Films About Zombies

"The idea of Zack Snyder being a political filmmaker is hilarious in any respect. He is stereotyped more for being so in awe with the art direction, production design and costumes of his films that he never realises how lacking in quality the final products are. But ever since his debut film, his 2004 remake of George A Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, a right-wing political allegory has always been so central to the narratives of his works it can hardly be described as subtext. The time has come for us to now understand that this is more than mere coincidence. As The Telegraph’s Robbie Collin wrote in a recent appraisal of Snyder as a “latter-day Ken Russell”; “Romero’s original was a bleak and timely consumerist satire, in which zombies shamble around a suburban shopping mall on lizard-brain instinct. Snyder’s version abandons that, and instead uses zombies as an allegory for western fears of “otherness” – immigrants, refugees, Muslims, you name them. This time, civilisation is the mall, about to be swamped by a rising tide of subhumans – although as the film’s ultra-bleak finale makes clear, any distinctions between “them” and “us” are ultimately meaningless”. Despite this allegory, the subversive screenplay by Guardians of the Galaxy director w:James Gunn\James Gunn ensures there was an intended satirical bite, that Snyder’s overwrought direction rendered moot. One of the complaints of his remake was the refusal to linger on the faces of the zombies, therefore “dehumanising” them in the eyes of Romero."

"Q: You've said somewhere that you felt Zack Snyder”s 'Dawn of the Dead' remake was a bit like a video game in itself? “I thought it was, yeah. I sort of thought it lost its reason for being. I know a lot of people really like it very much – Stephen King, for example. I didnt like it very much. Basically, because I was using the idea for satire. My film needed to be done right when it was done, because that sort of shopping mall was completely new. It was the first one in Pennsylvania that we had ever seen. The heart of the story is based in that. And I didn”t think the remake had it.” – November 2013 interview with the Telegraph"

"Polley's taste for horror, somewhat unsurprisingly, ran to more obscure movies than those of her costars, and found that their unconventional pleasures gave her better motivation than if she'd merely researched the endless string of slasher movies that have proliferated over the last two decades. "I love movies like Peeping Tom and those sort of classic movies, and I actually thought of that movie a lot while we were shooting this, about what is the most frightening thing is the look of fear. You realize as an actor you can just sort of wander through a movie like this, but actually you have to work harder in a movie like this than in any small character-driven piece, because your fear sells the audience on being afraid." Polley admitted that she did occasionally lose her way while filming the many scenes of death and dismemberment, but felt confident that the finished film was something George Romero would be proud of. "As we were shooting, I often wondered what was I doing, but I saw the movie last night for the first time, and I was shocked to see that the movie was exactly what they described to me that first time. Completely sick and twisted, and made by incredibly perverse people.""

"Jake Weber's motives for signing on to a Dead remake were a little less obvious: "I wanted to make an art film." Weber was kidding, but he did go on to reveal that he, like Polley, was convinced by the picture's directing-producing team to take on a role that might not naturally receive; much less deserve; his attention. "I met these guys in New York, and they were talking about Philip Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and I loved that movie. I loved the idea of making a smart horror movie, a movie that was a lot of fun and is punk rock and fierce and wild but also is about real people." Having completed the film, Weber set his sights high on the predecessors whose company this new Dawn of the Dead keeps. "I think the bar for this movie is Phil Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Halloween, I think 28 Days Later gets in there. I think Alien, which kind of a little more sci-fi, but still has elements of this, [or] The Shining." His comparisons, he clarified, were not so much qualitative as they were examples of effective approaches to a clich-laden genre: "I mean, those are the kinds of movies that are quality films that are in that genre that are terrifying.""

"Like Polley, the rest of the cast members joined the film for reasons other than fealty to Romero's classic. Rhames looked at the story as a metaphor for tumultuous times rather than a literal interpretation of the source material, which itself is ripe with social commentary. "I didn't see the original, and in general I'm not a fan of the horror genre," admitted Rhames. "But from reading the script, I don't really put this film in that category. To me, it just so happens that our nemeses are zombies, but it could be any life-threatening situation." Rhames observed that the cast of characters reflected a decidedly more multi-cultural slant than in other recent films. "What I liked about it was, I thought it's bringing people from different ethnicities, different cultures together who need each other. So when I look at the world, I really say unfortunately, sometimes it's an atrocity; let's say 9/11; that forces us to come together. When I read the script I had no concept of what the zombies would look like; I just said, it's interesting to find these groups of characters in the situation." As he also acknowledged, it didn't hurt to have a steady hand behind the camera to keep the proceedings organized: "I also looked at Zack's reel, he has a very good commercial reel, and what I did was I turned down the volume, and I just watched how he moved the camera, and how the camera told the story. After that, I said, you know, I think this guy has a lot of potential, and I'd like to be a part of the project.""

