[[Warning: spoilers everywhere]] This weekend I went to see the movie Dawn of the Dead. In it people are converted into bloodthirsty zombies after being bitten by other zombies. The zombiefication spreads quickly like a virus until zombies take over all of greater Milwaukee and, implied by the opening montage, the entire world. The plot follows a handful of lucky humans who somehow escape the feeding frenzy and hold off zombies by locking themselves in a shopping mall. Not wanting to sit and starve in a mall they craft a plan to drive armored buses through the zombies to a boat
The movie is pretty intense and I enjoyed it even though it was cliché start to finish. Every 10–15 minutes a character dies until only the main characters are left. At the end, just as the main characters are about to make it to safety, one of them reveals he too has been bitten and remains on the pier while others float away. Between the pit stop killings the plot skips along with barely an attempt to be plausible.
Zombies are just like rabid animals. They don’t think and they can’t drive cars or pilot planes. All they do is run you down and bite you. In the movie, the people survive because they’re in a locked mall. Zombies apparently can’t break down doors or take elevators. But, the rest of the city turns into zombies. Zombies even conquer a military base where people flee for safety. It’s absurd to think that the whole city would be overtaken. Plenty of people in highrise offices and apartment buildings would survive. At my office you have to have a special fob to get on the elevator and all staircases are locked. Zombies couldn’t get up here. At most apartment buildings the security is the same. The poor doorman might get bitten but that’s as far as it would go. In the circumstances presented the zombies manage to take over everywhere despite their limitations. Even if they could get up every building it is unlikely they’d be able to spread past an urban area. Between the suburbia surrounding major cities there are vast open areas of rural America. Zombies can’t drive. The ‘virus’ only passes orally so there’s no reason the military couldn’t contain the outbreak within a certain perameter. There’s absolutely no reason a military base with tanks and guns and bombs couldn’t defend itself if the locked doors of a shopping mall can prevent invasion.
The movie also missed plenty of opportunities for meaningful social commentary. The only thing the zombies do is run down people who aren’t zombies yet and bite them. They have no concern for their own well-being, emotions, or reasoning ability. They run. They attack. One could easily use the zombies as metaphors to single-minded, consumerist America. Buy buy buy bigger SUVs, more food till we’re too fat to fit in a seat on an airplane, success determined by possessions, etc. Nope. In the movie they just kill and no one tries to make a message out of it. My favorite exchange in the movie happens when the surviving humans stand on the roof of the mall and see rows of zombies meander to the parking lot. “Why are they coming here,” one character asks. Another answers, “I don’t know, instinct I guess.” Instinct compels mindless humans to a shopping mall? How accidentally poignant.
Zombies don’t really eat people either. If they ate people then when they attacked bodies would be devoured and there wouldn’t be so many zombies. Instead they just bite people and victims turn into more zombies. It seems that the driving compulsion of zombies is not human flesh but replication. Do humans use violence from wars to bar fights just for blood or do we resort to violence primarily to make other people more like us? Don’t ask questions. The blonde girl is being dismembered by a chainsaw!
I know punching holes in plots takes away from the fun of the bloodbath. I know social commentary is not the point of horror. I know by choosing to go see a zombie movie I agree to suspend my disbelief to a ridiculous degree and abandon all hope of art commenting on life. But I wish I didn’t have to. To me the most enjoyable parts of the movie showed officials in press conferences unsure how to handle the zombie problem. The opening includes images of zombies overtaking the lawn of the White House. The breakdown of society is infinitely more disturbing than an individual attack. This is all dismissed as background but I would love to see a horror movie where elements like these are successfully incorporated. Most movies in the genre are like pornos. Violent killings, like animalistic sex, satisfy something basic in us and the “plot” around these parts is filler for atmosphere. What I would like to see is a movie that combines an improbable problem like zombies in a fully believable setting. How would police, military, media, churches, schools, families, and government officials respond to people rapidly changing into the undead? More importantly, how would individuals (complex characters with full identities) respond? I would love a movie that combines the visceral fear of being eaten with the modern complexities of organized society and human relationships. Cognitive horror is the rarest of cinematic gems. If I could relate to a single character or envision living in their world Dawn of the Dead would successfully frighten me. The product now just made me uneasy and somewhat humored. The only thing frightening was the $20 I spent on parking, a ticket, and a slurpee at the theater.
