I Am Riding The Zombie Bandwagon And I'm Sad

I've been getting into zombie movies more recently, and it's not a hopping on the bandwagon so I'd seem cool kind of move. It's because of Jonah Ray. The fact that I listen the Nerdist podcast is not a surprise to anyone who knows me, which now includes you. And whenever the topic of zombies comes up, mister Jonah Ray will always come to the educated rescue to inform the listeners of how it will all really go down.

Now I'm as sane as the next person and I know there isn't going to be a zombie apocalypse. At least not tomorrow...Nonetheless, I do enjoy the entertainment aspect of our dreaded demise when it comes to our plight against the living dead. I will pick up movies, tv shows, novels, and graphic novels depicting the inevitable struggle we will all take. And let me just say, I'm not scared.

Is that wrong? These are supposed to be part of the horror genre, so why am I never horrified? I don't believe I've become desensitized to the mass flesh feast. Why is it that no matter what creation I get my hands on, I don't shiver from disturbance?

I recently bought George A. Romero's Land of the Dead ($10 Blu Ray - I thought I would be okay). I wish I hadn't. There was nothing in that film that gripped me to my seat. I actually started playing solitaire on my phone at one point. I could care less for the characters; none were heartwarming, nor I felt a need to cheer for. I felt they were all pretty pleased with themselves and they had no redeeming qualities. Back stories were glossed over for the possibility of more gore, but no gore was to be had. All I found myself saying, out loud at one point, was "Well, you're stupid and deserve to die." No one had any sense of self preservation when it came to surviving. Even Simon Baker's character, Riley (which I had to look up in IMDB because I didn't care enough about him to remember the character name), I thought was an idiot for risking his life for a truck. Too many mistakes had by all and I'm surprised that the characters who did survive actually did.

And only to go to Canada. Because we're so secluded the zombies wouldn't think of coming up to us. And cold. Zombies can't survive in the harsh Canadian winters, right?

Besides the obvious analogies that are usually submersed in Romero's zombie flicks, I didn't care this time. I was too upset by the stupidity of everyone to even look past to see the harsh lesson of the haves vs the have nots and society's grips. Next time, Romero, create people I care about so that when their arm gets gnawed off, I feel some compassion.

But that rant aside, I haven't felt a sense of dread for the decaying mass when they enter the scene. Either the zombies seem cartoonish, or simply unrealistic. In any form of media I just don't find myself thinking I would need to run away from these creatures. The last time I felt worried was while watching Night of the Living Dead. The slow oncoming is what got me and the sense that it would never go away. You could fight, hide, and flee, but nothing would make a difference. It wasn't the appearance of the zombies in the film that frightened me, but the continuous determination they had to eat you that disturbed me. It feels like in current zombie apocalypses, the dead have a different motivation. Let's face it zombie extras, you're just there to eat flesh, not to get on the cover Entertainment Weekly.

If you want to see who's doing it right, just watch AMC's The Walking Dead. ... But that's obvious.