I feel like a lot of zombie fiction where characters know what zombies are and the dangerous of getting bitten end up being semi-satirical comedies. Movies and shows where the idea of zombies didn’t previously exist seem to be a bit more serious from what I’ve experienced. I don’t know if it’s the aura of suspense and mystery or because it leads to more pandemonium.
Nah, good zombie fiction, at least for my taste, requires that the zombies aren’t the main focus of the story. Sure, they’re there, and they’re the most omnipresent threat, the whole reason the world is the way it is; but they should be background stuff, for the most part. What you really want is to focus more on something like, I dunno, man’s inhumanity to man or something like that.
In this case, having a zombie-savvy cast can actually massively improve some of the more hard-hitting moments. For example: instead of choosing to shoot the bad guy or leave him stranded in the desert, the choice is shoot him in the head to give him a quick and painless or do the practical thing and not waste the ammo when the zombies everywhere will do the job just fine. Slower and more painfully, but it’ll get done just the same.
So yeah, those are my thoughts.
When the original Walking Dead comic books came out around 2003 I was just getting back into comics and I remember reading Robert Kirkman’s ideas about what he wanted it to be.
This is exactly what he said. That the original classic zombie movies that he liked — mostly the Romero Living Dead ones — were stories about the people trying to survive. The zombies are secondary and, sometimes, even kind of ridiculous (see Dawn of the Dead, one of my favorite movies).
I thought the Walking Dead TV show and the comics after a certain point went into more gore porn, so I tuned out.
But you’re 100% right for me. George Romero made zombie movies to look at people. Not the zombies.
