Archive for the ‘State of the Zombie’ Category
Saturday, October 16th, 2010
Editor’s Note: We haven’t published anything in a long time, and you have our greatest apologies for that. It’s been a busty few months, but we’re hoping to bring you more fresh zombie fiction in the future.
It took me a long time to get around to finally seeing George Romero’s new zombie offering, Survival of the Dead. There wasn’t any real reason for it. Yes, some bad reviews gave me pause – but Romero’s films are always subject to the critical eye of people who I feel “just don’t get it” (sorry if that’s a cop-out). But as a writer who occasionally works as a critic, I can’t just shake off the reasoned opinions of my contemporaries. Even if they’re wrong.
Tags: dawn of the dead, diary of the dead, george a. romero, george romero, land of the dead, night of the living dead, review, reviews, survival of the dead, zombies
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Thursday, April 29th, 2010
Zombies shuffle through Hollywood
I’ve taken a bit of a break from zombie fiction for a few weeks in favor of participating in Script Frenzy, a month-long script-writing social event that encourages people to get out and write for a month. Having just finished, my thoughts have turned back to zombies.
Last weekend, my journalist girlfriend Caitlin M. Foyt and I decided to go check out the So.Cal Zombie Walk, a gathering for charity that had participants covered in makeup and stumbling down Hollywood Boulevard’s Walk of Fame. Caitlin was searching for a stranger to interview for her blog project, BeautifulStrangerLA.com, which documents her meetings with various interesting people throughout Los Angeles. (As it turned out, she found Chanel Jensen, who was dressed as a zombie Marilyn Monroe.)
Tags: Beautiful Stranger, Caitlin M. Foyt, Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles, Marilyn Monroe, Phil Hornshaw, So.Cal Zombie Walk
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Monday, March 15th, 2010
Editor’s note: We know it’s been a really, really long time since we posted here. Sorry about that. Site master Phil Hornshaw recently made a cross-country move from the suburbs of Detroit, Mich., to Los Angeles. Things have been a little hectic. Our apologies.
Recently, I was wandering the Internet trying to think of things to blog about here – my recent 2,500-mile move having left me without nearly any DVDs to speak of, including films of the undead variety – and I stumbled on a forum question in which someone was interested to learn exactly why it is that zombies seek out and devour the living.
Tags: cannibalism, Phil Hornshaw, questions answered, why zombies eat people, zombie explanations, zombie questions
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Monday, January 25th, 2010
Recently I watched for only the second time “Night of the Comet,” a mid-80s zombie movie making use of one of pop culture’s favorite zombie-making horrors, cosmic radiation.
The movie’s not great. A campy, tongue-in-cheek horror/comedy that includes maybe three total zombies in the whole film, “Comet” is fun but brings little to the fold as far as progressing the genre. In fact, it’s only barely a zombie film to begin with: radiation from the comet turns people into homicidal monsters, that’s true, but the process is so gradual that most characters spend the film stuck somewhere between human and monster.
Tags: Night of the Comet, Phil Hornshaw, talking zombies
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Saturday, January 9th, 2010
I find the concept of fast versus slow zombies to be almost inconsequential, because neither iteration is particularly better or worse than the other.
Of course, fast zombies on the whole are more deadly. They sprint up and attack you, making an individual much more dangerous than their slow-moving counterparts.
Slow zombies, of course, are much less difficult to deal with, and their strength isn’t in being especially dangerous, but in being surprising or attacking in heavy numbers. Whenever one considers a zombie outbreak, the sheer fact that it’ll take humanity a few minutes to realize what the hell is happening is what gives slow zombies time to multiply.
Tags: apocalypse, fast zombies, Phil Hornshaw, slow zombies, survival
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Monday, December 14th, 2009
The other day while perusing my favorite tech blog, I came across the a loosely zombie-related post (someone had re-done Star Wars movie posters to appear as though zombie flicks) and noticed the following exchange among the comments:
"What’s with all the zombie stuff lately?"
"Yeah. They’re like the new vampires."
My initial thought was that this comment displayed an ignorance of monster history. Truly, the two super-natural genres share little cultural commonground: vampires have often been lumped in with monsters of old (Frankenstein, Mummies, and other manner of creatures found in Van Helsing), while zombies have been something very much their own.
Tags: genre, monsters, Nick Hurwitch, vampires, wrath, zombies
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Saturday, December 5th, 2009
There’s the technicality in the realm of zombie movies that some fans take to heart.
It’s born of films such as Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, which die-hard zombiites are quick to point out is not, in fact, a zombie film. It’s a movie about murderous psychopathic humans, made evil by a virus they pass to the people they attack, provided those people don’t die from said attack.
But they’re not zombies – they’re not driven by any kind of paranormal or extra-special force. They’re just crazies.
Tags: Phil Hornshaw
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Monday, November 23rd, 2009
“Left 4 Dead 2,” the sequel to phenomenal zombie-blasting title for the Xbox 360, was released last Tuesday (Nov. 17), to heavy fanfare. Whereas the predecessor enjoyed good sales, the hype surrounding “L4D2” was standard for blockbuster titles in the gaming world.
It’s another zombie game that’s received considerable attention, and to me, it’s indicative of the success the genre enjoys across several media.
But video games have done more for the modern zombie than anything or anyone since George A. Romero.
Tags: Phil Hornshaw
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Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
The trailers for “Zombieland” excited me, but I was wary because of the fact that more often than not, zombie movies are funny inadvertently. A purposely funny zombie movie is almost unheard of and I generally despise them because of their penchant for mocking the genre rather than commenting or expounding on it.
What we get in “Zombieland” isn’t a mockery, luckily, but the film isn’t exactly ground-breaking. I got the impression that the film would be a lot like “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” but with zombies, and I was pretty much dead on in that regard.
Tags: Phil Hornshaw, reviews, Zombieland
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Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
Things are changing.
“Wrath of the Damned” previously found its home on blogspot.com, and the hosting service met our needs for the early part of this project. We needed somewhere to house our stories – and that’s all we needed.
That’s no longer the case.
I always thought that the “Wrath” project was different from other pieces of zombie fiction because of our attitude about the genre. The Zombie Story has experienced (suffered?) a resurgence in the last decade or so, but to be honest, I’ve never been that impressed by what I’ve seen.
Tags: new site, Phil Hornshaw
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