In the forty-five years since the original Night of the Living Dead, there have been eight adaptations. Three are in 3-D, including the upcoming Night of the Living Dead: Origins 3-D. All were made in the 2000’s, save for one in 1990. There have been so many zombie movies lately; it’s no longer considered horror. Zombies have become their own genre. This new genre intermingles with other genres, creating zombie drama, zombie action, zombie comedy, and now zombie romance with the new Warm Bodies coming February 1.
This infection will spread until all movies are based on weak and moaning monsters, and protagonists pushed to their wit’s end. It isn’t the zombies that are the bad news. They’re likeable if you get a zombie once or twice a year; it’s interesting then. It’s when the zombies spread from studio to studio in hoards, until the zombies have their own market, that homogeny sets in. Luckily, there are other more rare and interesting monsters, like the Deadites from the Evil Dead series (which has a remake coming to theatres in April of 2013), running around and wreaking fun havoc.
If we remain complacent and see every zombie movie that is thrown at us, we won’t even be able to defeat other overused and overrated horror baddies (little girls in nightgowns, invisible ghosts caught on video recorders, abnormally large animals, serial killers with unexplained invincibility, etc.).
Let’s start this fight against zombies. For example, World War Z releases June 20 of this year. Let’s start the war against zombies by not watching World War Z.