Horror: Zombie- film research and conventions. (Simular films, Youtube links, Settings and generic conventions)

Horror: Zombie film research and conventions

Zombie films are a sub genre that span off from horror films, Like most Horror creations, Zombies have come from old stories and myth . In Haitian folklore, a zombie is an animated corpse raised by magical means, such as witchcraft. The first thing to contain an idea the most similar to that of the zombie would be Frankenstein, the novel published by Mary Shelley in 1818.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Zombies began to appear in movies as early as 1932. George A. Romero is considered to be the one that set the standard for modern zombies. He first portrayed zombies in the classic 1968 movie, "Night of the Living Dead". In this film zombies were shown to be slow moving, flesh eating corpses that have been reanimated due to radiation from a satellite returning from Venus. Although the reasoning for the zombies differ from film to film, There is always reasoning behind their reanimations and the boundaries set by Romero tend to be followed and remain consistent throughout most classic zombie films.

Your Stereotypical  zombie. Decaying, slow moving flesh-eater.



 Zombies are also seen to be very strong, and invulnerable to pain and usually the only way to kill them is with a blow to the head, destroying the brain. In most zombie films, Zombism is contagious and can be passed on through making contact of getting bitten by the undead, The bite either turns them or kills them, in the case of the latter, they become reanimated anyway due to the same force that created the other zombies. This often leads to the antagonists (Zombies) outnumbering the protagonists, making the whole experience more intense. In these films, There are three common endings: Everyone dies, A cure if found or you are left on a cliffhanger.

Poster for George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead"

The typical settings for modern zombie films usually begin in isolated, abandoned locations. This creates a build up of tension for the viewer. The characters are usually placed in a setting alone.  There are also stock props that are found in most Zombie movies, these include; blood, heavy gory make up, weapons: e.g guns, knives, baseball bats, Food and brains.

In more modern depictions of this sub genre, Zombies are found to be faster and more intelligent, in the film "28 days later", it portrays all the conventions of a zombie film but it does not actually contain zombies.



Poster for the 2002 film, 28 days later.

In modern times zombie films are few and hard to come by but the concept of zombies still remain popular, an example to show this would be the Television series, "The walking dead", Which the number of viewers have broken the record number of views set by a cable TV drama, hitting 17 million as of October 13th 2014.

The following videos allow you to see the differences between the old and new zombie films.

Old zombie film comparison

New zombie film comparison