Poll: Ugh, zombies

[Ten Foot Bunny]

So V/H/S is not only one of my favorite horror movies, it's one of my favorite movies ever. Everything about it is brilliant and original, and the monsters (if you can call them that) were among the best of all time.

So why, oh why was the sequel nothing more than a cheap, lazy, easy-way-out zombie film?! I was so bored that I could barely sit through it. Mind you, that was my second attempt at watching the movie; the first time I tried to watch it, I fell asleep. They cashed in on a craze and ruined a promising franchise.

When will this zombie crap end? It's tiring when so many "horror-themed" media fall back on this now-comfortable formula. Zombie crawls, zombie video games, zombie movies, zombie TV shows... how much more can the entertainment industry milk out of this idiocy?

In my opinion, there hasn't been a truly frightening (if not a bit cheesy) zombie since Tarman from the first Return of the Living Dead in 1985. I saw it when it first came out (I was eight years old) and it scared the shit out of me. See for yourself:

Spoiler: Tarman is hungry for more!

What are your thoughts about zombies? Have you had enough of them, on-the-fence, don't care, still a fan? I'd love to know.

 

[tippy2k2]

Still love'm

Unfortunately there is a lot of crap out there but there is plenty greatness to be had as well. That kind of over-saturation happens with a lot of the pop culture loves. As long as you stick with the greatness, zombies are a-ok with me.

Send...more....paramedics...

 

[Denny Crane]

I find them more and more to be boring. Every movie/game/tv show always has the same premise and it's getting really boring.

 

[Ten Foot Bunny]

Send...more....paramedics...

Well played. VERY well played.

 

[Darks63]

:Hipster:I love zed before they were cool:Hipster:

I actually had seen the original NotLD and serpent and the rainbow when i was way too young and as a result for years it made me afraid to sleep because i was afraid they would break out of the ground and eat me except in the winter because that meant the ground was too hard for the zeds to break out of. I ended up conquer my fears by becoming a huge fan of zed films, books, and games(mostly mods back in the day).

I watch the Dead Trilogy Bi or triennially along with the 1990 Night remake. But due to the massive oversaturation and disliking alot of the current zed stuff like TWD TV show I have taken a major step back from the genre and i'm giving it a long cooldown before i get back into it again. Overall im still a fan thats why im giving it some space so i dont end up hating it.

Send...more....paramedics...

Who is the current president? umm...Harry Truman

Shame that series went to crap after the 2nd movie.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

There was a streak of fun zombie movies not very long ago... Shaun of the Dead, Fido, Zombieland, Warm Bodies... what I haven't seen in a while is a truly SCARY zombie movie. For me the last one was 28 Days Later, and before that, probably the original Night of the Living Dead or Day of the Dead (Return of the Living dead was fun but not that scary). It's the same deal with games, I can have tons of fun with zombies or whatever you want to call them, but I haven't been scared by one since fixed camera angles. Pin it on mediatic bombardment.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Eh, yeah, also sick of zombies, especially as they almost always have to be exactly the same.

Why do you have to shoot them in the head? How do their muscles work without their blood flowing? That's something that could do with explanation.

 

[Tsukuyomi]

I don't normally mind zombies. Sadly I can't remember the exact quote but Walter from Hellsing put the purpose of Zombies/Ghouls very well: effective in their own way, certainly tenacious, but essentially not much to write home about compared to the REST of the horror-movie menagerie.

They have their place, ultimately. What annoys me is not zombies themselves, but that every non-nerd person on the bloody planet is currently obsessed with them. I have people who would never touch Hellsing, Resident Evil, Diablo, High School of the Dead, or anything like it watching Walking Dead religiously and damn near acting like it could genuinely happen. Hell, there's an ongoing safety plan among a bunch of us at my job in terms of if an outbreak happens, what do we do. (Largely it involves getting to our job as fast as possible and sealing up all possible entrances since the place is rather well suited to be an anti-zombie stronghold.)