"Polley, whose career has found footing in smaller projects outside the studio system (including roles in Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter and Isabelle Coixet's My Life Without Me), explained that she needed a bit of coaxing from the filmmakers before she'd sign onto the film. "I met with Zack [Snyder, the director,] and Eric [Newman, the producer] one night at a restaurant, and they convinced me they were going to make a really sort of daring, sick, twisted movie that was going to be true to the allegory of consumerism that was in the original.""

"Unlike the tight little group of survivors in "28 Days Later," this one expands to the point where we don't much care about some of the characters (the blonde with the red lipstick, for example). But we do care about Kenneth (Ving Rhames), a gravel-voiced cop with hard-edged authority. We care about Michael (Jake Weber), a decent guy who tries to make the right decisions. And we care about Andre (Mekhi Phifer), whose wife Luda (Inna Korobkina) is great with child and will give birth at any moment; the way that plot plays out is touching and horrifying. We even work up some feeling for the guy marooned on the roof of the gun shop across the street, who communicates with Kenneth by holding up signs."

"The contrast between this new version of "Dawn of the Dead" and the 1979 George Romero original is instructive in the ways that Hollywood has grown more skillful and less daring over the years. From a technical point of view, the new "Dawn" is slicker and more polished, and the acting is better, too. But it lacks the mordant humor of the Romero version, and although both films are mostly set inside a shopping mall, only Romero uses that as an occasion for satirical jabs at a consumer society. The 1979 film dug deeper in another way, by showing two groups of healthy humans fighting each other; the new version draws a line between the healthy and the zombies and maintains it. Since the zombies cannot be blamed for their behavior, there's no real conflict between good and evil in Zack Snyder's new version; just humans fighting ghouls. The conflict between the two healthy groups in the Romero film does have a pale shadow in the new one; a hard-nosed security guard (Michael Kelly) likes to wave his gun and order people around and is set up as the bad guy, but his character undergoes an inexplicable change just for the convenience of the plot."

"The Walking Dead, Gencarella asserts, “is part of another shift, post-9/11, in which the ghouls fill in for presumed ‘outsiders’ to the nation — but a nation that is limited only to a worthy few.” 9/11 imagery cropped up unintentionally, and largely incidentally, in Danny Boyle’s innovative fast-zombie film 28 Days Later, made before the attacks; its sequel, 28 Weeks Later, was in essence a critique of America’s militaristic overreach in the attacks’ wake. But the opening credits of Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake wed the terror of its depiction of the zombie apocalypse’s first harrowing hours with pointed stock imagery and mockumentary footage of Muslims and Arabs, setting a precedent for the rightward swing of the subgenre’s “us against them” political undertones."

"36 billion people have died since the reign of humanity. For the new Dawn, there's a reunion..."

"How do you kill what's already dead?"

"When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth."

"When the undead rise, civilization will fall."

"A state of emergency has been declared in the United States of America, including all overseas dependencies, and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. We face- We, uh- For reasons yet to be determined, the bodies of the recently deceased are returning to life and attacking the living. The scope of this eci- epidemic is now reaching global proportions. The President has sent to Congress a package of initiatives which will be explained by the Secretary of Defense, Mr. Martin Emery. Mr. Secretary?"

"My fellow Americans, this Republic faces a crisis like no other in its history. While the lights across this great land dim and the darkness of an uncertain future descends, let us not forget the words that led our country through another great challenge: 'We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.' We will endure, we will rebuild, we will drive away the night and warm our children in the dawn of a new day. God bless you all, and god bless the United States of America."

"[on TV] Danny, put another round in that woman over there! Look! She's a twitcher!"

"Hell is overflowing! And Satan is sending his dead to us! Why? Because...you have sex out of wedlock. You kill unborn children. You have man-on-man relations; same sex marriage! How do you think your God will judge you? Well, friends, now we know. When there is no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth."

"[After Luda asked for a bathroom & Andre says she’s not going anywhere alone] She’s not going anywhere... THIS IS A FUCKING NURSERY SCHOOL!"

"[Just before committing suicide to save the other survivors] Fuckin' Figures!"

"[To Steve after he abandoned his post and allowing the zombies overtake the mall] I'll deal with you later you motherfucker!"

