Reviews, Interviews , News, Commentaries, My Top 5 Movies, Best-Of Lists, Filmmakers of Faith, Film ForumThe Zombie Apocalypse
In Night of the Living Dead, Ben, the central character, is committed to cooperation and trust, even among total strangers. As those around him succumb to denial, cowardice, stupidity, and guilt, he works to rally and inspire, to protect his companions and try to get to safety. In a dark film, Ben represents active hope. As we watch, we long for a satisfying level of self-sufficiency, for friends that we could trust our life with, for a sense of clear purpose, however bleak that might be. At its best moments, the zombie apocalypse offers that to us.
Christians, of course, can find many familiar images here. With a little allegorical stretching, we can talk about the church as a community of the risen dead, of zombie cannibalism as a perverted Eucharist, of the church's perilous existence as a community out of place in the world as analogous to the band of survivors in a good zombie flick. But we don't need to dig very far at all to find deep meaning in the zombie myths of our culture. Really, the films are about us, about all of us, in this time and place in history, and about our hopes and fears. And those truths, while hard to swallow, give us a whole lot to chew on.
Paul Pastor is assistant editor for Church Law & Tax Group and Global Publishing at Christianity Today.
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Richard Antonowicz
With regard to the Ben character in the movie, "Night of the Living Dead." Turns out that he is wrong about what the group should do. They should have all hid in the basement. The article doesn't seem to take into account what the zombie genre has seemed to evolve to: opportunities to display gratuitous violence. The current storyline of "The Wallking Dead" graphic novel is a case in point. A very likable character who has been in the series since the beginning has his head obliterated by someone yielding a basebat bat. This turn has made me rethink if I want to keep following this series. And it's like someone said in an Amazon.com review. There's not many characters left that you care about.
Douglas schulze
Great article. Very timely. I recently produced a film entitled MIMESIS: NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD that was just released nationwide by Anchor Bay.on dvd. It's at WalMart, Target and most rental outlets. The word Mimesis refers to imitation more specifically the imitation of life in art. The film explores the horror fan subculture and how horror movies fans take their obsession with the zombie film to the "next level". The story asks; what happens when we grow tired of just watching horror films and we decide to start LIVING them. In some ways the film is meant as an homage to Romero's classic but on another level the film seeks to explore the psychology and even spirituality behind our love of zombie films. I say spirituality because the central theme running through the film deals with the notion that today we live in a kind of self made "hell on earth" . Trailer link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZruiiiL_5E or facebook http://www.facebook.com/MimesisMovie?fref=ts .
Matt Slykhuis
Thanks for this one. I often poll my students to see how many have a secret wish to be a survivor in a zombie-apocalypse, and I pretty much always find that a majority of each class raises their hands. I whole heartedly agree that a large part of the allure of this genre is the way it strips away so much of the meaningless trappings of our culture, and asks us to consider what we would be left with in an apocalypse--i.e., beauty, community, terror (often, in this genre, a hope in the transcendent that is ultimately disappointed).