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in a Time of Terror The Development of the Film Narrative

Jasper Wezenberg

5947634

[email protected]

Ferdinand Bolstraat 27-3 1072LB Amsterdam

06-20924216

Thesis guide: dr. C.J. Forceville

Second reader: Amir Vudka

2 Acknowledgements

First of all I would like to thank dr. Charles Forceville for being an excellent thesis guide who always provide me with pragmatic tips, interesting insights and fast comments. Thanks to Amir Vudka for being my second reader. I would like to thank Absaline Hehakaya and Maarten Stolz for reading parts of my unfinished thesis and providing comments. Many thank to Saskia Mollen for designing the awesome front cover. Thank to my colleagues Joost Mellink and Renée Janssen for covering for me. Thanks to my friends Niels de Groot and Rufus Baas for encouraging me. Thanks to Marek Stolarczyk, Roeland Hofman, and Marije Ligthart for being funny and supportive. Thanks to Nika Pantovic for making nice music and providing inspiration. And finally thanks to my parents and brother for being awesome people.

3 Contents

Acknowledgements 3 Introduction 5

1. Generic difficulties 6 2. On zombie studies 12 3. The Quantitative of the dead 16 3.1 Introduction 20 3.2 Corpus and zombie movie production numbers 21 3.3 Results 23 3.3.1 Zombie narrative 23 3.3.2 Shots of deserted streets 24 3.3.3 Use of news- or found footage 25 3.3.4 Speed of zombie movement 25 3.3.5 Are they dead? 27 3.3.6 Extra: funny zombies 28 4. Zombies in a time of terror: invoking images 29 4.1 29 4.2 Train to 34 4.3 40

Conclusion 45

Bibliography 48 Filmography 50 Appendix A 51 Appendix B 53

4 Introduction

Of all the monstrous creatures that have populated the horror stories of culture, the zombie may well be the most characteristic for the late 20th and early 21th century. What is with massive amounts of walking, flesh eating, rotting, and mindless corpses that fascinates millions of movie fans? While it once was a of b-movies, nowadays zombies seem to have taken over the world. It is as if a cinematic has been taking place the last two decades. In film, the creation of the zombie can be traced back to the movie White Zombie (1932). It was inspired by Haitian folklore like voodoo, in which a witchdoctor takes control of another person’s body. The took a more postmodern turn when filmmaker George A. Romero released his low- budget movie Night of the (1968), containing undertones of social critique. Today, Romero’s debut has become a prototype for the whole genre. In a typical zombie movie, a zombie apocalypse takes place, which causes the dead to rise again from the grave. These animate corpses are almost always murderous and out for human blood. After a person has been attacked by one or more zombies, he or she then also turns into a zombie. By this mechanism the zombies spread like a virus or a plague. Amidst this deadly chaos, the story’s protagonists are trying to stay alive and rescue their loved ones. What kinds of zombie narratives are there? How is the zombie genre able to reflect social unrest? Has the genre changed much since Romero? How have zombies been studied by academics? In this MA Thesis I will investigate the development of the narrative, hoping to find answers to these questions. In the first chapter I set out to create an overview of the studies that have been done on the subject of genre in film studies. As I am dealing with a very specific genre, I must investigate numerous theories on the existence and use of . In the second chapter I will look into the academic studies that have been done to date on zombie films, to provide me with bearings for my own research: what has been discovered and what needs to be researched more? In the third chapter I will present the results of quantitative research I have done on the characteristics of zombie narratives, to show how narrative techniques in the zombie film have changed. In the fourth chapter I will do a close analysis of three selected zombie titles, to provide us with more details the element that are typical for the genre, and how zombie narratives function. At the end of this research I will hope to provide an answer to the question: how has the zombie narrative developed over the years?

5 1. Generic difficulties

If we want to be able to discuss and research the zombie movie as a category, we first have to delve deeper into the structures and processes that define the generic conventions of the zombie movie. What criteria define a specific genre and how do we use and need our knowledge of ? In this chapter I set out to create a general outline of the field of (film) genre studies and some of its main scholars like Rick Altman, Barry Keith Grant and Stephen Neale. The problems and concepts introduced here will be used in our next chapter on the genre of horror and its subgenre: zombie movies. The concept of genre has been important on many levels of spectating and studying film as the work of the following scholars will prove. While for the average moviegoer, the different generic categories may seem like a collection of clear-cut traits bundled to categorize different films, the concept of genre is of course not without its difficulties. The meaning and use of genre within the realms of film is the result of a complex interplay between scholars, spectators, critics and the movie industry. I would first like to consider the work of Rick Altman and especially his book Film/Genre (1999), for it has been a seminal work in the study of genre within film studies. Altman starts out his book stating that one of the first ideas about genre goes back all the way to Aristotle and his famous work of Poetics. In his work Aristotle states that he will approaches the art of poetry based on its essential qualities. Determined by these “essential qualities”, Aristotle describes how different forms of poetry could be discerned from each other based on the medium, the object, and the manner of imitation. While literary genre theory has of course evolved over the years, Aristotle’s ideas have remained influential. The main problem with this, according to Altman (1999), is that Aristotle’s ideas are based on various presumptions. Aristotle namely assumes that his generic categories are “objectively present, stable phenomena, while the decision whether a certain text belonged into a specific genre depended on the presence or absence of certain characteristic features embodied in that text” (Forceville 2001: 1787). Altman states that Aristotle’s ideas have persevered all these year in literary studies and thus literary genre theory has not been able to come to any definite conclusions about what constitutes a genre (Altman 1999: 12). Although a theoretical framework on film genre has been established since the late sixties, this body of theories has not been without its shortcomings: the same dogmas of genre studies within the literary field, have crept into the academic work on film genre. Altman point out multiple problematic tendencies that have persisted within film genre studies. One of the most important things he points out is that the focus of genre critics and scholars has been on a reduced corpus that consists of canonical titles, to keep things neat and manageable (Altman 1999: 16). This means is that the critics and scholars tend to pay more attention to a small number of movies and as a result reduce a genre to a

