the guy at the Center for Disease Control in the opening title montage. ("Is it a virus?" "We don't know." "How does it spread? Is it airborne?" "Airborne's a possibility; we don't know." "Is this an international health hazard or a military concern?" "Both." "Are these people alive or dead?" [pause] "We don't know.")
I played it four times just now and some zombie snarl gets in the way, but I'm reasonably sure that the reporter says "international" and not "national" health crisis. We do see a guy who's clearly meant to be on a Baghdad "green zone" hotel balcony (whom Zack Snyder calls "our embedded reporter") who's reporting on the crisis. I especially like that part because we suddenly swish-pan over to the vestibule of the hotel suite as someone shouts "My God, they're here! as zombies burst in, quickly overpower the too-slow USMP at the door and then converge on the camera.
So, "We don't know."
But you're 100% correct about what happens at hospitals and police stations. As Ana left the hospital, I was thinking, what the hell is beginning in there, behind her? What condition is the hospital in just an hour later? Remember the ambulance that plows into the friendly neighbor from across the street (in the bathrobe) pointing the gun at Ana? (Another smooth digital effect from "Mr. X," the Canadian firm that also worked on Silent Hill) What has to be going on for an ambulance to drive full speed into a pedestrian, throw him ten feet in the air, and continue without slowing?
Jordan, wow, damn! Please don't take my lack of comments (or Summerisle's for that matter) as a sign of disrespect for this excellent essay on all things zombie - Summerisle is here with me on the East Coast right now and we've been in Vermont where internet access has been limited. I'm now back at work and I've been inundated with email, which I need to tackle. I plan on going through this more carefully as soon as someone cancels!
Excellent work, Jordan. I wanted to hit this point by point last night but I just had to put that effort into wrapping up my reviews.
First of all, I want to say how heartwarming it is to see the amount of thought I’mnotMarc has put into the scenario of me turning into a zombie. In response, let me wish you the speed and nerve to pull that trigger or twist that knife in my remaining eye socket while there’s still time. And if you miss, please know I will prize the taste of your flesh above those victims of mine I never knew in life; when I’m in a corner gnawing on your forearm and I see your tattoo, my zombie heart will swell with all the fond nostalgia my congealing blood can sustain.
1. Embarrassingly the only other example I can recall is Night of the Comet, which Summerisle reviewed last year.
2. Cool! It’s great to see directors who not only love the source material like a fan, but also use that fan’s perspective to create such good horror. Hostel is similarly chock full of homage material, although it’s alluding to a number of different flicks in the canon.
3. When the remake came out, Summerisle and I got into a thing about Romero’s zombies being of the bite/no bite variety, a debate which got largely side-tracked by my thinking that Steven in original Dawn doesn’t get bit (wrong!). This time I watched them all closely, and still the answers aren’t too clear until Land. One of the soundbites in the opening credits of Land of the Dead says: “Any dead body will get up; being bitten just makes it that much faster.” This is borne out when a man commits suicide by hanging, only to come back and hassle his family. Day of the Dead shows us the reanimated head of a soldier who dies by friendly fire, then confuses us by not showing a headshot when Frankenstein is killed. He doesn’t get up, so maybe there was a headshot we didn’t see. Hard to think zombie-hardened soldiers wouldn’t think to do that. Original Dawn gives us nothing to work with, really, and Night has the woman who is trowelled to death arise, but maybe she got bit and we didn’t see it.
I’mnotMarc’s ER scenario is an excellent scenario; you could see how a fast zombie outbreak would explode while a slow one might be stopped. Of course, unlike us, nobody immediately understands the zombie-bite scenario they’re in. Hence the wonderful references to "civil unrest."
4. Yeah, those are great titles. I love that by the time they kick in, you’ve forgotten you haven’t seen them yet because the movie is rocking so hard.
5. The formula of zombie story = end of civilization reminds me of two things. The first is just the wry observation that “zombie” as a singular noun is never the whole story. It’s always “zombies.”
The second is something I said to justify 28 Days Later as a zombie flick: “What you do get is the end of civilization, the triumph of entropy, and the enemy is us.” The simple fact that the mechanism of this blunt-force armageddon is our own bodies always leads me to think it’s our fault somehow. Our appetites are turned on ourselves, and even dogs get a free pass. This is carried by the zombies’ eerie ability to tell the living from their own ranks – it’s like they received a basic, merciless command to take us down. And, as Jordan pointed out in his Dawn ’04 review, these days none of us are going to be 100% surprised.
6. Your Schrödinger's Cat thing cracked me up. The closing credit sequence is, of course, the reason I pointed out that I can sail a boat when I reviewed it. My team could’ve looked for another island, maybe.
I saw the remake in the theater with I'mnotMarc and Summerisle, who turned to me afterwards and said "how come the movies I watch with you guys never have any survivors?"
