Alive in Retrospect: The Walking Dead and My Weekend Date With the Zombies

My aversion for zombies was largely caused by the unspoken supernatural onscreen competition between them and vampires, where zombies are characterized as repulsive, while vampires are arguably portrayed as hot and desirable. (Yes, I'm talking about Damon Salvatore for that matter)

But it was only until 2 weeks ago when I saw two zombie-inspired films that I gave zombies a chance.

I watched Warm Bodies and World War Z on the same day (the former on my PC on Sat morning and the latter on cinema that afternoon) and that, I guess, was my first foray to zombieland.

Warm Bodies and World War Z differ both in genre and style. Warm Bodies is a romantic love story between a zombie and a human, where the undead are slowly capable of emotions, especially love, and may present the possibility of them becoming human-like once again. World War Z, on the other hand, is a heavy-themed apocalyptic horror movie that follows a former UN investigator's journey in finding a cure to a zombie-like pandemic.

Nicholas Hoult (Warm Bodies) vs. Brad Pitt (World War Z)

And because the two films' portrayal of the undead are so different from one another, it intrigued me how zombies are portrayed in other shows.

That's when I convinced myself to finally give Walking Dead a slot in my evening dates with the computer.

Almost everyone in the office raves about how amazing The Walking Dead is (and I didn't really care cause I already have enough fandoms to belong to). But since all of my fave TV shows like The Vampire Diaries, Nikita, Arrow aren't back until Fall, I finally hit play button for this critically-acclaimed show.

Walking Dead

Play Season 1

At first I found it boring and dragging compared to the fast-paced feel of The Vampire Diaries and Nikita where so many things happen in just one episode. And, the first episode is 1 hour long! But when you patiently sit on it and wait for the story to unfold, it can actually hook you in the long run because it follows the life of a group of people and the challenges they face in order to survive in a zombie-infested community, whatever the cost.

What took me so long to watch this are the presence of violence and gruesomeness. Okay, let's skip the violence part since Nikita, TVD and Arrow have their fair share of violence to brag about, but the gruesomeness – goodness! – is something I find hard to stomach.

Ravens feeding on a dead cat, zombies competing over the flesh of a horse, flies feasting over dead bodies in the streets - from opening credits to the last second of the episode – Walking Dead never fails to deliver the sporadic thrill required from a horror show.

Let's give the Walking Dead production team enough credits for the effective use of make-up and for making these zombies look so real and despicable on screen. This, plus the interesting relationship of characters to one another, is what makes Walking Dead such a commercial and critical success.

Just this Saturday, I finally finished the 6^th episode of Walking Dead (that's how long it took me, sorry!) and I realized it was worth the try after all. Paging Fritz Flores, give this damn thing a chance, too! :D

To suffice my growing curiosity for the undead, I watched 28 days Later (2002) and 28 weeks later (2007) last weekend, after reading movie reviews that compared World War Z to the two first mentioned movies.

Yes I know, 28 Days and 28 Weeks were so long ago and I sounded much of a loser to have not watched them until the weekend, but this is because I was never into this type of genre. I only got to expand my film options a few years back when I realized I'm too old for Lindsay Lohan's and Hilary Duff's teenage rom-coms. *facepalm*

Going back to 28 Days (Cillian Murphy and Naomie Harris) and 28 Weeks Later (Jeremy Renner and Rose Brynes), the films focus on how the spread of epidemic has threatened the people of Britain at the brink of extinction.

In fact, some scenes in 28 Days Later resembled those in Walking Dead and 28 Weeks Later to World War Z. Cillian Murphy's waking up alone at the hospital in the height of a zombie-apocalypse was similar to Andrew Lincoln' scene in Walking Dead Season One's 1^st episode. In the same way the fast-moving zombies in 28 Weeks Later was similar to the super duper fast-moving zombies of World War Z. And I'm betting Pepsi was a major sponsor for 28 Days and World War Z. Agree, anyone?? :D

Hypothetical Question: if someone was bitten by a zombie, should you chop the part of the body that was bitten just like what Brad Pitt did to the female soldier in World War Z to preserve the person's life? Or should you kill the person mercilessly because he runs the risk of infecting everyone like in 28 days later?

After the many hours I've spent lately in front of the computer watching zombie-related stuff, here's what I realized: the body-chopping, blood-splattering, head-shooting scenes do not disgust me anymore.