Caltrops - Peter Molyneux's The Movies





	[quote name="fabio"][quote name="Mischief Maker"]I am not arguing that the Walking Dead's underlying message isn't every bit the garbage everybody's been saying it is. But what's interesting about a zombie movie devoid of message? Zombies in and of themselves are boring. They're easy to kill, easy to outwit, sometimes easy to outrun. Really, the only way they CAN be a threat is if one of the protagonists fucks up.[/quote] It's a popular survivalist fantasy (that gun owners run through their heads daily) of society's rapid breakdown and suddenly you get to be out on your own proving yourself the hero. Zombies are predictable and dim enough so that any shlub gets to become a superhuman gladiator against them, but their numbers make them just enough of a threat that you don't lose tension and it doesn't become boring. Remember your whole appeal of Superman theory? [quote]The thing that makes zombies scary is as a symbol of the inevitability of death.[/quote] Propaganda spread by nerds awarding themselves symbolism points. What separates this from any other horror movie? You're describing <i>Blair Witch</i> and even <i>The Grey</i> more than any zombie movie. Zombie movies are scarey because the outcome is a fate <b>worse</b> than death. You're eaten alive and forced to exist as a mindless decomposing cannibal until someone blesses you with a bullet to the head. Then you have the threat of that happening to loved ones who you're then forced to kill. At least Jason and Michael Myers are done with you after the knife. And what's so exciting about inevitability? It's uncertainty that unnerves us. Uncertainty if things are going to go back to normal and all you have to do is hold out. Compare any zombie movie that takes place right at the outbreak (Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Return of the Living Dead, 28 Days Later, REC) to ones that happen years after (Day of the Dead, Land of the Dead, Diary of the Dead). The former is the better movie every time. Take the fantastic first 10 minutes of <i>28 Weeks Later</i> (and ignore the shitty rest of the movie). The audience already knows there's hope because the first movie told us the zombies starve after two months. All these people have to do is hold out that long, just like the first movie. The chink ends up being the worst part of every zombie movie. The only one I can think of that handled it decently was REC, and at least the <i>Dawn of the Dead</i> remake was so fun up until that point that you really didn't care.[/quote]