Zombie+Movies

**Zombie Movies** are a sub-genre of horror movies that became popular in the late 1960s. The modern concept of zombies originate from the 1968 film, //Night of the Living Dead//, directed by George A. Romero. Romero mixed the the vampire film with the already established ghoul type of creature. From that, zombies came to be.


 * The Night of the Living Dead (1968) **

//The Night of the Living Dead//, directed by George A. Romero, was released in 1968. This movie took from many older sources and created a truly terrifying and tragic movie. A movie in which no one is saved. It takes from the ghoulish blood drinking of Dracula and improves it a thousand fold. These "ghouls" fed on the flesh of man and woman. The movie was very different from other movies as well, starring an African-American man named Duane Jones as its main protagonist. Many of the old horror cliches established in the past make a frightening reappearance as well. The main characters board themselves up to protect themselves from the flesh-eating ghouls. This movie was the one of the last movies to be featured unrated, meaning anyone could see it. Innovation in the industry turned bad. Children who went to see this were terrified as it went from "delightfully scary halfway through, and be became unexpectedly terrifying." (Ebert) The movie was not fun anymore to the people who saw it. It was a shock for the young people who had seen it, and in the movie industry became one of the reasons a rating system was implemented to the system. The movie's "embedded political commentary on racism" fits in perfectly with out lead hero, again, who happens to be an African-American. This heavily impacted the film world, as it was not based on race that he got the part. Instead, Jones got the part because he his acting was impressive in comparison to the others who had gone for the auditions. (Barshad). It also brought the idea in film that sometimes there are no happy endings. Docu-dramas and some actions films take from this and sometimes make their movies overly brutal to the main characters.


 * The Overused Trope of the 2000s **

In the early 2000s a huge bang in zombie movies occurred. There had been other zombie movies through the past three decades, the seventies to the nineties, but these newer movies became an issue for the horror genre. The genre became to a complete halt, as people began copying each other. If //Night of the Living Dead// was an innovation for the horror genre, every zombie that has come out since 2000 is a unimaginative movie with no place to go. (Ebert) Some movies attempted to renovate the trope of the slow moving monster by making them faster. //28 Days Later// was the first to attempt this by making zombies into humans. It may not seem logical, but "activists set lab animals free from their cages--only to learn that they're infected with a 'rage' virus." (Ebert) This essentially turns humanity against each other. Despite this attempt at renovation, many other movies ignore this trope and went with the for more well-known one. Movie atrocities like //Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis// and the Resident Evil series are examples of non-trying movies that want to make a quick buck from an un-expecting public. (Ebert) //Resident Evil// does make use of any tropes they can find and tries to mix them with other ones, dialogue which consists mostly of "commands, explanations, exclamations, and ejaculations." (Ebert)

Zombies became an innovation for beginners starting out in the movie industry, being easy to make and produce much like exploitation films. This, however, made a catalogue of less-than-desirable films in the 2000s that mix the good ones like //28 Days Later// and the parody //Zombieland//, which makes fun of the overused tropes, with //Resident Evil//. From Universal's //Frankenstein// to Romero's //Night of the Living Dead// to Carpenter's //Halloween//, movies have changed the way other genre of movies use tropes. Tropes that began in the 1930s made their way into later horror movies, which further influenced other genres of movies such as action or science fiction. Things like overarching series, proper uses of music, and introduction to sound film. Due to the overabundance of zombie movies, however, most people do not remember that older horror movies were much more innovative then the ones today, those are the ones that receive their inspiration from the classics. From Universal to Romero, innovations were far and wide, never really ending and only further improving the film industry, which people have come to love so much.

Barshad, Amos. "New York Magazine." //NYMag.com//. NYMag, n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2013. Ebert, Roger. "Night of the Living Dead." //All Content//. Chicago Sun Times, 5 Jan. 1969. Web. 14 Nov. 2013. Ebert, Roger. "28 Days Later." //All Content//. Chicago Sun Times, 27 June 2003. Web. 14 Nov. 2013. Ebert, Roger. "Resident Evil." //All Content//. Chicago Sun Times, 15 Mar. 2002. Web. 14 Nov. 2013.

Wikipedia, Contributors. //Night of the Living Dead.// Digital image. //Wikipedia//. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Nov. 2013. M@storo. //28 Days Later//. Digital image. //The Lighted//. N.p., 21 July 2012. Web. 21 Nov. 2013.