“Zombie Island,” heh. I love that word zombie – I was psyched to see you bring up Zombie Shakespeare when you did. I would say that adding “zombie” to any word makes that thing better, but that’s only true if you’re not actually dealing with that thing.
I agree: they probably should’ve given the mall another shot.
7. It’s incredible how singular the Dawn remake’s opening is. Good directors make it look easy; it’s like that piece of the story was always there waiting for us to tune in. Amazing.
8. Right you are, Jordan. Unfortunately critics are just as likely to slap labels on things like the marketing departments from which they’re supposedly trying to protect us.
Remember that it's NOT the end of the world in 28 Days Later, which I think is the actual dealbreaker regarding whether they're zombies or not.
My concern with the "bite"/"no bite" dilemma is purely about the global spread. I want it to make sense that you just can't beat it.
Remember in The Stand that the U.S. DELIBERATELY spreads the "blue" virus overseas. (Assholes.) But one of the generals writes at one point, "It's not isolated. We had our chance at 'isolated' in Arnette and we blew it." I love that part. It wasn't until this year's Horrorthon discussion that I realized that Stu Redman could have prevented the entire fucking thing by NOT turning off the Texaco station pumps (the first thing he or anyone does in the "real" version of the book): the station would have blown up in a huge fireball, destroying the virus; the end. I never thought of that.
I don't know why it's so important to me that 2004 Dawn be about "legit" zombies: they must be DEAD and they must be EATING US or it's no good.
I just put this in an email, but I can put it here too:
Do enough people in 2004 Dawn get eaten (or partially eaten) by zombies to get the idea across? There aren't really any scenes of groups of zombies totally chowing down on legs, intestines etc. like in the Romero flicks. Do you think it maybe comes across too 28 Days Later? It's important that the audience recognize that we're their FOOD (rather than just walking into the theater with that information the way we do.)
"My team could’ve looked for another island, maybe."
Are you sure? It's just not looking good for their voyage no matter what. I'm not sure that bad seamanship is the problem. They run out of fuel; a fire starts on board; worms eat the food (that part's confusing) and they find a dinghy with a zombie head in a cooler. (What the hell happened there? I'd love to hear any plausible theory.)
But they still could make it at the end. The camera drops to the deck; it's ambiguous. But it follows the superb DOTD'04 filmmaking of "you get slammed in the face by the result before you even begin wondering what the cause is."
There's also an eventual victory in Shaun of the Dead, as well. British zombies are pussies, apparently.
I'm pretty sure the Dawn '04 zombies are after us as food, despite the lack of an ol' fashion chowdown scene. They're certainly into biting, that's for sure, and the doofus blonde security guard gets swarmed in the parking garage. If they just wanted to bite and make more of themselves, they wouldn't swarm like that. Aren't there other scenes of cannibalism?
The woman getting devoured by two zombies in the back of the bus (the bus whose driver tries to take Ana's car). (I can't figure out what the dazed naked woman is all about: she's staggering around near the bus, but she's not a zombie and she's not bloody.)
A dude on television says "They seem to feed on warm human flesh." (Then he takes a drink of water so it can sink in.) While he's talking, the CNN-style crawl on the bottom says "AUTHORITIES CONFIRM: CRISIS NOT RESULT OF BIOTERRORISM, GERM WARFARE" [not verbatim].
I don't know if it's me or the fact that I've never seen the unrated version, but I don't know anything about that bus. The guy does go for Ana's car, but I didn't know he was the bus driver, nor did I see the dazed, naked chick.
Afterthought on point #5, about zombie victory: When I looked at the aerial shot you posted in your review, I thought "damn, all that open country, all those houses and nowhere is safe." Why? Because the same forces that shaped that landscape (us) are now the threat. Anywhere people can go, zombies can go.
And I know they can't fly planes and stuff, so don't even go there.
I'mnotMarc's comments on my hypothetical zombification remind me of a creative writing assignment JPX did in high school, in which a Jason-style maniac busts in on one of our sleepovers. I get killed, but JPX and Gary Turgeon survive. Thanks a bunch.
(Admittedly, I lasted longer than our friend John Morse, who didn't even make it out of his sleeping bag.)
"I'mnotMarc's comments on my hypothetical zombification remind me of a creative writing assignment JPX did in high school, in which a Jason-style maniac busts in on one of our sleepovers. I get killed, but JPX and Gary Turgeon survive."
Wait, what? You must be making this up.
That's okay, Octo, Doug didn't know how to fend off a zombie attack either...
whoawhoawhoa! octo gets a burned copy of dawn04? i want one too!
November 27, 2006 4:43 PM
[Image] Here are a few extraneous points I wanted to make about zombies, Romero's zombie movies, and the Dawn of the Dead remake.