6 very select group of ‘pure’ genre titles. From this strategy follows that only the titles that tick all the boxes of a generic prototype are included. Cross-genre and titles from outside of the canon tend to get overlooked. “[Genre critics] have systematically disregarded films that fail to exhibit clear generic qualifications. [Also], each major genre has been defined in terms of a nucleus of films obviously satisfying the theory’s […] assumptions” (Altman 1999: 16). He adds to that genres are treated as if they are trans-historical, as if they are fixed in history and never change of evolve over time. For Altman, this is clearly not the case. Altman uses the example of the musical genre to demonstrate that genres undergo historical development and are constantly susceptible to changes. He explains that in the earlier years, the term ‘musical’ was never applied as genre, but always used as an adjective to other genres such as or (Altman 1999: 32). It was only after films with singing and dancing became less popular, that the term ‘musical’ started being used solely to describe a . Many examples of movie reviews from the time period are given by Altman to underline the change in public perception of what a ‘musical’ is. It is also an important nuance that not all films are deliberately designed to fall into pre- existing categories. This is where Rick Altman makes the distinction between a ‘film genre’ and a ‘genre film’ (Altman 1996: 277). ‘Film genre’ refers to broader categories that can encompass a wide scope of films, regardless of the intent with which they were made. ‘Genre films’ refers to a type of film that self-consciously makes use of existing categories, models and expectations. When trying to explain the functioning of genre, Altman introduces the idea of creating a communication model for film genre. He explains that genres are communicative processes: films belonging to a certain genre change the viewer’s perception from seeing an autonomous title into seeing a film as belonging to a generic group. And in turn this creates a bond between multiple groups of “part-real, part-imagined genre viewers” (Altman 1999: 169). In constructing a model for this process, Altman draws inspiration from the classic encoding/decoding model created by Stuart Hall. The premise of this model is that a sender communicates with multiple receivers through a medium. And these receivers also communicate with each other. Adding to the model, Altman points out that the receivers also interact with the medium, thereby repurposing and redefining the genre (Altman 1999: 172) communicating through the medium as can be seen in figure 1. This process is especially evident in a cult genre like zombie movies, where the fans constantly discuss, repurpose, and redefine the genre and its corpus. I will discuss this more in depth. In the eighties Altman wrote an article named A Semantic/syntactic Approach to Film Genre (1984). In this text Altman introduces a dual approach, both focused on semantics as well as syntax, that can be used to identify individual movies as belonging to a certain genre based on textual characteristics. The semantic approach utilizes identification based on the generic “building blocks” (Altman 1984: 10). For example: a Western movie contains elements like prairies, cowboys and saloons and a narrative taking place somewhere during the mid-ninetieth and early twentieth century.

7 With the syntactic approach a movie is categorized based on the returning narrative structures. With the example of the Western, we could describe its structural elements as residing “on the border between two lands, between two eras, and with a hero who remains divided between two value systems” (11).

Figure 1: This figure made by Altman (1999: 172) shows how not only the receiver communicates with the text (or in this case the genre) but also with other receivers.

Concluding Film/Genre, Altman admits that he has made the same mistake as other genre scholars before him. While a useful method for researching the relation between genre and text, it completely overlooks how genre operates outside of the text. His earlier model namely misses the complex relation between reader and text as described earlier, and does not account for the different interpretations readers can give of a text or genre. Neither does it account for the role of cinematic institutions like producer or distributors. The importance of how a genre is used by the spectator is not to be underestimated. Altman admits to have overlooked this important aspect of genre so he proposes an updated semantic/syntactic/pragmatic approach to address this complex relation, thud adding a third dimension to his older model. “It is precisely this ‘use factor’ that pragmatic addresses. Whether we are discussing literature or cinema (or any other meaning-making system), the base language(s) surpass their own structures and meaning as they are integrated into textual uses” (Altman 1999: 210). The work Barry Keith Grant also goes to show that a complex concept like genre cannot be explained through a single method. Grant investigated the different means of determining the boundaries of a genre. He distinguishes four way of defining genre based on the work of Janet Staiger while also acknowledging and highlighting their shortcomings. The first method is called the ‘idealist method’. It uses a standard model that privileges pure genre films over films that are more diluted in their generic characteristics. The second method, the ‘empiricist method’, defines generic categories based on characteristics from the existing corpus of a specific genre. The downfall of this method is its circular nature: categories that are created are based on characteristics from existing categories which are in turn against based on grouping certain characteristics. The third method is called the ‘a priori method’. With this method films are selected based on predetermined characteristics they have in

8 common. The problem with this method is that it can lead to purely theoretical categories. Lastly there is the ‘social convention method’ which selects films as belonging to a genre based on public consensus, something that probably can never be fully determined (Staiger qtd. in Grant 2007: 22). A lot of the problems when trying to find a fixed model arise from the fact that “different genres are designated according to different criteria. Such genres as the , and the western are defined by setting and narrative content. However, horror pornography and comedy are defined or conceived around the intended emotional effect of the film upon the viewer” (Grant 2007: 23). Another important genre scholar I would like to consider is Stephen Neale and his book Genre and Hollywood(2000). In this book he describes of genre research within film studies. The first distinction made in classical literary theory is between literature and popular writing. This is a distinction that has persevered throughout the twentieth century in film studies as well. During the 1930s and 1940s scholars from the Frankfurt School like Adorno and Horkheimer, argued that popular culture was aimed at turning high culture into homogeneous and mass-produced commodities. Neale states we can see the same attitude in early film studies. He pinpoints the sixties and seventies as a turning point for film criticism and theory. It was around this time that the famous French film journal Cahiers du cinéma began focusing on ‘auteurism’ (Neale 2000: 10). As other critics adopted this concept, it created the premise of the director being the creative force behind a film. Before the sixties, comparable with the Frankfurt School, critics saw Hollywood film production as being superficial, conservative and produced for the mass market. Auteurism provided scholars and critics with the means to engage with commercial Hollywood cinema in a serious and productive way. Although it led a big change, most of the attention was thus limited to directors and “individualized corpuses of film” (Neale 2000: 11). When trying to approach the institutional aspects of Hollywood and its audience, auteurism was not that useful. It was the American art critic Lawrence Alloway who turned the attention to genres and categorical film cycles. Tom Ryall also explains in the following quote how auteurism does not account for the specific characteristics of popular culture: “The theory, though important and valuable during the 1950s and for drawing attention to the importance of the American cinema, nevertheless tended to treat popular art as if it were ‘high art’” (Tom Ryall qtd. in Neale 2000: 12). Neale acknowledges that a lot of research has been done on the topic of genre from the sixties of to the nineties, but he finds, like Altman, many of the theoretical definitions on genre are restrictive and often one-sided. “Canons of critical preference, rather than those of empirical or historical enquiry, have often resulted in uneven degrees of attention, discussion and research” (Neale 2000: 3). Genres are thus treated as fixed and trans-historical. Inspired by for example structural anthropology, genres are stripped of their historical differences with critics treating genres as beyond history. Instead of seeing genres as the outcome of a certain historical process, genres are treated as “a representational form derived directly from a basic human capacity” (Altman 1999: 20).

9 Neale tries to avoid creating taxonomic models for genre. Comparable to Altman’s ‘pragmatic’ approach, Neale explains that genre is more than a corpus of films grouped together based on their similarities. A genre is also a system of expectations, conventions and viewing modes that the audience bring with them to the film. To clarify this, he explains Tzvetan Todorov’s concept of ‘verisimilitude’ (2000: 32). It refers to the probability or plausibility of a genre for its audience. Each genre has its own regime of motives that are probable and sometimes obligatory. According to Todorov there are two basic forms of verisimilitude:

“The first is what we call rules of the genre: for a work to be said to have verisimilitude, it must conform to these rules. [...] [The second is the relation] between discourse and what readers believe to be true. The relation is here established between the work and a scattered discourse that in part belongs to each of the individuals of a society but of which none may claim ownership; in other words to public opinion. The latter is of course not ‘reality’ but merely a further discourse, independent of the work” (Tzvetan Todorov qtd. in Neale 2000: 32).

