As a writer of zombie fiction, a
watcher of zombie movies, an organiser of zombie walks and an all round zombie
fan, I’m considered by those who know me to be – deserved or not deserved – a
bit of a zombie geek. That’s why a friend contacted me on Facebook recently,
asking me to settle an argument that had been raging all day between him and
his mum: In my opinion, do I class the ‘Rage’ infected victims in the 28 Days/Weeks films as zombies? His mum
was adamant that they were while my friend disagreed.
I
knew he was hoping for a yes/no answer (and more specifically a ‘no’), but that
was something I couldn’t give. In my zombie obsessed mind, the seemingly
innocent question raised all sorts of problems. The first being: What is a
zombie?
If
you type my friend’s question into Google you will get a wide response from
those who firmly believe the rage infected victims are NOT zombies because they
are living, rather than reanimated corpses that feed on flesh; those that DO
consider them zombies because they attack the uninfected and pass on the virus;
and those that just DON’T CARE (it’s just a movie ffs!).
The
image of the lumbering, brain munching Undead that we know as the zombie comes
largely from the zombie king himself, George A Romero and his Living Dead series. Of course, zombies
existed in movies and literature long before then, but it was Romero who
brought the iconic image into the mainstream.
In
28 Days/Weeks Later, a virus called
‘Rage’ infects humans through blood and saliva. The infected are nothing like
the classic Romero rotting, reanimated corpse zombies. In fact, they are not
dead at all. Furthermore, they run, rather than shuffle, they are strong, rather
than stiff and rotting, and instead of stopping to chow down on their victims’
brains, the rage infected like to bite for biting’s sake, for no other reason
than to spread the virus.
So
with the biggest argument against the 28
Days/Weeks rage infected victims being termed as zombies is that they are
not dead but infected by a virus, does that mean someone has to be dead in
order to be a zombie?
The zombie’s
roots go back to voodoo. The Haitian zombie has less to do with a witch doctor
actually raising the dead, and more to do with a victim being rendered into a
death-like state by the use of a powerful paralysis inducing drug. Once the drugged
victim has been ‘raised from the dead’, they are kept in a zombie-like state by the
use of further drugs, allowing the witch doctor to control the affected person.
This is, after all, the premise of the 1932 movie White Zombie. Thought to be the first ever zombie movie, it tells
the story of Madeleine who is drugged and turned into a zombie by a voodoo
master, until she wakes up from her trance upon her captor’s death.
A
story that dominated the news a couple of years ago was that of ‘bath salts
zombies’ where individuals under the influence of a synthetic drug similar to
crystal meth, become crazed, flesh eating cannibals or, as the media revelled
in calling them – zombies. Ever since the case in Miami in 2012 where homeless
Ronald Poppo had part of his face bitten off by Rudy Eugene while Eugene was
under the influence of bath salts, there has been a new wave of zombies in town
… they are alive, they do not lumber, they do not munch brains. People were
falling over themselves to term the Poppo/Eugene case, and the subsequent copy
cat cases that followed as zombie attacks … so why do some people have a
problem with calling the 28 Days/Weeks
films zombie movies?
And
what is wrong with playing with a genre? Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel I am Legend, that perhaps inspired
Romero and his Living Dead series, is
a ground breaking vampire tale that was way ahead of its time. While the
novel’s hero, Neville, himself, refers to the creatures as vampires, they are
nothing like the
I’ll-bite-you-then-you-drink-some-of-my-blood-and-you’ll-be-a-vampire-too
creatures that we’re used to from Dracula
to The Lost Boys. In I am Legend, the vampirism is
transmitted by a bacterium, one that Neville is immune to. Some of the vampires
are dead, others are alive and infected and intent on killing humans and
spreading the disease. Not so dissimilar to the ‘Rage’ virus in 28 Days/Weeks. But who are we to argue
with Neville when he decides to call them vampires? He is, after all, the last
human – it’s up to him what he calls them.
Okay,
so no one in 28 Days/Weeks refers to
the victims as ‘zombies’, but no one in The
Walking Dead has ever said the word ‘zombie’ either, instead sticking to
the term ‘Walkers’. But we all agree that the show belongs in the zombie genre.
So, do I class
the infected rage victims in 28
Days/Weeks as zombies? Yeah, I do. Just a different take on them. Matheson pushed boundaries to
create a fresh spin on a genre. And if people don’t move a genre forward, play with
it, do the unexpected, subvert it, what are we left with – something that is as
dead and rotten as a … well, a zombie …?
