Zombie Cliche Lookout: Seeing the Forest for the Trees
Focus is often a double-edged sword. While it can allow you to divert all your attention to performing a single task to the best of your abilities (stabbing a zombie in the face and cracking wise over it’s bleeding corpse, for instance), it can also lead you to miss important details around you.
This tunnel vision can be deadly in the zombie apocalypse. In fact, I would argue that it is one of the leading causes of death in zombie movies (behind letting your guard down, or simply being expendable by nature of that fact that you are not the protagonist).
About this Episode:
While seeing grotesque acts of violence perpetrated on zombies is certainly fun, there’s only so many zombies we can watch Clark stab in the face before we start to question how this is advancing the story. Therefore I thought it appropriate for our intrepid survivalist to realize that discretion is indeed the better part of valor, and beat a hasty retreat into the forest.
Of course he left in sort of a hurry, so he’s leaving behind his tent, supplies, and – sadly – those sunglasses that made him look just like Stewart. Life can be hard sometimes.
Discussion Question: Your Favorite Zombie Flick
Since last episode’s discussion question ruffled a few feathers, I figured we’d go with something easy and fun this time around: what is your absolute favorite zombie flick, and why?
For the purpose of this discussion, I define favorite as the film you most enjoy watching, not the one you would consider more important, or objectively better. For instance, if you think the original Night of the Living Dead is an incredible important movie for the genre, but you’d rather watch 28 Days Later, then Night isn’t going to be your favorite.
Update: New Page Added
I complete forgot to mention, Bo was kind enough to put together an extensive live of survival and preparedness terms, abbreviations, and acronyms. I have built a page for this; the Survival Glossary can be found here. Thanks for your hard work, Bo!
I have no favorites. In fact, you could say I am not even a fan of zombie movies. However, my aunt is, and thus I saw several while I was living with her for a time. I do like watching them when they are on, but I do not buy zombie movies or go out of my way to see them.
Hmmm… If I had to choose though, I would probably go with the Walking Dead. I only saw the first season, but I connected with the characters more than the movies I saw, which tend to focus more on people dying than living. (Hard to connect with a character when they only live for about 45 minutes run time.)
Hey Bob, The Walking Dead is a good one, I’ll bet a lot of people count that as their favorite.
BCN, on the table of contenents, it stands for Boron, Carbon, and Nitrogen. Was that on purpose for did they do that because it sounded like a good name?
I don’t believe they based their name on the Periodic Table, but I guess you never know.
I guess…
For me it’s a tie between Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead. While I do love serious-scary zombie flicks (even if they do tend to give me nightmares), the humor in those two is nearly perfectly balanced with the serious zombie stuff and, in a way, makes them more real than the serious movies.
Shaun of the Dead is a damn fine choice, Darg (I enjoyed Zombieland too, but wouldn’t count it in my top three).
It’s hard to nail down a favorite… Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead are fun movies, and I’ve re-watched them both quite a few times, but I can’t classify them as favorites…
I would have to say Diary of the Dead is the zombie flick at the top of my list. I find myself watching it much more frequently than any other. I’m a fan of the video documentary style, and I love how the movie concentrates more on the reactions of this small group of survivors instead of just basic survival as they are picked off. I also love the minor tie-in with Survival of the Dead.
Dan.
Diary of the Dead, eh? I remember being quite disappointed with that when I watched it, but perhaps I need to check it out again.
I’d probably call it a tie between Shaun of the Dead and the original Night of the Living Dead. Dawn of the Dead is close too, but Shaun and Night get watched the most by far.
Hoo boy… favorite zombie flick?
Original Dawn of the Dead, maybe… but it’s got pacing problems…
I do, oddly, almost like the remake of Dawn better.
Shaun of the Dead is excellent, as is Zombieland.
Masters of Horror: Dance of the Dead is awfully effective.
Army of Darkness? Braindead?
Nah. I’m going old-school. Original Night of the Living Dead for me. Gave me nightmares as a little boy, but now I think it’s unrivaled.
I would agree about the pacing problems with the original Dawn. It also has that god awful pie fight that just takes me right out of the movie.
Hmm… Favorite zombie flick?
Recognizing that my favorite this morning might not be my favorite tomorrow, right now it’s the Dawn of the Dead remake. I don’t know why. It’s full of holes. I think I like it because to me it represents stupid people in a really decent situation. That is, of most zombie movies I’ve seen, the characters have the best resources, maybe short of the .gov guys at the beginning of 28 Weeks Later. So you’ve got these people shut up in a shopping mall (that still has power, natch), and they’re so stupid, so dysfunctional and unorganized, that they still can’t survive. I really enjoy yelling at the TV whenever I see it, “OMG, you’re so stupid!. Can’t you rig a LADDER from one building to the next!”