"I don't want to shit on anyone's riff, but let me see if I grasp this concept, okay? You’re suggesting that we take some fucking parking-shuttles and reinforce them with some aluminum siding, and then just head on over to the gun-store and watch our good friend Andy play some cowboy-movie-jump on the covered wagon-bullshit. Then, we're gonna drive across the ruined city through a welcome-committee of a few hundred-thousand dead cannibals, all so that we can sail off into the sunset on this fuckin' asshole's boat? [The group nods] Alright I'm in."

""Andy... I'm sorry brother.."

"[En route to the marina, zombies swarm against Kenneth's bus] They're trying to turn us over! Hit them with the saw!"

"[About the deaths of Luda, Andre and Norma] There's nothing to be said. I been to a lot of funerals, folded the flags, givin' them to mothers, wives, sons, and told them how sorry I was. But that's not what I was really feeling. In the back of my mind, I was always thinking better them than me. But I don't believe that now. And now I know that there are some things worse than death. And one of them is sitting here waiting to die."

"I don't believe in God. I don't see how anyone could."

"I feel like I'm here for another reason. I feel like I'm here to bring that baby on this earth, and give it everything that I never had. I just want the opportunity... to change things."

"[Zombie has slammed itself against a glass door at the mall from the outside] Shatterproof, asshole"

"The bites killed her, the bites brought her back."

"[To phone getting "busy" signals after her husband got bitten on his throat] Don't do this to me! Please, don't DO this to me!"

"Farrell: ...Marge walks onto this ship. Smithers says, "Women and seamen don't mix." And Mr. Burns says, "We all know what you think, Smithers." And that was my favorite ever joke in The Simpsons. And see, that's what they’re doing, a few hundred miles from here across the channel -- across the Atlantic. They’re eating dinner and they’re watching the fucking Simpsons! They’re sleeping in their beds next to their wives...! But we’re here, chained to a fucking radiator because the OC HAS GONE INSANE! Starting the world again when the rest of the fucking world hasn’t even stopped! Just imagine it. Just think about it! How could infection cross the oceans? How could it cross the mountains and the rivers? Th- They-- They stopped it! And right now TVs are playing and planes are flying in the sky and the rest of the world is continuing as fucking normal. Think. Actually think about it. What would you do with a diseased little island? They quarantined us. "There is no infection, it's just people killing people." He's insane!"

"Stuart McQuarrie - Sergeant Farrelle"

"Christopher Eccleston - Major Henry West"

"Megan Burns - Hannah"

"Brendan Gleeson - Frank"

"Noah Huntley - Mark"

"Naomie Harris - Selena"

"Cillian Murphy - Jim"

"One of the problems with filming in Britain is that there's this slightly depressing air of familiarity and scale, but we wanted to make it something mythic and give it a mythical size. We didn't have enough money to pay for carnage on a city-wide scale, but the idea of an emptied London gave us the iconic image we needed."

"Yes. It's this idea of a psychological virus. Like road rage, that moment when the red mist descends, if you magnify that a thousand times and experience it to the exclusion of everything else, imagine what that kind of power would be like. That was our monster. If you really think about that, it's very, very scary indeed."

"Return to normality"

""...people killing people." -Our rage is destroying humanity; whether on a large or small scale, slowly but surely."

"His fear began when he woke up alone. His terror began when he realised he wasn't."

"Day 1: Exposure - Day 3: Infection - Day 8: Epidemic - Day 20: Evacuation - Day 28: Devastation"

"Be Thankful For Everything, For Soon There Will Be Nothing..."

"The Days Are Numbered"

"Man walks into a bar with a giraffe. They both get pissed. The giraffe falls over. The man goes to leave, the barman says "Oi! You can't leave that lying there!" He says "No, it's not a lion. It's a giraffe!" [Jim fails to laugh. To Selena:] He's completely humourless. You two should get on like a house on fire!"

"You killed all my boys."

"Eight days ago, I found Jones with his gun in his mouth. He said he was going to kill himself because there was no future. What could I say to him? We fight off the infected or we wait until they starve to death, and then what? What do nine men do except wait to die themselves? I moved us from the blockade, I set the radio broadcasting and I promised them women. Because women mean a future."

"This is what I've seen in the four weeks since infection: people killing people. Which is much what I saw in the four weeks before infection, and the four weeks before that, and before that, as far back as I care to remember- people killing people. Which, to my mind, puts us in a state of normality right now."

""The answer to infection". [...] Well, as I said before, it's here. Though it may not be quite what you imagined."