This may sound quite complex, but what it means is that a generic text is subjected not only to an internal regime of rules of verisimilitude, but also to an external regime of public discourse and socio- cultural verisimilitude. This may be called ‘realism’, though we are not literally talking about a relation between discourse and reality. The balance between these two forms of verisimilitude differs per genre. “Negotiating the balance between different regimes of verisimilitude plays a key role in the relations established between spectator, genres and individual films” (Neale 2000: 35). An example of this would be the musical genre: the defining aspect of a musical is that its characters burst out in singing to non-diegetic music. This is something that, while not probable within public discourse, is essential within the internal generic verisimilitude of the . Because the audience knows they are going to watch a musical, they are guided towards expecting random outbursts of singing in the film. Altman states that the audience, and the way they make use of genres, is determining how genres function (Altman 1999: 173). Neale on the other hand places more emphasis on the role of institutions like Hollywood. He describes the cinematic institutions as defining in the creation and shaping of genres. Hollywood is his main of focus, but of course we can substitute Hollywood for any large industry of film production, or cultural production for that matter, as genre is “common to all instances of discourse (2000: 31). Hollywood must be seen as just one specific instance of many cultural forms. When producing and promoting a film, a ‘narrative image’ (Neale 2000: 39) is created. This is a promotional image of the film containing information about the , narrative and overall atmosphere. The ‘narrative image’ is created in public discourse by the film industry itself, journalists,

10 as well as the audience. And essential part of this ‘narrative image’ is of course genre. “The indication and circulation of what the industry considers to be the generic framework – or frameworks – most appropriate to the viewing of a film is therefore one of the most important functions performed by advertising copy, and by posters, stills and trailers” (Neale 2000:39). All these images that are being brought into circulation contribute to the ‘narrative image’ and are part of the ‘inter-textual relay’ (Neale 2000: 39). These posters, advertisements, and also film credits, are not part of the films narrative but do shape spectator expectations about a film’s narrative. A relay can also include the screening venue, a video store and even genre studies itself (Langford 2006: 6). The ‘inter-textual relay’ of a film contributes to, and interacts with the generic status of a film. A lot of genres are not cinema exclusive, and the generic images created are thus part of a bigger generic movement across media like theatre or television. The sum of these images contributes to the cultural embedding of a genre. We must note though, that genre is only a part of the ‘narrative image’ and ‘inter-textual relay’, as other elements like production companies, directors and stars also make up an integral part of this. Coming back to Neale’s earlier assessment that a lot of genre definitions are too restrictive, he goes on to counter the theories of Thomas Schatz on the confining nature of genres. According to Schatz, genre films encompass a story and setting that are always familiar and predetermined, resulting in one-dimensional characters. Neale explains that he agrees that genres bring a certain degree of familiarity, but adds that Schatz’s definitions are also too narrow. While a lot of generic protagonists exhibit typical traits conform to the genre, it does not exclude the addition of more complex characteristics that can even be contradictory. The same goes for narrative structure: While for example a war films always have a violent conclusion, “the path to these climaxes and resolution vary considerably” (Neale 2000: 209). I might add that these deviations are what lead to progression, as genres are not static but subjected to change over time. For example, the effectiveness of (1968 dir: George A. Romero) lay in the fact that it kept breaking with generic conventions of the horror genre (Grant 2007: 53). The works of the authors discussed in this chapter provides important cues on how to research genre, as well as which pitfalls to avoid. I am therefore going to research the zombie genre in the upcoming with multiple methods. When studying genre, it is key to not only look at the textual elements but also be aware of the historical development of a genre, as well as the important roles both the cinematic institutions and the audience are playing.

11 2. On zombie studies

“The zombie remains, for the most part, underappreciated. Zombie films are relegated to of every horror movie guide, saved from utter obscurity only by the dubious Zontar, the Thing from Venus. There are almost no serious studies of TV and movie zombies, as there are for in abundance. Nevertheless, the sheer volume of zombie movies attests to their enduring cult popularity and contemporary relevance” (Dendle 2001: 1).

While Peter Dendle wrote this in 2001, and things have changes for the better, the zombie movie still remains a relatively understudied film genre. In this chapter I will create a compact overview of the zombie as a cultural icon and as an object of academic research. The last few years, after Dendle, scholar Kyle William Bishop has done a lot of the research on the genre. He has published multiple books and articles on the phenomenon of zombies in popular culture and introduced some new ideas on recent developments. Bishop started his work on zombies with an article he wrote trying to find an explanation for explosion of zombie movie production occurring around the beginning of the new millennium. The article “Dead Man Still Walking: Explaining the Zombie Renaissance” (Bishop 2009) begins with a short introduction of the genre, describing its (re)rise to fame in the late sixties with the movie The Night of the Living Dead (1968). After a decline in popularity, zombies where declared as good as dead in the nineties. Bishop now tries to prove to us that the popularity of movies like 28 Days (2002) and Dawn of the Dead (2004) is not coincidental, but part of a much bigger cross-media zombie renaissance taking place in the twenty-first century. To understand why the zombies are back, we have to understand how the structural narrative features of the genre resonate with a modern, mostly western, audience. Since the 9/11 attacks, Bishop supposes the American people have become more acquainted with images of death and urban destruction. He describes the eerie similarity between the newsreel footage of the 9/11 attacks and hurricane Katrina on the one hand and scenes from the aforementioned movies on the other. Bishop’s article provides a nice clear example of the relevance of zombie media and the importance of researching it. “Although the conventions of the zombie genre remain largely unchanged, ’ relevance has become all the more clear – a post-9/11 audience cannot help but perceive the characteristics of zombie cinema through the filter of terrorist threats and apocalyptic reality” (Bishop 2009: 24). Being a literature scholar as well, Bishop states that zombie movies can be placed within the gothic tradition. Not only do zombie stories blend the romantic with the realistic, they also have shown the ability to “adapt to changes in cultural anxiety over time” (Bishop 2010: 25).