1) I added this to the bottom of my review of Dawn of the Dead (2004) directly below, but I don't think anyone saw it, so I moved it up here:
ADDENDUM II: Dawn of the Dead joins an impressive roster of fantasy/sci-fi/horror movies that follow the unwritten rule that, before the end of the world, the protagonist must fall asleep and re-awaken. Tom Cruise does it; Sarah Polley does it; Cillian Murphy does it. Sometimes it's a full night's sleep and sometimes it's just a catnap, but it's somehow necessary: you doze off, and when you wake up, everything's different. You may not realize it yet, but the phonograph needle of the universe has skated off the edge, and the nightmare has begun in earnest. It's a deeply Freudian, deeply primal motif that's been serving the purposes of apocalyptic fiction for decades: the original Dawn of the Dead begins with Fran waking up against a wall of blood-red carpet with an associate (also awakening) uttering the movie's first line: "I'm still dreaming." Examples: War of the Worlds (2005); Miracle Mile (1988); 28 Days Later (2002); 12 Monkeys (1995). Any others you gentlemen can think of?
2) I missed a cameo/homage in my first roundup (also below): the WGON helicopter from the first version makes an appearance right before the opening titles, in one of the nine or ten heavily-digital shots of Ana fleeing her neighborhood (right before she gets temporarily stuck behind the bus whose panicked driver attempts to take her car from her). Look!
I hasten to add that I missed this more than once: it took the director's commentary for me to catch on. (You can see the heathaze and fumes coming off the helicopter in the new shot, which corresponds to footage I've seen of helicopters filmed from above: I point this out only by way of admiring the work done on the digital helicopter. That's a hell of a lot of effort just to create an homage that even I missed twice! Way to go, guys.)
3) Thinking about the Zombie Rules and the question of whether they change from Romero to the new movie, I suddenly realized that I can't think of a single character in any of the Romero movies who dies a non-bite-related death and then comes back as a zombie (Unless you count the very first zombie in the graveyard in Night, but we don't really know anything about him, do we?) Ignoring that zombie for purposes of argument, every other character who becomes a zombie gets bitten by a zombie (including Stephen in the elevator, above) so it might as well be the new rules. I'm not sure what I'm getting at, but the 2004 zombie plague spreads about ten times faster than Romero's zombie plagues, and this may have something to do with a) the new fast zombies as well as b) yes, you have to be bitten, but (as octopunk pointed out before) how close are any of us to hospitals, morgues, funeral homes, graveyards etc. anyway?
4) Kyle Cooper, oft-imitated but never-equalled film design guru extraordinaire, did the opening title design for 2004's Dawn of the Dead. He's the guy who did the titles to Se7en (which was his first claim-to-fame); He's done a number of title sequences in this style before, so I was glad to discover that they went and got the real McCoy for this movie.
5) Octopunk and I have had a few conversations about the intriguing inverse relationship between the enjoyment levels on either side of the movie screen. With sci-fi and horror movies specifically, the worse things are for the characters in the story, the better they are for us, watching the movie. Trailers for upcoming summer movies understand this and work like travel brochures in reverse: they keep tantalizing you with how BAD things are in the place they're talking about. The final "stinger" shot in the trailer is usually something truly, deeply awful like the tanker truck slamming into the windshield (and your face) in Twister or the Alien drone moving its head to nuzzle Ripley's in Alien 3.
So, along those lines (bad=good) I think it's fair to say that the true charm of the zombie threat is that it's just way, way worse than anything else. I refer you to my comments about the "automatic end of the world" below; when I was discussing zombie movies with a few friends who were over at my house the night before Thanksgiving (to look at the balloons) and we watched the openings of both versions of Dawn of the Dead, I said, "Against vampires, you've got a chance. Against Aliens [Scott/Cameron/Fincher] you've got a chance. Against 'body snatchers' [e.g. "pod people"] you've got a chance. Against "the machines" [Terminator or Matrix] you've got a chance. Against "Martians" [H. G. Wells] you've got a chance. Against zombies...forget it." When we got back from the title sequence and Ving Rhames was holding the shotgun on Sarah Polley, we agreed that it was clearly game over already.
There are some interesting ideas here, I think. Why are they so damned unstoppable, especially given that they don't have amazing powers (like vampires) or super-advanced technology (like the machines) or the ability to blend in (like pod people)? I can think of a couple of reasons. First of all, unlike other threats that take over the identities of the good guys, the zombies do this very quickly and indiscriminately. Remember how Veronica Cartwright came outside and noticed that pods of Donald Sutherland and the others were forming, and woke them up (thus cancelling the lengthy pod-forming process)? Major setback for the pods, right? (Because they were creating duplicates, which is apparently a painstaking job.) Well, had those been zombie bites instead of pods, forget it. It would have only taken a few minutes (Romero) or a few seconds (2004) for the protagonists to be permanently out of the game (or rather, playing for the other team).