It just becomes annoying when people see my lack of enthusiasm for zombie-talk and go "I thought you'd be into this!" With my reply being: "I was...about a decade ago. Now I'm just not all that interested anymore." Then they get all huffy with me, not because of the response, but because I actually don't think zombies are like the coolest thing ever. It's one of the few times I literally want to tell someone "get on my level!"

Thankfully I don't say that out loud because I'm not THAT much of a jerk and I realize that they're just discovering this stuff for the first time and I remind myself that I was (and am) just as obsessed about some things.

Basically I don't mind them, though I AM waiting for the general public to move onto their next big obsession.

 

[Frezzato]

Although my idea probably isn't original, for a few years now I've viewed the zombie obsession as a direct result of the housing crisis/global financial meltdown. Several years ago I noticed on the drive to work that there was at least one 'for sale' sign on every block and it was such a widespread phenomena [http://www.utne.com/politics/squatter-villages-tent-cities-informal-urbanism-economic-crisis.aspx#axzz2yY6Ugi3L] that I truly started to worry. Less homeowners means less taxes paid, which results in either a reduction in public services or layoffs, which might lead to more foreclosures. I was filled with dread at the idea of society slowly starting to break down in some catastrophic cascade, not to mention I was keeping a keen eye on the local crime rate.

I started noticing strange things, like the local supermarket chain started to use security paper for printing receipts. It had small red hairs embedded in it much like US currency does (actually, dollars contain both red and green fibers). It struck me as a bad sign that a grocery store had been hit enough to warrant spending money to cut down on fraudulent returns. What the hell was worth stealing in the first place? Prosciutto? And yet, the statistics show that crime in the US actually declined [http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0524/US-crime-rate-is-down-six-key-reasons] back then. Hmm.

I really do believe that the zombie craze was the sociological mirroring of the general thought of "What if that happens to me?". And it did happen. There were a few homeless tent cities out there, one of them famously in California, filled with regular people who all of a sudden couldn't afford to pay their floating interest rate mortgages.

Much like how UFO sightings changed from circular to triangular-shaped in the 90s due to public awareness of the F-117 Stealth "Fighter", I believe zombie-related entertainment will be associated with the financial crisis by historians in the future. Either that or we'll just be viewed as creatively bankrupt. Huh. Damn you, Occam's Razor.

 

[Frezzato]

snip

Also, I've noticed a trend in the stuff you like to post about, namely horror movies.

I like it. I like it a lot. Every once in a while somebody posts a scary movie thread, so it's good to know there's at least one more that'll have something to contribute!

 

[Hero of Lime]

Been sick of them for a while now. I guess the lack of interesting things they seem to have run out of with regards to zombie stories. It seems like these days it's all about "humans are the real monsters" in a zombie apocalypse scenario. It may be more "realistic" I guess, and it makes for more characterization they would say. Fair enough, yet being the only narrative they can come up with nowadays makes me sick of it even more.

I guess that was my overall problem with the tremendous praise Last of Us got, it relied so heavily on zombie tropes it made it hard to say it had an amazing story with a straight face.

 

[Esotera]

I got fed up with zombies a couple of weeks ago when DayZ was updated so that they respawned 50m away from you every 5 seconds. As it stands the zombie mechanic is so broken that I don't even play it anymore, and won't give it a go until they've implemented zombies properly. I understand it's early access but it was better when the focus was more on survival, than having a magical cloud of zombies following you wherever you go.

Zombies are a bit overdone at the minute as well. I'd like to see more attention given to vampires or werewolves, as they are way more awesome (particularly vampires).

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Thing is noone does anything new with them. They are all more or less the same. Thing is if you read the WWZ book there are loads of stories from all around the world in it that i dont know why no one has thought to expand on some of them.

Now Sony are making a zombie game now like DayZ, i just roll my eyes.