12 Like gothic literature, they are “a barometer of the anxieties plaguing a certain culture at a particular moment in history” (Steven Bruhm qtd. by Bishop 2010: 24). Before we continue to look at the relevance of zombie studies and how this thesis will fit in with the existing research, I will investigate the origins of the zombie. Unlike other iconic horror antagonists like vampires and which stem from European culture, zombies are the product of fusion between old African and New World culture. This ties the zombie to colonialism, slavery and ancient mysticism. “Zombies, in fact, made the leap from mythology to cinema with almost no previous literary tradition. Rather than being based on creatures appearing in novels or short stories, zombie narratives have developed instead directly from their folkloristic, ethnographic, and anthropological origins” (Bishop 2010: 38). Before the zombie made its first leap to the big screen, it was a product of colonial history and religious society of Haiti. If we want to understand the cultural impact and the significance of the zombie, we must first try and understand the culture that created it. Bishop names ethnographers Hans W. Ackermann and Jeanine Gauthier, whom have stated that the roots and the folkloric origin of the Haitian zombie go even further back to Benin, Zambia, Tanzania, and Ghana. Legends of witches who reanimated corpses were imported to many islands in the West Indies when slaves were brought over. So while the general American perception is that the zombie was created in Haiti, this research proves that the zombie has a diverse background coming from many places of the African continent (Bishop 2010: 42). The French government acquired Haiti, a country that was located on the western half of the island of Hispaniola, after the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697 (Sidney W. Mintz qtd. by Bishop 2010: 43). The French called their part of the island Saint Domingue and started a brutal regime, bringing in slaves from the West-African coast to work on the plantations. Because of the high mortality rate, and the fact that new slaves were brought in at a higher pace, there was a less creolized slave population. This in turn resulted in more preserved African traditions and resistance against the French oppressor. At the end of the 18th century, the slaves revolted against the French, which resulted in a long revolutionary war that lead to the creation of the independent country of Haiti. After becoming independent, the voodoo practices taken from Africa had the freedom to grow and develop without the interfering of imperial forces. This evolved eventually into ‘Haitian Vodou’, a religion that combined elements from African voodoo with elements from Roman Catholicism. It was in this fusion that the first incarnation of the zombie was created. Bishop explains, “[ancient believes were] likely transformed when abducted slaves were exposed to the Christian concept of resurrecting a body– returned from the grave–and the ideologies of colonial enslavement–bodies lacking freedom and autonomy. As a result of this cross-cultural fusion, Haitian zombies were born: victims of nefarious chemical assault, lacking conscious minds and, implicitly, their souls as well” (Bishop 2015: 7). People were transformed into mindless zombies by witchdoctors, and then sold to plantation owners to work the fields. Zombies instilled fear because the people of Haiti were afraid of being turned into a

13 zombie. The ideology of the zombie in Haitian culture is thus related to power struggles and oppression. Bishop uses the theories of Louis Althusser to explain that the ideological institution of the voodoo religion, in the form of the zombie threat, “can be seen working on political, social, and economic levels” (Bishop 2010: 54). Haiti remained politically instable throughout the nineteenth century and in 1915 the occupied Haiti to restore order and install a pro-American president. The occupation lasted for nearly twenty years, and this was the first time that the American people learned about the dark and mysterious voodoo practices of Haiti. It was the travel author William Seabrook who brought tales of seemingly dead people working in cane fields to the American audience, when he released his book The Magic Island (1929).

“It seemed ... that while the zombie came from the grave, it was neither a ghost, nor yet a person who had been raised like Lazarus from the dead. The zombie, they say, is a soulless human corpse, still dead, but taken from the grave and endowed by sorcery with a mechanical semblance of life—it is a dead body which is made to walk and act and move as if it were alive. People who have the power to do this go to a fresh grave, dig up before it has had time to rot, galvanize it into movement, and then make of it a servant or slave, occasionally for the commission of some crime, more often simply as a drudge around the habitation or the farm, setting it dull heavy tasks, and beating it like a dumb beast if it slackens” (William Seabrook qtd. in Bishop 2010: 48).

The fascination of the American public in twenties and thirties with the Haitian Zombie can be explained by a combination of factors. In some ways the United States resembled Haiti, as it is a former colony, and had been relying on slavery for many years. This new post-colonial order that existed at the turn of the century also lead to a combination of collective social guild and fear for the post-colonial other (Bishop 2010: 60). These were the social conditions under which racist narratives of voodoo priests taking possession of white, often female, victims became of interest to the American mainstream public. The first Hollywood movie featuring these Caribbean zombies was White Zombie (Victor Halperin 1932), which was partly based on William Seabrook’s novel. The movie introduced a novel horror plot to the audience and it was an unanticipated success. In White Zombie a wealthy plantation owner enlists an evil voodoo master to force a woman to marry him by turning her into a zombie. In the same vein of White Zombie, more horror films were released exploiting “racial and cultural difference to instill its audience with the terrors of a misunderstood and menacing (post)colonial Other” (Bishop 2010: 66): Ouanga, Revolt of the Zombies (1936), (1941), I Walked with a Zombie (1943), Zombies of Mora-Tau (1957), and The Plague of the Zombies (1966).

14 All these movies used fear of the Other to create horror. Also, these movies confronted audiences with the fear of losing autonomy; being dominated, which could also be linked to the realities of the Great Depression. It was a time were the American working class felt enslaved by “a tedious job, a bleak economy, or a helpless government” (Bishop 2015: 8). The idea of losing your autonomy carried over to the science-fiction movies that were made after the Second World War with titles such as (1959), The Dies Screaming (1964) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). Furthermore, these movies used the context of the and fear of communism to frighten their audience. Of course these movies did not feature any zombies but they did carry some of these themes, syntactic characteristics, as Altman would call them, over to the sixties. Peter Dendle names The Earth Dies Screaming as an obvious inspiration to the zombie genre of the sixties (Dendle 2001: 64). Both Bishop and Dendle hail George A. Romero as the director who (re)invented the modern zombie genre by bringing the zombies back from the dead in his low-budget feature film Night of the Living Dead (1968). Romero took the Caribbean zombies and combined them with other iconic horror like the Gothic bloodthirsty and the hordes of invading aliens from the fifties, to create a type of subgenre that was completely original. These new zombies Romero created did not have any relation to voodoo or a zombie master that controlled them. It is also typical that they come in huge groups that outnumber the human protagonists; are hungry for human meat and move slowly. Also, if a zombie bites a human, he or she turns into a zombie itself after some time, showing the zombie- condition to be contagious. Romero was influenced by the existing horror tradition, as he employed the use of fear for an unfamiliar monstrous Other, in this case the zombie. The fear of being turned into the Other something that vampire narratives have in common with Romero’s zombie story. The novel (1954) by was a mayor influence on the script of Night of the Living Dead. In this novel its protagonist Neville becomes the last man on earth, while the rest of the world population has turned into bloodthirsty vampires. Neville tries to survive in this post-apocalyptic world where he is extremely outnumbered. The concept of a large group of invading monsters is also inherited from the alien invasion movies from the fifties I discussed earlier. Romero’s zombies were in short a “synthesis of the voodoo zombie, the alien invader, and the vampire” (Bishop 2010:112-13). Night of the Living Dead became a horror classic and a prototype for the whole zombie film genre. So what makes zombies so frightening and zombie narratives so effective? In answering this question we provide ourselves with the means for further in-depth analysis of our corpus in the fourth chapter of this thesis. What made Night of the Living Dead such an effective horror movie was the allegoric power of its narrative. It had a direct link to American social issues of the late sixties, and zombies formed a vessel to address “violence, death, mortality, cannibalism, invasion and infection, not to mention sexism, racism, the collapse of the nuclear family, and even incest” (Bishop 2015: 10). It took almost a decade for Romero to produce a follow-up, but since its release, Dawn of the Dead