Um, yeah, not exactly rational, or maybe even healthy; but it’s fun.
I have very similar feelings on the 2004 Dawn of the Dead. It’s entertaining, but very frustratingly so.
The part that always makes me crazy is when one characters puts down a steel breaker bar to pick up a flimsy wood croquet mallet just before fighting a zombie. It’s all done as a setup for a pretty awesome effects shot, but good god is it stupid.
Why didn’t they rig up their van in the first half of the movie and use it to rescue their Mall Ninja neighbor? (love that I can use all of those terms with impunity now 😉 )
God, Mall Ninja has got to be one of my all time favorite terms.
If you’ve seen the move Observe and Report you’ve seen a mall ninja. Think about the biggest tactical wannabe you know, decked out in 5.11 brand pants and polo shirt, a photographer’s vest, and Oakley sunglasses, acting like Billy Badass, but having no training or experience to back it up.
That was quite the movie. The perfect answer to that awful looking Paul Blart.
I’mma go hipster here and say.. I don’t like any of the popular zombie movies or films.. I do like zombie books and this one you tube film maker did a good short film that I REALLY liked. I can’t remember the name of it, but I can remember the whole thing from start to end.
I don’t think it’s too uncommon not to like a lot of zombie flicks because – let’s be honest here – most of them are terrible.
well at least he had the decency to run away, oh course my brother and me do something at that point, we call it “Pop the Balloon.” Then its followed by a heavy object to the face. Its a good strataegy.
And what would “Pop the balloon” entail?
groin area of the body, make sure to knee the zombie there before smashing its head open.
I’m not sure hitting a zed in the groin would do you a whole lot of good. Might be kind of cathartic though.
its actually a good place to knock someone back, but im thinking about adding cleets to my Post Apocoliptic list.
If I encountered one zombie, I’d probably go for the balls too – not because I expect it to be that effective, but to find out how effective it would be. Knowing exactly what you’re dealing with is important. If I got the chance, I’d probably try to ward them off with fire for pretty much the same reason; to see if I can.
Or if you wanted, you could grab a zombie by its neck, ring it real hard, then throw it off hte edge of a building, its gaurantied to get you results.
Sounds like it belongs in an action/horror flick.
if you really have those abbs, you probibly could
im not saying that you dont by the way
Sadly, I don’t. In real life I’m less well-muscled. Hairier though.
LIES! Still, i can barley lift my couch up, so i’ll give you some credit.
Oh I can totally lift a couch.
My neigbors like doing weights with our old piano.
Hmm…going outside of films I prefer The Walking Dead, but sticking to films I don’t have a preference. I generally don’t like horror and action that much though, preferring things that go in other places, like human drama and for that matter comedy.
I think one thing I like about apocalypse-themed fiction is that it could have opportunity for human drama. What happens to people when the thin veil of government authority goes away? If integrity is how one acts when no one is watching, how kind and honest are people really? I think that’s an aspect of the genre that some have explored, and other authors have ignored. That is, there is more conflict than man v. zombie, man v. nature, and man v. man. There is also man versus himself. No mater how bad things get, man has to look himself in the mirror and face his own inner workings and the consequences of his actions. Either he keeps his integrity, or not. If he loses it, will it make him mad? Rick Grimes is a good example of this. His morality becomes relative, and he hates that part of himself, because he’s no longer the deputy. Rule of Law went out the window.
Oh, that’s another acronym you sometimes read describing this situation: WROL, without rule of law, a situation when men rule by dictate or emotion, mob rule
Two of my favorite books explore human stories in the apocalypse: Lord of the Flies and The Road. I highly recommend both.
I remember reading The Road because I was trying to get my mother in-law into preparedness. It was on Oprah Winfrey’s book list; and my mother in-law used to go gaga for anything Oprah Winfrey said ir did, back when she was on television daily.
I went down to the college library and checked it out, and got through it in about three days (it’s really an easy read, with a sparse literary style). Well, I got through it, put it down, and said to myself, “Yeah, I’m not recommending that to my mother in-law”. I was looking for something to help get her motivated to survive, and not make her want to commit suicide. My initial response to The Road was “It’s a ray of sunshine on every page!” (yeah, sarcasm’s not my strong suit).
It is a great human drama; but don’t read it if you’re on a suicide watch list; and definitely don’t read it if you’re thinking of getting into preparedness. It may inspire you to get a shopping cart.
Yeah, The Road isn’t really for getting people into prepping.
But I would argue that it’s not as depressing as it initially seems. I think the book talks a lot about hope, even in the face of overwhelming adversary. That whole “Carrying the fire” thing really stuck with me.
