Hacker Cinema
Day of the Dead
1985 · Film · 101 min
Part of Living Dead Collection
Directed by George A. Romero
As the world is overrun by zombies, scientists and military personnel in an underground Florida bunker must decide on how they should deal with the undead.
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Great article. As an aside, the unshaded "color" GBuffer channel [1] makes me want a game that's fully lit like that.
The original Resident Evil game for PS1 was (because of technical limitations back then) comparatively brightly lit, and it lent the game a weird atmosphere — you have the normalcy of the house, but intruded upon by the supernatural. It's scary in a different way than the newer games, which are darkly lit and rely on jump scares.
The only recent game that comes to mind is Control, and only certain parts of it.
There are a few movies that are lit more naturalistically — The Shining and Day of the Dead come to mind — and I love the effect.
[1] https://mamoniem.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/re_gbuffer_draw_out_color_rgb-scaled.jpg
This is an interesting take on what zombie fiction is about:
> The zombie myth has roots in Haitian slave plantations: they're fairly transparently about the slaves' fear of being forced to toil endlessly even after their death. Then this narrative got appropriated and transplanted to America, in film, TV, and fiction. Where it hybridized with white settler fear of a slave uprising. The survivors/protagonists of the zombie plague are the viewpoint the audience is intended to empathize with, but their response to the shambling horde is as brutal and violent as any plantation owner's reaction to their slaves rising, and it speaks to a peculiarly American cognitive disorder, elite panic.
Contrast this to Christian Thorne [0], who writes:
> Zombie movies are always going to be about crowds. People-in-groups are the genre’s single motivating concern. Other classic movie monsters are like malign superheroes, possessed of special powers, great reserves of speed and strength. What’s peculiar about zombies, when put alongside vampires or werewolves or aliens, is that they are actually weaker than ordinary human beings. They are really easy to kill for a start, because their bodies are already moldering. Their arms will tear clean off. They go down by the dozen. You’re in no danger of being outwitted. They can kill only because they have the numbers, and so that’s the menace that zombie movies are always trying to clarify: The threat of multitudes.
I've watched/read a fair bit of zombie stuff, and I think Thorne is more on the mark about modern zombie movies. -- lots of scenes of zombies breaking down barricades or tearing people out of their cars (America's favorite refuge against crowds!). But movies that try harder to have a point, like the original Day of the Dead, lay it on pretty thick that we are the zombies (who, even after death, return to the mall to amble around). Which is, I think, more in-keeping with a 'zombies are slaves doomed to eternal toil' reading.
Colson Whitehead's 'Zone One' flips the slave/master dynamic by having a mediocre black protagonist advance in post-zombie society way more than he was ever going to pre-outbreak, because the C student who survives in a low-effort way is more resilient than traditional high-achievers.
0: https://sites.williams.edu/cthorne/articles/the-running-of-the-dead-part-2/
That intrigued me as well, so I went to read some Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_of_the_Dead).
Day of the Dead is a southern Mexican celebration that evolved from the assimilation of native culture (Maya and meso-American) into the Catholic calendar (all Saints/all Souls days). It wasn't celebrated much in Mexico City and northern Mexico until recently, pushed on in part by the government celebrating more indigenous culture and creating a national holiday, and then the movie.
In my mind the best zombie films are - Dawn of the Dead (modern version) - The first Resident Evil - 28 Days Later
The common theme in them is they are different and "non cheesy". I hate cheesy horror films (Scream made me laugh so hard ;)).
Dawn of the Dead has fast zombies in (Day of the Dead failed partly because they slowed down :() which is a great idea. The "gritty" camera work also works well with that (the sort of hand camera filmed look) speed as you really get the horror etc.
Resident Evil was just epic full stop. Verged on cheesy but elegantly avoided it. Not particularly scary but the sexy lead kicking ass = good :D Also it was somewhat intelligent - it explained the Zombies fairly logically (and mixed in an acutally good storyline - the memory loss etc.) and crucially kept them locked into one location. None of this "spreading across the world" thing. It could happen :D
28 Days Later is far and away one of the best. The Zombies only make up a small portion of the film and the rest focuses on humanity facing the end of life as they know it. It was an extremely good story (really, very very simple but hugely effective) and didnt push the reality enevlop too far.
So IMO what makes a good zombie flick?
- Realism (as far as possible)
- Good, sensible, logical story (it could happen!)
- No cheese (OMG were all gonna dieeee)
- Hot lead optional
- Gritty (camera work and writing)
Hope that helps :D
EDIT: oh yeh make it logical. Slow zombies are never really a threat - I always hate those films where they fail to avoid lumbering zombies. Please :(
Also, I never thought Shaun of the Dead would count. If it does this pips 28 Days Later as my fav zombie film. The writing/story is pure brilliance and the production is very very good. It nails it's genre perfectly.