15 (1978) is considered as one of the most influential films on the zombie genre. In Dawn of the Dead a group of zombie apocalypse survivors become trapped in a shopping mall. The movie draws parallels between the mindless, hungry zombies and us humans: creatures of habit and consumerism. Even after the humans have died, their zombie counterparts are still drawn to the shopping mall. Romero is effectively suggesting here that maybe humans are already part zombie, driven by modern consumerism. Since zombies are former living humans, being confronted with animated corpses that were formerly people known to the protagonists creates the effect of the uncanny; the Unheimlich as Freud called it (Bishop 2010: 95). Like vampires and ghosts, zombies are the returned dead that remind us of our own mortality. What makes Romero’s zombies all the more frightening is the fact that while zombies are animated corpses looking like humans, they are empty characters that cannot speak and do not seem to possess any form of ratio. It is the constant tension between the Heimlich and the Unheimlich that makes zombies such effective scaring machines. While they definitely look like humans, they are in fact rotting but moving corpses, which makes them very unfamiliar and thus uncanny, as can be seen in figure 2.

Figure 2: Graph made by Masahiro Mori (qtd. In Bishop 2010:120). A zombie does resemble a human but since it is in essence a dead animated body, its level of familiarity is very low. It is therefore Unheimlich.

Zombies continued to be popular throughout the seventies and early eighties, but Bishop mentions Michael Jackson’s music video of as the point where zombies first turned from effective allegorical creatures into pastiche and comedy. By the time Romero released his third zombie movie Day of the Dead (1985), movies (better known as “zomedies”) like The Return of the Living Dead (1985) and I Was a Teenage Zombie (1987) proved more lucrative. In the nineties hardly any zombie films were made. It was not until (2002) that the zombie returned to popularity. According to Bishop it were the events of the 9/11 attacks and the social unrest that

16 followed it that called for the return of an allegorical creature capable of addressing these issues. This of course meant the return of the zombie to the big screen. ’s 28 Days Later showed wandering through the empty streets of London and thereby invoking the newsreel images of the 9/11 attacks. It was also a strong critique on the “excessive empowered military” (Bishop 2015: 12). At the time of writing this thesis, the zombie renaissance may have slowed down a little, but big budget zombie films are still being made. David Fincher is working on a follow up to World War Z (2013) and last year the South Korean made Train to Busan (2016 dir: Yeon Sang-ho) was a box office hit. Bishop and Dendle have made a valuable point about the zombie being of scholarly interest because of its capacity to reflect the fears of society. Bishop has done extensive research into the cultural context in which the zombie was created, using his extensive knowledge of literary studies to analyze a multitude of texts. What it lacks though is hard data. Bishop’s research consists of historical research combined with a close analysis of three of Romero’s first zombie films. To seek further proof for the zombie as society’s barometer, as well as investigate the development of the genre, we need to have a good look at the, albeit scarce, quantitative data that has been collected. One of the few quantitative researches on zombie films was performed by Annalee Newitz and published in the online magazine io9. The research features a graphic (figure 3) showing on the y-axis how many zombie movies are produced, and on the x-axis the corresponding years. Newitz has used data from The Internet Movie Database to create the graph. The spikes in zombie movie production, she argues, are linked to moments of social unrest in western society (Newitz 2008). This research is a great inspiration and an interesting starting point. It shows in an effective way how Bishop’s claim that zombie films are a reflection of social unrest, can be substantiated by doing quantitative research. It also proves how accessible abstract data can become when it is used to create a clear graph. It does have its shortcomings which are for the most part pointed out by the author: “Mostly we've focused on movies from the U.S. and Europe, and we've included the living dead among zombies — so mummies are included, but vampires and ghosts aren't” (Newitz 2008). She is somewhat vague about the origin of the movies, not excluding non-Western movies but also not including all. Newitz also points out that the data has to be corrected for the increase in total movie production from 1910 to 2008. Bishop has combined multiple sources, including not only Newitz’s research, but also data from The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia (Peter Dendle 2001) and Book of the Dead (Jamie Russel 2005) to create a comparable graph. He does not explain the process of collection the data, but I am guessing that he just used the filmography of both books to create the graph (figure 4). Where Newitz relates the spikes in production to “social upheaval”, Bishop uses the peaks in his graphic to show the developmental cycles of the genre using four phases: the “developmental peak”, the “classical peak”, the “parodic peak” and lastly the “renaissance peak” (Bishop 2010: 14). The peaks correspond nicely to his genealogy of the zombie movie, a genealogy I used a lot in this chapter. However, he is not

17 consistent in choosing the peaks, switching between datasets to choose a peak that fits his story. Still, it provided a nice example on how to use quantitative data to create meaning.

Figure 3: The graph made by Annalee Newitz (2008) for her quantitative research on zombie movie production. She links spikes in the production to global social unrest.

Figure 4: The graph made by Bishop (2010: 14) where he combined data of three researches, including that of Newitz. He uses it to point out the developmental peaks of the zombie genre.

18 In the next chapter the goal is to create my own data for research. To do this I shall use Altman’s theory of syntactic and semantic genre elements to look for similarities and differences between zombie movies. When looking for inspiration for which semantic features I will be scoring in my quantitative research, I can consult Bishop’s “the Taxonomy of the Dead” (Bishop 2010: 20). In this taxonomy (figure 5) he shows us all the options for the type of zombies we have encountered over the years in movies. In my own quantitative research I want to investigate the development of the zombie genre, from before, and after the zombie renaissance. Since the reinvention of the genre by Romero, zombie movies have been mostly featuring infected zombies. That is why I can use the categories of the ‘infected’ part of the taxonomy to create a set of traits to look for in zombie films. The categories ‘slow’, ‘fast’, ‘dead’, and ‘alive’, are the ones I will be using in my next chapter. I will add to them more categories that address Altman’s syntactic approach. These will be categories that focus more on the structural elements of zombie narratives. We can conclude now, that in this chapter I have done three things. First I tried to retrace the history of the genre, arguing that the zombie movie is indeed an acknowledged film genre or sub genre with a diverse cultural embedding. Secondly, I have shown, using the theories of Bishop, that zombie movies can be used as a barometer for societal upheaval of a certain historic period. This is possible because of the allegorical possibilities of the figure of the zombie and the narrative structures used in zombie films. Lastly I have examined the data research that has already been done on zombie movies, so as to provide me with bearings for my own data research in the next chapter.

