Thursday, July 23, 2009

Don't mess with my Beastie, jerk!

When creating a genre movie, particularly a monster flick, it's up to the filmmakers to put their own unique stamp on the beasties or risk going unnoticed, unrecognized or even worse- unwatched. Sometimes the attempts at re-telling the tale of the same, time-worn monsters in a different way leaves us with a weirdly mixed bag of sparkle vampires, teen werewolves, and boobarellas gone wild. Creativity is one thing, but when you mess with "the Facts"- watch out.

Nowhere is the disagreement over the "true nature" of a monster more divided than with our undead, hungry hero, the zombie.

Perhaps because they are "us" or perhaps because their inherent simplicity makes them so much fun, new interpretations of the zombie can cause die-hard fans to take up (severed) arms against unrealistic or unreasonable portrayals of this most stalwart of monsters.

We are currently living in the age of the super-fast (28 Days series), super-smart - (in zombie terms mind you)( Day of the Dead) and super-subservient (Fido) manifestations of the classic zombie. While some viewers may scoff at the fleet-footedness of the ghoulies in "28 Days" (or outright deny that they are in fact, zombies) or wrestle with the implications of zombies that can learn, or (WTF?) develop emotions, they are all part of one big-flesh eating family.

Our Eaters set a new model. Created by a radioactive blast that keeps the corpses alive and fantastically ravenous, our zeds are neither smart nor particularly fast. Some of them are markedly more aggressive then others. Some attack. Some don't. Or at least, some Eaters are slower than others when it comes to figuring out how badly they want to eat you.

But beware, children, letting a drop of your blood fall free around an Eater. That will get you noticed, in a very, very bad way.

"Bloodlust?" I hear you say, dear reader, "That's vampire shit!"

Well, not anymore. It's EATER shit, friends. The zombie world has changed again.

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