So speed's important and communicability is important but what's most interesting about the zombie threat is something that octopunk hinted at with his phraseology about how the zombies "get the upper hand and never lose it" (which implies a determined struggle on both sides): for such a deadly, unstoppable threat, they're incoherent. Unlike every other threat I mentioned two paragraphs above, they don't have any kind of master plan at all. They're not trying to do anything per se, so they can't be reasoned with or fooled or delayed or outwitted. The Warchowski's "machines" used us for food, too, but their technique for doing so was very sophisticated, and, unfortunately for them, allowed a narrow window of human consciousness and tactical breathing room (the "matrix") in which we could mount a subversive rebellion and inculcate a subsequent military revolution out in the real world. Vampires get fixated on individual prey or get overcome by hubris and make mistakes. The aliens will be canny; they will negotiate with Ripley ("Tell those drones to back off or I'm torching the eggs") to even the odds; human ingenuity prevails. But the zombies are pure animal force; pure Darwin, and they can't be reasoned with or out-schemed. So they take over the world, every time, as noted. It's got to be an especially galling defeat, because losing to "the machines" or the body snatchers at least means there's going to be something left that you can respect a little bit ("This is our time," Agent Smith tells Morpheus), but the zombies just turn the entire world into shit irreversibly (as we see in the opening of Day of the Dead -- nice "Brave New World" you guys created there...makes it all worthwhile), which makes them scarier and more deadly by an order of magnitude.
6) I went back and re-read "Home Delivery" by Stephen King (now that I've seen all the Romero) and I think it's terrible. I stress that the outer space sequence is scary as hell and well done, but he should have just made up his own story and not grafted that idea onto Romero's. I'm completely convinced that the one thing the zombie story shouldn't have is a coherent explanation. It ruins it somehow. Besides, how much scarier is it if we just never find out what the hell happened? It seems much more realistic to me. (It must have taken a long time, in both Wells' version and Spielberg's, to figure out what suddenly happened to the invading aliens, even though the narrator understands immediately.) So "Home Delivery" combines a needless explanation, a mediocre retelling of the "zombies taking over, as seen on television" concept, and then a boring graveyard-shootout in a little island town. Yawn.
I can't even think about zombies on an island now without going back to the extreme end of the 2004 Dawn of the Dead (which was added much later, in Los Angeles, when test-screening audiences objected to the suddenness of the "gunshot/blackout" ending. It's like Schrödinger's Cat, isn't it? "Are you sure you want to see what happened?"). In the DVD commentary, the director etc. refer to the looming shadow through the mist in the camcorder footage by saying, matter-of-factly, "there's Zombie Island" and not even discussing it, as if there was never any question for the filmmakers that the survivors were on their way, deliberately, to a place known as "Zombie Island." They really should have stayed at the mall, if you ask me.
7) The opening of 2004 Dawn follows a specific pattern that I really like, which compares with the opening of Revenge of the Sith and the Bathtime at Clerkenwell animation: first you focus quietly on a SINGLE item (spaceship, singing bird, zombie) until you get the basic idea, and then you pull back or open a door or glide past the edge of a battlecruiser and suddenly see the entire thing. (Wouldn't Sarah Polley and her husband have HEARD all of that shit going on outside their house? Helicopters; sirens; gunfire; burning houses and vehicles; car crashes; explosions; screaming—yet the bedroom is so quiet you can hear the tiles on the old-school digital clock flipping over.) It's a great technique. The Romero movies get the idea across with verbal explanations, each time. (You don't even understand the zombie in the 1968 graveyard until Ben explains it.) But the 2004 version teaches you what's happening by showing you the husband's instant tranformation so you can't possibly misunderstand or get confused.
8) I quickly got tired of hunting down reviews of 2004 Dawn of the Dead because even the positive ones hasten to add the caveat that the new movie "lacks the depth/social commentary" of the original, which (they point out) was so shrewdly knowing in its equasion of mall-shoppers with zombies. I think that's bunk: First, the new movie has plenty of "depth" of its own as I've noted; it's about 9/11 and AIDS and CNN and consumerism and guns and other pertinent themes, and, anyway, there's just no way to conclude that a story so primally evocative is without depth unless you're looking for categorical excuses to dismiss it because of its formal identity as a bloody horror movie. (Apparently the original was "a satire," which is news to me.) Where were all these critics when the original came out? The only review I can find from 1978 that praises Romero's Dawn of the Dead is by Roger Ebert, who basically gets it right. Being on the cultural vangard is easy when it's twenty-six years later; it's getting things right at the time that's hard because you've got to think for yourself, and not mindlessly follow the herd in search of sustenance, like a...well, never mind.
That's it for now! Truly outstanding material all around. Happy Thanksgiving!
"zombie roundup"
22 Comments -
jordan, i've said it to octo before, but i really love hearing you talk about things you like. you were apologetic for talking through ghostbusters when we watched it at your place earlier this year, but i learned tons about it that i'd never noticed before.
and even when i'm not learning new stuff from your ravings, even when the thing you're saying is something i've already considered, you're an ace-hand at organizing your thoughts.