19 3. The quantitative of the dead

3.1 Introduction

In chapter 2, I have delved deeper into the history of the zombie as a cultural symbol and the development of zombie cinema. At the end of that chapter I outlined the few quantitative studies that have been done on zombie movies by Newitz and Bishop. In this chapter I want to build upon their studies, investigating the development of the zombie narrative. I will focus mostly on my own quantitative research on zombie movies, hoping to find patterns and trends that support my claims on the development of zombie film narrative and the way it reflects social unrest. Bishop has stated that since the 9/11 attacks a zombie renaissance has taken place, using the work of Dendle en Newitz to prove that the production of zombie movies has indeed increased since 2001. He has also claimed that the renewed popularity of the genre can be explained because the images of a zombie apocalypse can be linked closely to changed social conditions after the 9/11 attacks. The modern audience is accustomed to newsreel footage showing panicked crowds, deserted streets, extreme violence and environmental disasters. It is these images of a threatened Western society that contemporary zombie movies closely mimic. Bishop also stated that these new zombie films, starting with Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (2002), closely follow the narrative structure of original movies made by zombie godfather George A. Romero, but that they have taken on new meaning for a modern audience. Is Bishop right in in calling this new popularity a zombie renaissance? Can modern zombie movies indeed be said to address these modern anxieties? Has the zombie narrative changed over the years? If I want to find out if there is indeed a correlation between contemporary social unrest and zombie movies, I need to answer these questions with my own quantitative research. You may ask yourself; why focus on numbers and graphics instead of analyzing the films in question using methods like close reading? In choosing this method of research I draw inspiration from cognitivist film studies. I am of the opinion that if I want to make any valid claims on the development of genre and zombie films, I need to combine interpretative research with hard data. Genre is a complex language made up films, cinematic institutions and the people that interpret and use genre to understand and enjoy texts. Because of the multifaceted nature of genre, it is useful to approach it from a cognitivist angle using scientific methods. In contrast to what other film scholars like Warren Buckland have argued (Buckland 1989), I think interpretative analysis and cognitivist film studies are not there to compete with each other. I propose to use both methods to enrich and enhance each other. Because there is always a limit to what one can research, I assume the position of a fallibilist, hoping that my data will be of use for future research. A fallibilist, as cognitivist Noël Carroll describes, “admits that she may have to revise her theories in light of future evidence or of

20 theoretical implications of later developments because she realizes that at best her theories are well-warranted, and that a well-warranted theory can be false. There is no claim to a purchase on absolute truth here” (Carroll 1992: 202). With this research I also hope to provide any leads for future research. The interpretation of what this data may say about the development of the zombie narrative will be discussed at further length in the conclusive chapter.

3.2 Corpus and zombie movie production numbers

To start out my research, I first had to define what encompassed the total corpus of zombie film. This is immediately problematic since a multitude of studies on genre are about defining generic corpuses, but have come to no definite conclusions. I had to make a pragmatic decision when choosing which list is representative for the genre of zombie films. Peter Dendle’s The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia (2001) would have been the obvious choice, since it is the most extensive list of zombie movies made by an academic. The problem is that it is still one person’s opinion of what the zombie canon encompasses. Both Neale and Altman have argued convincingly that if we want to research genre, we have to look beyond the textual elements as well. I want to use a list that addresses what Altman has called the pragmatic (Altman 1999): the complex relation between genres and the way the audience uses them to create meaning. Since the zombie genre is very much a cult genre, the audience is a defining factor in what constitutes its corpus. Many zombie films were low budget made box-office flops that were later hailed by genre fanatics as cult classics. Because of the democratic nature of its creation I have chosen to use the zombie film list from Wikipedia. This is a list that is made and updated by people who enthusiastic about the subject: the fans. As is the case with every article on Wikipedia, this is a list that is co-created and co-edited by anyone who wishes to contribute. But they can only contribute on the condition that all entries are “reliably sourced” (Wikipedia: Identifying reliable sources 30-6-2017). This leads me to conclude that, because of its democratic nature, this list consists of titles that are labeled as zombie films by the fan and connoisseur community. The International Movie Database, while used by a lot of film scholars for primary reference, is not as democratically established or as transparent in its sources. But because IMDB does contain advanced searching functions I still needed it for my research to sort my selected zombie titles. I therefore merged the Wikipedia list with the IMDB title information. I will explain this merging process in this chapter. The first thing I set out to do was to create an updated chart based on the zombie film list I retrieved from Wikipedia (see appendix B for the full list of titles that I used). Graph 1 shows on the y- axis the amount of films produced annually and on x-axis which year. As you can see in the chart, there is no arguing with Bishop that a zombie film explosion has occurred since the 00s with zombie film production peaking in 2008 with thirty-two zombie films produced that year alone. There are a lot of similarities between my graph and the graphs made by Newitz and Bishop. That does not mean that

21 it is exactly the same down to the numbers, as each researcher made his or her own choices regarding the corpus. But it does correspond roughly with the trends and peaks of the other charts. Bishop recognized four different peaks in the development of the genre. First there is the developmental peak set around 1973. Second there is the classical peak set around 1980. At the end of the eighties we have the parodic peak; the moment where the genre turned into pastiche. In the nineties the popularity of the genre dwindled to revive again at the beginning of the new millennium. For my quantitative research I chose to compare two decades; the eighties and the 00s. I chose these two decades because, as can been seen in the graph, they contain most of the zombie movie production peaks that Bishop talks about.

Graph 1: This graph show the annual film production based on the list of zombie films from Wikipedia. Although not exactly the same, it follows most trends of the graphs by Newitz and Bishop. (c) Jasper Wezenberg.

Since it would be impossible for me to analyze all the movies produced during both decades, I had to take a sample with a limited set of titles. I chose to analyze twenty-five titles of each decade to keep things neat and manageable but not too limited in scope. I could not go out and just pick my favorite titles, as this would make the research appear biased and unscientific, so I had to find an effective way of selecting these titles. This is where The International Movie Database comes in, as it contains a way more advanced searching engine than Wikipedia. I initially had the idea of selecting titles based on their revenue since this would show how popular a title would have been at the time of its cinematic release. But as I stated earlier, the zombie genre is a cult genre that encompasses titles that sometimes did poorly at the box-office, but in retrospect got appreciated by the fans as classics of the genre. I therefore chose to sort zombie titles based on their IMDB popularity. On IMDB, popularity is calculated based on a title’s rating, the number of votes, and the number of page visits. Using IMDB’s search engine I searched for horror titles using the keyword ‘zombie’ and setting the release date

22 ranging from 1980 till 1989 and from 2000 till 2009. After this I took the titles from IMDB and checked if they were also on the zombie list retrieved from Wikipedia. Only if a title is present in both the Wikipedia list, as well as the IMDB list, I would use them for my research. In doing this I created a list containing twenty-five zombie movies for each decade based on the Wikipedia list but ranked according to their popularity on IMDB. The two lists, in essence, contain the top twenty-five most popular zombie movies from the eighties, as well as the 00s. The appendices also contain all the titles I used in this part of the research. Now that I had my two lists, I had to decide which zombie film characteristics I was going to investigate. Bishop has stated that the classic zombie narrative of Romero has not changed much since it was introduced again during the zombie renaissance. So I chose categories based on the characteristics of typical zombie apocalypse films. The categories are binary which means their presence in the selected movies is either positive or negative (0 or 1, as can be seen in the appendix). The categories are for the most part based on characteristics of the classic zombie movies made by Romero like Dawn of the Dead(1979) which we also see returning in popular modern zombie films like 28 Days Later (2002). In the following paragraph I will explain each category individually and then show the results of my research on that category.

