Zombies. The undead. The walking dead. The living challenged. Whatever you want to call them, they’re everywhere. Zombie films have been around since the beginning of cinema and are now more popular then ever. What is it about the undead that continues to fascinate and terrify audiences? Zombies are the physical representation of what we fear most: Death and the unknown. Not only do they embody the fear of what happens after death, even further than that, zombies reflect the greatest fears of each era.
White Zombie (1932) is given credit for being the first feature length zombie flick
The film centers around a maleficent master of voodoo in Haiti who turns a young woman trapped in a bizarre love triangle, into a member of living dead. America was experiencing an influx in immigration. The idea of strange, new people infiltrating in the country brought animosity and fear to America. White Zombie plays on that fear as an innocent American girl is put into an unbreakable trance by voodoo. The zombie in this film is your typical slow moving, non contagious zombie.
The King of Zombies (1941) is a film about a couple who crash lands at the doorstep of a Nazi Doctor who has harnessed the power of voodoo to raise the dead for his own diabolical purposes. The America public was well aware of Germany’s cruelty and inhumane treatment of Jews during the Second World War. Hitler was thought to have a fascination with the occult. Hitler used science in terrifying ways, such as using fertilizer products to make nerve gas. Zombies could be produced in a terrifying rate using this mad scientist’s formula.
Night of the Living Dead (1968) is the most famous zombie film ever produced.
This is the first time zombies are seen as hunters that could leave their environment to seek out food sources, albeit slow moving predators. It was believe the zombies were caused by radiation given off by an exploding space probe. In the heart of the cold war, radiation given off by an atomic bomb was a very real fear for many people. Even the Congress and Senate had a secret fallout shelter nestled in West Virginia to escape radiation from an atomic device.
In 2002, films like 28 Days Later and Resident Evil gave rise to the zombie apocalypse. The faster moving zombies physically represent the quickened spread of the flesh eating undead. In other words, with these guys after you, you’re screwed. These films displayed the public’s fear in gene alteration and the idea of super-viruses that could spread with such speed that escape was virtually impossible.
Zombies are the loss of a person’s uniqueness and humanity. Zombies feed on other humans turning their victims into someone devoid not only of life, but individual essence. Cannibalism is just one of the frightening elements. In each period of time, these films capitalized on the fear that was known, but unknown so seemingly plausible. As knowledge and experience change so evolves the zombie, the embodiment of the new fear.
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Film posters for ''White Zombie'' ''King of the Zombies'' and Night of the Living Dead all used in accordance to Wikimedia Commons
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