November 25, 2006 12:15 PM
the other reason i think the takeover is so efficient is the familiarity aspect:
fending off a zombie attack isn't just a physical matter. it requires overcoming the reflex not to kill people, a daunting shift by itself. but it goes beyond daunting when the zombie is someone you know.
i recently took a few moments to consider whether i'd be up to the task of fighting off octo if he were a zombie. i imagined a ferocious struggle. octo is a strong dude and, zombified, i'd have to contend with his unbridled strength -- he wouldn't hold back because we were once friends.
i imagined, perhaps, part of his face torn off. maybe his eye dangling from a socket from his own final struggle against a zombie onslaught. maybe even self-inflicted wounds around his mouth from chewing so ravenously.
but mostly i imagined the fury in his eyes -- or, in his eye, i guess, if we're not counting the one dangling from its socket (which would probably still be furious in a lolling, uncontrolled, zuni warrior kind of way).
perhaps these memories wouldn't have time to surface. i'd see the attack coming and as a pure defense reflex, i'd fight him off and consider the gravity of the struggle later. these are the people that survive in these conditions. the ones who don't consider; who simply think, "fight" and then "run like hell" -- actually it'd be an even smaller group: people who think "fight/run like hell" and who have luck on their side.
people often ridicule the girl in the campy horror movie for not getting up and running when she's tripped and the bad guy is chasing her. "get up!" they scream at their tv's, feeling smug and safe on their couches. well, duh, douchebag, she can't get up because she can't feel her legs. all she can feel is her heart wedged somewhere up in her throat, hammering and hammering.
that's such a vital part of the zombie equation, that we die because we can't imagine that our attackers would ever hurt us. they are, after all, our friends and we love them.
November 25, 2006 12:39 PM
notmarc,
Yeah, you're exactly right. You can see early signs of the "survival instinct" in the heroes of these movies or books. I'm thinking of Mark Petrie in 'Salem's Lot, who keeps his wits about him in two crucial early situations that show him to have the balls to win the game (Danny Glick at the window; tied up in the Marsten House). Ditto Ripley in Alien (which is pretty much a splendid illustration of any horror concept anyone wants to bring up): She keeps her head when Dallas has flipped and is demanding that she let them into the ship with the infected astronaut. ("That's an order Ripley! You hear me?")
Alien's a good illustration in general because each character displays their primary trait when they face the Alien: Dallas = "bad decisions" = turns the incorrect direction in the vents and walks right into the Alien; Kane = "too brave" = sticks his face in the egg; Brett = "stupid" = lets the cat go, and then loses his life chasing it onto B-deck; Parker = "headstrong" = dives at Alien and is quickly dispatched; Lambert = "panicky" = freezes while facing the Alien and gets it ("Lambert! Get OUT OF THE WAY!"); Ash = evil robot = doesn't count; Ripley = "hero" = acts quickly, and, as you point out, Marc, acting quickly for her means that at the right moment she runs like hell (twice) but also means that she gathers her will and attacks. (I didn't say "heroine" because it's well known that the script doesn't specify genders and states explicitly that all seven roles may be played by men or women.)
Thanks for the kind words, by the way. Remember that I'm seeing all these movies for the very first time (except Night of the Living Dead which I saw with a raucous college audience), so this is my first flush of enthusiasm for the concept.
As octopunk pointed out in his review, Ana (Sarah Polley) makes the grade because she grabs the car keys while tumbling away from her zombie husband's arms and across the bed to the bathroom. She also locks the bedroom door, but she has a moment's "legs like water/heart in mouth" confusion when she doesn't unlatch the bathroom window (at first). I figured that was there so that the audience could scream, "The LATCH! Girl, get THE LATCH, fool!" (from their comfortable, relaxing theater chairs).
November 25, 2006 7:26 PM
The first ten minutes of Dawn of the Dead (2004) is an absolute masterpiece of horror. (And the title sequence isn't too shabby either, as I and others have said). Spielberg performs similar wizardry in the first half hour of War of the Worlds (and is dealing with vastly more difficult and complex filmmaking issues to master, but then, he's Spielberg, and he can make the lightning and the mechanical monster exploding from from beneath the street look as effortless and matter-of-fact as two actors in zombie makeup).
I even appreciate the basic "sex=death" horror equasion in the opening of Dawn, in that Ana and her husband miss the Special Bulletin on television because they're screwing in the shower.
November 25, 2006 7:37 PM
By the way, I've written a great deal about 2004 Dawn of the Dead without once mentioning that I watched the UNRATED version!
I can't make a comparison between the two versions (obviously) but the one I watched has a "director's introduction" in which he points out that in "the unrated world" they can do anything they want, and that there's consequently more gore and more character material (and I think it's about eight minutes longer).