3.3 Results 3.3.1 Zombie invasion narrative

The first and most important category I created was ‘the zombie invasion narrative’. This style of zombie narrative was introduced in Night of the Living Dead (1968). What it means is that the narrative of the film is built around an expanding group of zombies that attack the protagonists. This does not mean that the film’s narrative has to feature a zombie apocalypse were whole of society gets overrun by zombies. It can also mean an zombie invasion on a mansion like for example in Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror(1981). Graph 2 shows the percentage of films containing such a narrative, compared in both decades. These results are immediately interesting and possibly even contesting Bishops theories. What is claimed to be the archetypical zombie narrative structure only appears to make up thirty-two percent of the most popular zombies movies from the eighties. So while the movies made by Romero, featuring hordes of contagious bloodthirsty zombies, are now identified as the prototype of the genre, this probably was not the case in de eighties. For example a classic film like Re-animator(1985) does feature aggressive undead corpses but it does not follow a narrative structure where a big group of zombies try to invade the house or the city of the protagonists.

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Graph 2: This graph shows a significant increase in the films containing a zombie apocalypse narrative from the eighties to the 00s. (c) Jasper Wezenberg.

3.3.2 Shots of deserted streets

The category ‘zombie invasion narrative’ does not per se mean an apocalypse narrative. That is why I created more categories made up of characteristics that are signs of an apocalypse. As Bishop claimed images of deserted streets resonate strongly with a modern audience, I also looked for this characteristic in my selection of zombie movies. Shots of deserted streets are a typical characteristic of a zombie apocalypse. As most people are dying and survivors have to hide in sanctuaries. The authorities fail to contain the zombie epidemic and the cities become empty. Graph 2 shows how there has been an increase in the use of shots of deserted streets. Where only 16% of the zombie movies in the eighties contained these shots, almost half of the films featured them by the 00s. This could indicate an increase in apocalypse narratives.

Graph 3: Shots of deserted streets in zombie movies during the eighties were rare. In the 00s almost half of the zombie films contain them. (c) Jasper Wezenberg.

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3.3.3 Use of news- or found footage

Another technique that is used a lot in the zombie apocalypse context is the use of news- or found footage. As the protagonists turn on their television or radio they can hear or see on the news how the zombie disaster is unfolding. It also adds to a strong sense of realism. The modern western audience is used to seeing newsreel footage of environmental disasters and terrorist attacks. Showing news images of a zombie attack strongly invokes the real news footage. I have also included films that feature diegetic found footage like we see in the movie REC (2007); a film shot in camcorder style, creating the appearance of a documentary. I will analyze the use of news- or found footage more extensively in Chapter 4. The use of news- or found footage has increased significantly from 12% to 56% (graph 4). This could indicate that modern zombie films are more likely to invoke real news footage that is recognizable for the modern audience. It could also indicate an increase in zombie films with a more ‘realist’ style.

Graph 4: Comparable to shots of deserted streets, we see a marked increase in the use of news- or found footage. (c) Jasper Wezenberg.

3.3.4 Speed of zombie movement

Speed of zombie movement is a topic of some debate amongst the fans. Purists claim that running zombies are not real zombies because that is not how Romero envisioned them. We see an increase from 20% to 60% (graph 5), so it is hard to argue that they are not an increasingly important factor. While Bishop claimed that the running zombies were introduced in 28 Days Later (2002), my research shows that they were present in zombie movies before that. Still, they formed only a small part of the zombies in the eighties, where in 00s they became the majority. Because the running, or even

25 sprinting, zombies pose more of a threat to humans, their increase could indicate an increase in suspense in the modern zombie films.

Graph 5: While not much of a presence in films of the eighties, running zombies now seem to dominate the genre. (c) Jasper Wezenberg.

3.3.5 Are they dead?

It seems like a stupid question to ask if ‘the undead’ are dead. But as graph 6 shows, zombie films containing zombies that are still alive increased from almost zero to nearly 50%. Zombies used to be supernatural corpses that became animate without any clear explanation. Modern zombie films feature zombies that are actually alive humans contaminated with a virus that makes them rabid and hungry for flesh. “This kind of zombie is more frightening than the traditional monster, and instead of just being a horror movie, 28 Days Later crosses into science fiction: it could happen” (Bishop 2009: 23). This is why I chose ‘alive zombies’ as a category. I only marked this category as positive on the condition of a clear explanation in the narrative that the zombies are still alive. For example the narrator of (2009) at one point explains to the spectator that the whole zombie apocalypse started with someone eating a hamburger containing mad cow’s disease, causing him to slip in to a rabid state but still being alive. The increase of the ‘alive zombie’ could be linked to the increased fear for epidemics, a topic I will come back to in Chapter 4.

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Graph 6: The increase of ‘alive zombies’ could indicate an increased public fear for disease outbreaks. (c) Jasper Wezenberg.

3.3.6 Extra: funny zombies

This is a category that did not prove to be of any use to the questions I am trying to research in this thesis. Still, I am presenting the results here. They may be of use for future research. Graph 7 shows the percentage of zombie that have been made in the eighties and 00s. What is does prove is that Bishop’s ‘parodic peak’ really is not that much of a peak. Only a quarter of the zombie films made in the eighties are zombie comedies. And while zombie comedies are still very popular, there has not been a significant increase.

Graph 7: There has not been a big increase of zombie comedies. (c) Jasper Wezenberg.

27 4. Zombies in a time of terror: invoking images

“Unlike many other and the supernatural, the classical zombie story has very specific criteria that govern its plot and development. These genre protocols include not only the zombies and the imminent threat of violent deaths, but also a postapocalyptic backdrop, the collapse of societal infrastructures, the indulgence of survivalist , and the fear of other surviving humans. All of these plot elements and motifs are present in pre-9/11 zombie films, but they have become more relevant to a modern, contemporary audience” (Bishop 2009: 20). Bishop states in this quote that, while the narrative structure of zombie movies has stayed the same, zombie movies have found a new audience in a changed post-9/11 world. I mostly agree but would like to nuance his argument. My quantitative data from Chapter 3 namely shows that while in the eighties there was a multitude of zombie narratives, since the zombie renaissance, most zombie stories are based on the zombie invasion narrative. This type of narrative is what probably proved most resonant with a post-9/11 audience as Bishop argues. How has this premise shaped modern zombie narratives? And has the genre evolved further beyond Romero’s prototypes? In this chapter I am going to do a close analysis of a few selected zombie titles to further investigate and expand on the findings of the previous chapter. On the one hand I hope to show how modern zombie films utilize its audience’s post-9/11 awareness and, in the tradition of the Gothic, form an allegory for social and geo-political unrest of the last two decades. On the other hand I will argue that the genre is constantly reinventing itself and employing new cinematographic techniques and narrative structures. The titles I have selected are examples of modern zombie film that utilize this post-9/11 awareness while at the same time introducing new elements to the genre.

