Zombies aren't so scary when they're fast

So as I mentioned two posts ago, I watched the remake of Dawn of the Dead with Canada's own Sarah Polley last night as part of an attempt to scare myself into not feeling lonely. And while the film did have a lot of shocks and "Bleah!"-boogeymen-jumping-out-of-dark-corners scares, it entirely lacked the haunting sense of dread that has invariably stayed with me whenever I've watched a zombie movie.

Now, when it comes to scary movies I'm about the biggest wimp there is (shut up Hansen), so the fact that I watched a good chunk of the film from my kitchen table rather than the living room isn't a surprise. But wheenver I've watched a zombie flick, be it as awful as Resident Evil or as hilarious as Shaun of the Dead (a film I cannot recommend enough, by the way -- if I ever teach pop culture again, that film is Exhibit A), I'm literally sleepless for a week afterward. And it's not the eight-year-old "ohmygawd what's that noise" type of fear (which I do still get, and yet again, shut up Hansen), but the odd fascination I seem to have for that particular apocalyptic scenario ... in other words, I'm not up jumping at noises, but putting myself in my mind in the Omega Man (awful, awful film) situation, imagining my familiar surroundings populated by zombies and (even worse) having to put down friends and family who've been zombified.

Hence, having heard what I've heard about 28 Days Later, I'm not sure this is a film I should see.

At any rate, I kind of expected Dawn of the Dead to have this effect too. I've been wanting to see it anyway, as it was principally filmed in Thornhill Square, a mall right around the corner from my parents' place, where I held two part-time jobs in high school, and which is now in the process of being demolished. And, well, anything with Sarah Polley in it is a good thing.

But it didn't faze me. And the conclusion I've come to is that it's the zombies themselves -- instead of the inexorable, lumbering, barely vertical George A. Romero species, in this version we have very swift zombies that positively sprint toward their prey. While that makes for some better jump-in-your-seat scares, it lacks the dread that comes with the spectre of inexorability implicit in hundreds of slow-moving zombies. The Romero versions suggest a terrifying mindlessness that the remake lacks -- we have countless scenes where the zombies turn, see a human, and fixate ... immediately leaping into a sprint to attack. Never mind the logical gap (lumbering slow zombies at least nod toward the notion that reanimation of the dead probably has some difficult physical issues to deal with); this new element suggests a consciousness that somehow makes the undead less frightening.

Actually, the best interpretation I've heard of this new film is that, while the zombies of Night of the Living Dead were (a) thinly veiled communists, or (b) mindless conformists and the ones of the original Dawn were mindless consumers, the zombies of the remake are terrorists -- innocuous until they spot their quarry, at which point their attack is swift and deadly.

My own take is that swift zombies are more amenable to gun culture. While slow zombies are easily dispatched with a cricket bat, a la Shaun, swift zombies require firearms. All the more reason to stock up on your guns, middle America ... who knows when the UN or the zombies (tomato, tomato) are coming?