I think it fits in perfectly with the whole zombie ethos (and this thinking is confirmed by George Romero's "career-killing" move of absolutely refusing to make an MPAA-rated zombie movie, so all four of his are unrated).
It's like 9/11 (even though that hadn't happened yet in 1978) (and the comparison can presumably be forgiven): when something this bad happens, you don't know what's going on and you see all kinds of bad shit you weren't ready for. I think these are crucial elements of any zombie story; the actual "zombie rules" (if you will):
1. No explanation
2. No MPAA rating
3. de rigeur end of the world
November 25, 2006 9:18 PM
The first clues in Dawn of the Dead (2004) that something's wrong:
1) In the first scene, the doctor talking to Ana (Sarah Polley) says, "Am I missing something? Why did Dr. Cho order a head x-ray when the patient was bitten on the hand?" (She consults the chart and explains that the patient was "in a bar fight" and was "communicative when admitted.")
2) As Ana approaches the nurse's station, a barely-audible voice on the P. A. system says, "Security to Admitting."
3) The computer tells Cora, the triage nurse, that the aforementioned patient is in the Intensive Care Unit. ("From a bite"? Ana asks skeptically. Cora can't explain.)
4) Ana finishes her conversation with Cora and walks out, passing a patient on a gurney being wheeled into the emergency room -- in restraints.
5) The paramedic taking a catnap in the back of the ambulance wakes up and is told, "Let's go—we're starting early."
6) Driving home, Ana switches past a radio station on which a newsreader says "—confirmed that it is not an isolated—"
7) In the shower with Lawrence, her husband, Ana misses the "SPECIAL BULLETIN" that comes on the television, interrupting a [Zack Snyder-directed] car commercial.
Then she goes to sleep, and, when she wakes up, well...things have changed.
November 26, 2006 10:00 PM
i missed the "security to admitting" part. reading the list, i think that one's my favorite. i picture it like this, patient is wheeled in acting all sick. everything's fine so far. sick guy gets immediate attention because he looks just awful. sometime in the middle of the ordeal he turns and begins snapping at the doctors and nurses. there's more immediate alarm than normal -- this isn't a druggie thrashing on the table after all, it's a dead guy. but in the early part of the struggle, the doctor is probably thinking, "boy, we've gotta get this guy locked down. nothing we can't manage though."
then a nurse gets bit, and it's a horrific bite. deep tissue damage, lots of blood, "and on top of that, we still haven't gotten the zombie tied down. shit, we better call in security."
security walks down to ER thinking, "probably someone on drugs flipping out." not really in a superlative hurry. security is speechless when they walk in and see all the blood and shouting. it's still shouting right now, no screams yet.
that comes when the nurse that got bit comes back to life. now instead of 10 against 1, it's 9 against 2 and the situation has gone from grave to critical.
this all happens within 10 minutes of sarah polley getting in her car.
and it's happening everywhere -- every time i think i've plumbed the depths of the horror on-screen, that thought comes in like the cigarette after that 6th whiskey sour -- in ERs all over the city this is happening.
this may be the decisive layer of all of this: the people who first had to confront the zombie menace are the caregivers. the hospitals and ambulances and police stations are the first places hit. so when the menace hits the populace at large, we're already screwed because our ordinary crisis response has been disabled. worse because, as jordan put it, now they're playing for the other team.
imagine how awful it must have been for the first vanguard of terrified family members bringing sons and daughters and parents and grandparents to the hospital, only to discover that the situation is worse there than it was at home.
November 26, 2006 11:20 PM
I'm glad you mapped all that out, notmarc, because I continue to have some doubts in the back of my mind about the premise change (zombie-bitten people only) and the spread of the zombies. (And I love your scenario; it's close to what I was picturing but it's much more detailed and the details are all good.)
But what I mean is, if it doesn't start with the "recently deceased," how does it start? It's a chicken-and-egg problem; you know what I mean? In the DVD commentary, Zack Snyder says, "there's some controversy about the 'recently deceased,' like in Night of the Living Dead, but how far back does it go? Would you have Abraham Lincoln walking around? And how would those older corpses even move without muscles and stuff?' ('Yeah, this is a documentary,' the producer insists. By now I'm laughing because all I can think is, 'Is this the end of zombie Shakespeare?')" All of this directly contradicts Day of the Dead where denuded bloody skeletons are moving around and it's determined that you don't even need your entire brain to function as a zombie.
If if doesn't start in graveyards, morgues etc. then it either spreads or it starts simultaneously in different locations around the globe, right?
I guess we have to write the whole thing off to an ignorance that's never appeased. Remember the guy at the Center for Disease Control in the opening title montage. ("Is it a virus?" "We don't know." "How does it spread? Is it airborne?" "Airborne's a possibility; we don't know." "Is this an international health hazard or a military concern?" "Both." "Are these people alive or dead?" [pause] "We don't know.")
