Zombies Aren't The Real Monsters
maybe it's us
They shamble clumsily around, unthinking and uncaring, baleful and brain-dead, bumping into things, terrifying decent people, driven by evil and primitive urges and no, I’m not talking about that MAGA lot. I mean Zombies (although I’ll grant you it’s not always easy to tell the difference). However it’s not my intention to mock any Trump-deluded cultists here, even if it’s hard to resist. I was just wondering why we seem to be so fascinated by Zombies.
We are, you know. I was flicking through Netflix and Amazon recently looking for something vaguely late-night watchable and you wouldn’t believe the number of Zombie movies and TV series. Or perhaps you would. I was surprised, though. ‘The Walking Dead’ is a monster hit on TV, as was ‘Z Nation’ and ‘iZombie’ while in the cinema things like ‘Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies’, ‘Big Tits Zombie’, ‘The Evil Dead’, and ‘Rockabilly Zombie Weekend’ have all, in their time, provided flesh-creeping frissons on the big screen for Zombie lovers.
Personally I’ve never really got their appeal. Zombies don’t actually seem to do much except shamble around slowly, bump into things, and groan despairingly. I do that myself most mornings when I have to get up (and I’m not at all scary) so I’m not impressed. They’re not what I’d call a deadly threat either because even committed couch-potatoes could easily outrun them. As scary monsters go, for me, you really do need a bit more menace than Zombies can manage.
And since Zombies aren’t particularly scary, I struggle to see why else they might appeal. I can quite easily accept the perverse allure of Vampires, with all of that neck biting and getting to stay up really late and have torrid nights in boudoirs and so on. And werewolves are pretty cool too because, honestly, which of us hasn’t fancied loping through summer fields at midnight with the long grass tickling our tummy while we howl at the moon ? Or is that just me ? Anyway, I can see why anyone might go for a bit of nocturnal neck-biting or lycanthropy but who would want to be a Zombie ? And why ?
Maybe it’s more to do with us than the creatures themselves. Vampires and werewolves tend to be shown in popular entertainment as individuals, each with their own personality and complicated life-story going on. They’re relatable. Zombies, on the other hand, generally aren’t. They’re objectified and usually appear anonymously in masses. Maybe this is what explains their appeal to movie-makers. Perhaps they’ve shrewdly worked out that there are millions brought up on endless war and ‘shoot-em-up’ computer games who find pleasure in mindless mass killing and maiming as long as the premise of the entertainment sets up some slight justification.
We’re told it’s okay to kill zombies or watch them being destroyed. Lots of them. Blow them apart with shotguns, chop off their heads, hack off their limbs, beat them, batter them, blow-up, annihilate, and destroy them. The more the better because they’re just zombies. They’re the bad guys, not even human, and we need to do it to them before they do it to us. They’re dehumanized, the same way Trump dehumanizes refugees and immigrants by calling them ‘vermin’ that he will rid the country of. Vermin. Not human. So it doesn’t matter what’s done to them. Like zombies.
Of course I may be totally wrong. I often am. There may be complex cultural reasons for the huge current popularity of zombie movies. Or people could like the Zombs for the way their body-parts fall off comically at unexpected moments. Or it may just be a passing entertainment fashion because Vamps have been rather done to death (no pun intended) in recent years. Who knows ?
But if the huge appeal of the Zombie genre is, either entirely or in part, that we as a species just love the idea of splattering and smashing other creatures, if we revel in slaughter and destruction, then what does that say about us ? And who then are the real monsters ?
Stephen King once wrote, in a book called ‘It’, “Eddie discovered one of childhood’s great truths. Grownups are the real monsters”. Maybe he was right.
Wolf Hour
I see your connection to the current issues in the US and how these people feel like zombies. I think of zombies as an example of our existential dread come to life on screen.
I think we love zombie movies not just because they’re thrilling or gory, but because they tap into something deeper — a fear of losing control. Zombies are terrifying because they were once us. They look like us, move like us, but they’ve lost everything that makes us human: choice, reason, empathy, even identity. (Sound familiar to MAGA right now? 😉 Sorry, too easy to connect those.)
At their core, zombie stories are about transformation. The idea that something (a virus, a system, a trauma, a hunger) can override our minds and turn us into something else. Something less. We fear becoming that — not just the monsters outside, but the ones we might become ourselves.
They also play with survival: What do we cling to when the world ends? What matters when civilization falls? Who do we become when everything familiar is stripped away?
So maybe the real addiction, and fear is because they show us what happens when we lose the things we think make us us. That’s not just horror. That’s existential dread. And as we get closer to “end times,” it makes people think how they’d respond.
" Zombies don’t actually seem to do much except shamble around slowly, bump into things, and groan despairingly. I do that myself most mornings when I have to get up "
That was funny !
Your other, main point about how we see people as the other and the masses... Is interesting but..
Same can be said about "alien invasion" movies and other genres.
And you say, if I understand correctly, that these movies are made to maybe... subconsciously have people to think and believe that "the other" is the enemy etc.
I think it's the other way around.
It's because we are like that, is why we make those movies and books.