 

[Sarge034]

I love zombies as a premise. It has been done to varying degrees of success but has never truly reached it's full potential.

 

[likalaruku]

Zombie movies used to be an "all the time" thing for me, but I have had quite a few disappointments & now they a "just for Halloween" marathon. I still think Zombieland was absolutely terrible.

Zombie movies are like fantasy MMORPGs; they all have small differences, but after the novelty wears off, you realize you're doing the exact same things in all of them. Not a bad comparison either, since "pre or post apocalyptic world at war" is the most common MMORPG plot. Actually, I'm surprised there isn't a fantasy MMO where all the forests & monsters are replaced with cities & 56 different kinds of zombies & you have to fight them off with magic, swords, & ninjas.

 

[Lil_Rimmy]

Zombies are a bit overdone at the minute as well. I'd like to see more attention given to vampires or werewolves, as they are way more awesome (particularly vampires).

(particularly vampires)

ohgodpleaseno.

Unless you mean ACTUAL vampires, aka burn in sunlight horrible evil monsters, in which case I'd say go for it, but I think we have enough terrible vampire things going on at the moment. It's reached the point of almost satiring itself. It's like Twilight being added as a secret ingredient to teen films. Then again, the last teen film without vampires was...

I have no clue.

 

[Lil_Rimmy]

I love zombies as a premise. It has been done to varying degrees of success but has never truly reached it's full potential.

I really, REALLY agree with that. I love zombie games and movies etc. when the focus is on people SURVIVING, rather than them gunning down waves of zombies while screaming "FUCK YEAH!"

I get why those exist, but for everyone 20 shoot-em-up zombie games (some of which are really good, ala L4D) there is the single lonely survival game. Imagine DayZ where you actually survived, instead of just getting a gun and then it turning into PvP. That's the kind of thing that so many developers get so close to, getting one or two features right but losing out on the others. Imagine all the best traits of various games combined into one great zombie game, involving character interaction, co-op, survival, tense, horror and so. That kind of stuff is why I still love zombies, and still get sad every time a game fails to meet them.

 

[Esotera]

Zombies are a bit overdone at the minute as well. I'd like to see more attention given to vampires or werewolves, as they are way more awesome (particularly vampires).

(particularly vampires)

ohgodpleaseno.

Unless you mean ACTUAL vampires, aka burn in sunlight horrible evil monsters, in which case I'd say go for it, but I think we have enough terrible vampire things going on at the moment. It's reached the point of almost satiring itself. It's like Twilight being added as a secret ingredient to teen films. Then again, the last teen film without vampires was...

I have no clue.

I think everyone can agree that Twilight sucks, and actual vampires are badass. I haven't seen a film with vampires in it for a couple of years now and the mania seems to have died down, it would be good to get films like Underworld coming out again.

 

[Bat Vader]

I am pretty much sick of both zombies and infected. I know infected are supposed to be different but they act so much the same that to me they are the same as zombies.

I hate to say it but the infected was the reason why I couldn't get into The Last of Us as much as I wanted to. I liked the characters but I hated the whole infected and how they came about. Honestly, I feel they weren't that integral to the story. They could have made the exact same game but filled with nothing but regular human enemies; the characters and setting could have been portrayed the same.

Zombies/infected just feel like a cheap way to add enemies to a game or film. They have just been so overdone that I feel they need to be placed on the back burner for about a decade or so. Same with vampires. Vampires are cool and all but I feel like they have been overdone too.

 

[Willstown]

The Walking Dead kinda brought zombies in saturation level in pop culture, but I guess 28 days later started the slow shuffling (or sprinting) comeback a while ago. From a design standpoint I guess zombies are easy, it's just rotting guys and they bite you, not complex stuff to do on film, unlike complex werewolve transformations etc.

In games I would think it's a easy choice for a bonus mode as you reskin a normal goon with 'zombie-look' and you've got a cheap mini game.