I played it four times just now and some zombie snarl gets in the way, but I'm reasonably sure that the reporter says "international" and not "national" health crisis. We do see a guy who's clearly meant to be on a Baghdad "green zone" hotel balcony (whom Zack Snyder calls "our embedded reporter") who's reporting on the crisis. I especially like that part because we suddenly swish-pan over to the vestibule of the hotel suite as someone shouts "My God, they're here! as zombies burst in, quickly overpower the too-slow USMP at the door and then converge on the camera.
So, "We don't know."
But you're 100% correct about what happens at hospitals and police stations. As Ana left the hospital, I was thinking, what the hell is beginning in there, behind her? What condition is the hospital in just an hour later? Remember the ambulance that plows into the friendly neighbor from across the street (in the bathrobe) pointing the gun at Ana? (Another smooth digital effect from "Mr. X," the Canadian firm that also worked on Silent Hill) What has to be going on for an ambulance to drive full speed into a pedestrian, throw him ten feet in the air, and continue without slowing?
November 27, 2006 3:11 AM
Jordan, wow, damn! Please don't take my lack of comments (or Summerisle's for that matter) as a sign of disrespect for this excellent essay on all things zombie - Summerisle is here with me on the East Coast right now and we've been in Vermont where internet access has been limited. I'm now back at work and I've been inundated with email, which I need to tackle. I plan on going through this more carefully as soon as someone cancels!
November 27, 2006 5:52 AM
Excellent work, Jordan. I wanted to hit this point by point last night but I just had to put that effort into wrapping up my reviews.
First of all, I want to say how heartwarming it is to see the amount of thought I’mnotMarc has put into the scenario of me turning into a zombie. In response, let me wish you the speed and nerve to pull that trigger or twist that knife in my remaining eye socket while there’s still time. And if you miss, please know I will prize the taste of your flesh above those victims of mine I never knew in life; when I’m in a corner gnawing on your forearm and I see your tattoo, my zombie heart will swell with all the fond nostalgia my congealing blood can sustain.
1. Embarrassingly the only other example I can recall is Night of the Comet, which Summerisle reviewed last year.
2. Cool! It’s great to see directors who not only love the source material like a fan, but also use that fan’s perspective to create such good horror. Hostel is similarly chock full of homage material, although it’s alluding to a number of different flicks in the canon.
3. When the remake came out, Summerisle and I got into a thing about Romero’s zombies being of the bite/no bite variety, a debate which got largely side-tracked by my thinking that Steven in original Dawn doesn’t get bit (wrong!). This time I watched them all closely, and still the answers aren’t too clear until Land. One of the soundbites in the opening credits of Land of the Dead says: “Any dead body will get up; being bitten just makes it that much faster.” This is borne out when a man commits suicide by hanging, only to come back and hassle his family. Day of the Dead shows us the reanimated head of a soldier who dies by friendly fire, then confuses us by not showing a headshot when Frankenstein is killed. He doesn’t get up, so maybe there was a headshot we didn’t see. Hard to think zombie-hardened soldiers wouldn’t think to do that. Original Dawn gives us nothing to work with, really, and Night has the woman who is trowelled to death arise, but maybe she got bit and we didn’t see it.
I’mnotMarc’s ER scenario is an excellent scenario; you could see how a fast zombie outbreak would explode while a slow one might be stopped. Of course, unlike us, nobody immediately understands the zombie-bite scenario they’re in. Hence the wonderful references to "civil unrest."
4. Yeah, those are great titles. I love that by the time they kick in, you’ve forgotten you haven’t seen them yet because the movie is rocking so hard.
5. The formula of zombie story = end of civilization reminds me of two things. The first is just the wry observation that “zombie” as a singular noun is never the whole story. It’s always “zombies.”
The second is something I said to justify 28 Days Later as a zombie flick: “What you do get is the end of civilization, the triumph of entropy, and the enemy is us.” The simple fact that the mechanism of this blunt-force armageddon is our own bodies always leads me to think it’s our fault somehow. Our appetites are turned on ourselves, and even dogs get a free pass. This is carried by the zombies’ eerie ability to tell the living from their own ranks – it’s like they received a basic, merciless command to take us down. And, as Jordan pointed out in his Dawn ’04 review, these days none of us are going to be 100% surprised.
6. Your Schrödinger's Cat thing cracked me up. The closing credit sequence is, of course, the reason I pointed out that I can sail a boat when I reviewed it. My team could’ve looked for another island, maybe.
I saw the remake in the theater with I'mnotMarc and Summerisle, who turned to me afterwards and said "how come the movies I watch with you guys never have any survivors?"
“Zombie Island,” heh. I love that word zombie – I was psyched to see you bring up Zombie Shakespeare when you did. I would say that adding “zombie” to any word makes that thing better, but that’s only true if you’re not actually dealing with that thing.
I agree: they probably should’ve given the mall another shot.