Honestly, I absolutely hated The Road. It may be because of my reflexive anti-hype backlash; I’ve read lots of post-apocalyptic fiction (Alas, Babylon is probably my favorite) and to hear literary-critic types talking about it as if it were so edgy and new, just because it was Cormac McCarthy… sigh. And no, it’s not hopeful. Sorry, Dave; I don’t usually disagree with you so violently. I do love your webcomic, and like thinking about the questions you raise. But The Road is the most damn depressing thing I think I’ve ever read in my life. Carrying the fire… but how far? The ecosystem’s still dead. There is no way out at all. The fundamental problem I have with it is almost the same problem I have with almost all modern horror movies; there truly isn’t hope in them (I despise “stinger” endings in horror movies). I felt with The Road that McCarthy was saying that we’re all ultimately screwed in the end, but it still matters what we do with our lives. Sort of the moral-atheist argument, to which I do not subscribe.
And I don’t find his use of language attractive. It’s terse, grim, and demoralizing, yes, but I find no poetry in it.
Sorry for the rant; blame it on early-morning blues and dealing with crooked carpet-cleaners. I think I’m just especially grumpy right now.
I actually thought the whole point of the movie and the book was to make everyone who read/watched it to be as depressed as possible?
I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one, Steven.
I am a fan of McCarthy and his writing style, which I think is a big part of enjoying The Road.
I also think the hope you get out of it depends a lot on perspective. Is there hope for the continued survival of mankind? No, not so much. The hope is more for the endurance of the human spirit in spite of the horror of the situation.
So I get that it’s about a man that loves his son, and will do anything to keep him safe (short of having him blow his own head off with an old M&P revolver). I get that he’s trying to preserve the boy’s innocence; but like Steve wrote, who cares? The world is still dead. After an unnamed ELE like this (Yellowstone caldera finally letting go, for instance), about the best one can hope for is to have deep preparations. Even then, that might last one lifetime, before humanity slides into extinction.
I ultimately agree that survival fiction should be character-driven with interpersonal conflict; but I don’t take survival advice from pointy-headed literary types on the Oprah Winfrey book club list. 😉
Yeah, it’s not at all a preppers sort of book, because in the end it doesn’t matter. It’s literary fiction with some post-apocalyptic flavor.
Yes. Run Clark! Run!
As to movie, I’m gonna have to say Shawn of the Dead, followed by the Resident Evil series due to having watched those the most.
Shaun of the Dead has been getting name checked all day. Damn fine movie.
I can sort of get behind Resident Evil as dumb fun, but something it goes a little too bizarre for my taste.
This is true. I liked the second movie, as an example of the apocalypse is happening, it’s all falling apart and the third one for doing a Mad Max vibe. But there are elements of it I don’t like.
I’ve never seen any of them, don’t know why, except my wife is not a great fan of zombie movies and I don’t have satellite/cable.
I bet you can make 100 episodes in 1 day.
Oh man, I wish. It probably takes me about a half-hour per episode to shoot and edit together. If there’s a new set involved that time goes up quite a bit.
I’m not sure what my favorite zombie movie is at this point. I think the last zombie movie I saw was Aaah! Zombies!! That had to have been the most silly zombie movie I’ve seen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtV3N9zRrJs
That certainly looks interesting.
I can’t say I’m aware of any other zombie movies that take things from the zombies perspective. I found it interesting how they used color vs black and white to signal if a scene was from the zombie perspective verses or the living human perspective.
I can’t recall any movies from the zombies’ perspectives either. The black and white versus color motif works quite well.
This one here http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1278322/ and personal opinion is don’t waste time with it, it’s low budget and very little dialogue and had me wishing for the 97 minutes back!
But it is a whole film based on the wanderings of a zombie….called Colin…..
Here’s a question for Dave: would the zombification process for your comic storyline turn a runner into a slow shambling zombie or a fast one? 😀
A slow shambler; there aren’t any fast zeds in Bricks of the Dead.
Unlike those Bastard Hunters in L4D
Right you are.
me the original dawn of the dead not dat crappy new one
No way. Vig Rames was a badass with that 870.
“The Remington 870, neutralizing the undead since 1951.”
Dammit.
ViNg Rames.
Leave it to me to post without my cheaters.
The original film was definitely better, but I enjoy the 2004 remake quite a bit as well.
Badass Ving Rames does help.
LAST CoMMENT!
I don’t really get why he’s running; he’s winning here, he got half of them already. I could understand it if there were a lot of them left, but he’s ditching all his stuff for basically no reason here.
Question:
Maybe surprising, but while I like zombies, I think the only zombie film I’ve seen is Shaun of the Dead. I want to watch more, but I’ve never gotten around to it. I’m getting Night/Dawn/Day of the Dead soon, I’ll have to see how I like a straight zombie film.