7. It’s incredible how singular the Dawn remake’s opening is. Good directors make it look easy; it’s like that piece of the story was always there waiting for us to tune in. Amazing.
8. Right you are, Jordan. Unfortunately critics are just as likely to slap labels on things like the marketing departments from which they’re supposedly trying to protect us.
November 27, 2006 10:37 AM
Ahhh, Octopunk commentary. Excellent.
Remember that it's NOT the end of the world in 28 Days Later, which I think is the actual dealbreaker regarding whether they're zombies or not.
My concern with the "bite"/"no bite" dilemma is purely about the global spread. I want it to make sense that you just can't beat it.
Remember in The Stand that the U.S. DELIBERATELY spreads the "blue" virus overseas. (Assholes.) But one of the generals writes at one point, "It's not isolated. We had our chance at 'isolated' in Arnette and we blew it." I love that part. It wasn't until this year's Horrorthon discussion that I realized that Stu Redman could have prevented the entire fucking thing by NOT turning off the Texaco station pumps (the first thing he or anyone does in the "real" version of the book): the station would have blown up in a huge fireball, destroying the virus; the end. I never thought of that.
I don't know why it's so important to me that 2004 Dawn be about "legit" zombies: they must be DEAD and they must be EATING US or it's no good.
November 27, 2006 10:51 AM
I just put this in an email, but I can put it here too:
Do enough people in 2004 Dawn get eaten (or partially eaten) by zombies to get the idea across? There aren't really any scenes of groups of zombies totally chowing down on legs, intestines etc. like in the Romero flicks. Do you think it maybe comes across too 28 Days Later? It's important that the audience recognize that we're their FOOD (rather than just walking into the theater with that information the way we do.)
November 27, 2006 10:52 AM
I must emphasize that Zack Snyder is directing Watchmen.
November 27, 2006 10:53 AM
"My team could’ve looked for another island, maybe."
Are you sure? It's just not looking good for their voyage no matter what. I'm not sure that bad seamanship is the problem. They run out of fuel; a fire starts on board; worms eat the food (that part's confusing) and they find a dinghy with a zombie head in a cooler. (What the hell happened there? I'd love to hear any plausible theory.)
But they still could make it at the end. The camera drops to the deck; it's ambiguous. But it follows the superb DOTD'04 filmmaking of "you get slammed in the face by the result before you even begin wondering what the cause is."
November 27, 2006 11:08 AM
There's also an eventual victory in Shaun of the Dead, as well. British zombies are pussies, apparently.
I'm pretty sure the Dawn '04 zombies are after us as food, despite the lack of an ol' fashion chowdown scene. They're certainly into biting, that's for sure, and the doofus blonde security guard gets swarmed in the parking garage. If they just wanted to bite and make more of themselves, they wouldn't swarm like that. Aren't there other scenes of cannibalism?
November 27, 2006 11:21 AM
The woman getting devoured by two zombies in the back of the bus (the bus whose driver tries to take Ana's car). (I can't figure out what the dazed naked woman is all about: she's staggering around near the bus, but she's not a zombie and she's not bloody.)
A dude on television says "They seem to feed on warm human flesh." (Then he takes a drink of water so it can sink in.) While he's talking, the CNN-style crawl on the bottom says "AUTHORITIES CONFIRM: CRISIS NOT RESULT OF BIOTERRORISM, GERM WARFARE" [not verbatim].
November 27, 2006 11:27 AM
I don't know if it's me or the fact that I've never seen the unrated version, but I don't know anything about that bus. The guy does go for Ana's car, but I didn't know he was the bus driver, nor did I see the dazed, naked chick.
Afterthought on point #5, about zombie victory: When I looked at the aerial shot you posted in your review, I thought "damn, all that open country, all those houses and nowhere is safe." Why? Because the same forces that shaped that landscape (us) are now the threat. Anywhere people can go, zombies can go.
And I know they can't fly planes and stuff, so don't even go there.
November 27, 2006 12:08 PM
I'mnotMarc's comments on my hypothetical zombification remind me of a creative writing assignment JPX did in high school, in which a Jason-style maniac busts in on one of our sleepovers. I get killed, but JPX and Gary Turgeon survive. Thanks a bunch.
(Admittedly, I lasted longer than our friend John Morse, who didn't even make it out of his sleeping bag.)
November 27, 2006 12:12 PM
"Is this the end of Zombie Octopunk?"
November 27, 2006 12:13 PM
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
November 27, 2006 12:14 PM
"I'mnotMarc's comments on my hypothetical zombification remind me of a creative writing assignment JPX did in high school, in which a Jason-style maniac busts in on one of our sleepovers. I get killed, but JPX and Gary Turgeon survive."
Wait, what? You must be making this up.
That's okay, Octo, Doug didn't know how to fend off a zombie attack either...
November 27, 2006 12:48 PM
whoawhoawhoa! octo gets a burned copy of dawn04? i want one too!
November 27, 2006 4:43 PM