4.1 REC, dir: Jaume Balagueró, , 2007

In this close analysis of REC, I want to show that REC employs imagery reminiscent of the famous television documentary 9/11 (2002 dir: Gédéon,Jules Naudet & James Hanlon) to engage a post-9/11 audience. Secondly I want to investigate how directors Balagueró and Plaza combined the traditional zombie invasion narrative of Romero with new narrative and visual techniques to create a film that stands firmly in the existing zombie movie tradition while at the same time providing a fresh new way to approach the genre. The story of REC is set around a television crew consisting of cameraman Pablo and presenter Ángela. They are shooting an item on a Barcelona fire station for the fictive television show While You're Sleeping. While the night starts out quietly, things turn disastrous quickly when the firemen get called away based on report of a screaming old lady. The lady, as it turns out, has been bitten by a dog and subsequently turned into a raging rabid zombie that is hungry for human flesh. After the women

28 bites a police officer, the infection starts to spread. Local authorities respond quickly and ruthlessly by sealing of the entire building, shutting in Pablo, Ángela, the firemen, two police officers and the tenants together with a growing group of zombies. Before they made 9/11, the French-American Naudet brothers, together with firefighter and filmmaker James Hanlon, were originally shooting a documentary on a New York firefighter trainee. Things took a turn for the worse on September 11, 2001, when Jules Naudet and Battalion Chief Joseph Pfeifer were out on patrol investigating a report of a gas leak. Jules only accompanied Chief Pfeifer because he needed some time to practice his camerawork; something that is proved by the jittery camera footage we see around 00:24:23. Just when Jules and the firefighters had arrived at the scene, a plane flew right over their heads to crash into the north tower of the World Trade Center. From then on Jules followed the firefighter throughout the rest of the disastrous day, as they went into the World Trade Center to try to save lives. REC bears a striking resemblance to 9/11 by showing us handheld camera footage made by a television crew that is following a group of firefighters at just another day at the office. By using a handheld camera that is operated by cameraman Pabo, REC creates a very realistic faux-documentary reminiscent of the found footage documentary of the Naudet brothers. REC also clearly draws inspiration from the horror movie classic (Eduardo Sánchez, Daniel Myrick that made the found footage style popular. It should also be noted that REC is the first zombie movie to employ this cinematographic style beating Romero to it by a year, as the latter did release his own found footage zombie film until 2008. One important difference between REC and The Blair Witch Project is the way in which the camera is operated. In the latter movie the protagonists are amateur student filmmakers using small camcorders. This results in lots of shots of the ground and a very unstable and shaky handling of the camera. While this adds to the authenticity of the film, as it connects the camera and footage to the diegesis, it also makes for a somewhat tiresome viewing experience. This problem is largely avoided in REC by the fact that the narrative revolves around a professional television crew with Pablo as the cameraman. Because they are journalists their job is to show their audience as much as they can. This also explains why they keep the camera running constantly, even when the situation worsens. To keep things realistic everything is shot using natural lighting. Because some parts of the building are very dark, and sometimes the light gets switched off, this adds to the suspense of the scenes: the spectator is sometimes literally in the dark. The footage used in 9/11 was originally supposed to be used in a documentary about the everyday life of firemen but it turned out that the Naudet brothers and the firemen became part of an extremely dramatic and traumatic event. The beginning of the documentary gives us a glimpse of the film that the Naudet brothers indented to make. A montage with a lighthearted tone shows the daily life of the firemen. We see shots of the firemen doing drills, cooking, eating and laughing together. We also see rookie fireman Tony Benetatos anxiously waiting for his first fire to get his hands dirty.

29 REC starts out in the same way with the showing of footage of everyday life at the fire station. Ángela interviews multiple firemen about their work and takes a tour of the station, even walking in on their supper as they are cheeringly greeted by the laughing and socializing firemen. As the night falls Ángela, much in the same way as Tony Benetatos, starts to wish for something to happen so she can get into action. Although in many ways similar the mode of narration is something that differs between both films. 9/11 uses a voice-over and talking heads to fill in a lot of the gaps left by the footage. Since the events unfolded totally different from what they could ever have expected, a lot of explanation is needed, hence the talking heads. Off course when making a suspenseful horror movie, even if it is a fake documentary, it is hard to use any talking heads as this would stand in the way of creating any suspense. In REC Ángela fulfills the role of the narrator on a diegetic level, while at the same time being the protagonist to the film’s story. When the call arrives of a screaming lady in a multistory apartment building Àngela and Pablo accompany two firemen to inspect the scene. When they get to the building, two police officers have also arrived and they al gather in the lobby of the building to talk with the upset tenants. Things start to go really wrong when the firemen and the police officers go up in the building to find the screaming lady. As I already metioned, the police officer gets bitten by the zombie lady, fatally wounding him. As the group tries to save the police officer, they carry him down the stairs in hope of evacuating him. As they arrive at the bottom of the stairs, police sirens can be heard everywhere. It turns out that the local authorities have sealed off the building to put everyone inside in quarantine. This scene strongly invokes the part of 9/11 where the south tower of the World Trade Center has just collapsed at 00:50:58. Jules Naudet and the firemen were at that time in the lobby of the north tower that was filled with debris and smoke. They use Jules’s camera light to reorient themselves and discover that chaplain Mychal Judge has been mortally wounded by the debris. As the normal exits are now blocked because of the collapse, they are trying to find a way out with the chaplain’s body. In the background sirens and sound of shouting and screaming people can be heard. Photographer Shannon Stapleton later photographed the men carrying the chaplain, a photograph that went all over the world. Judge was later designated as the first official victim of 9/11 with the status ‘Victim 0001’ (New York Post 4-9- 2011) (see image 1).

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Image 1: The iconic photograph of Mychal Judge who gets carried out of the WTC. Photo by Shannon Stapleton.

Image 2: A handheld shot of the police officer that gets carried down the staircase. This image is in way reminiscent of photograph made of Mychal Judge. REC: 00:14:57.

One of the most traumatizing aspects of the attacks on the World Trade Center attacks for the firemen as well as other bystanders were the ‘jumpers’. Above the location of impact of the planes in both towers, thousands of people were stuck facing smoke and extreme heat. Because of these conditions some people jumped out of the tower, fatally landing on the pavements and adjacent buildings. Before the collapse of the south tower, loud bangs can be heard every minute. The voiceover of Jules explains those are the sounds of the ‘jumpers’ landing next to the lobby. Jules did

31 not film the bodies themselves out of respect. Instead, every time a bang is heard he made close-ups of the firemen’s faces looking around in frustration. Not long after the scene in REC where the wounded police officer is carried down the stairs, the protagonists are standing in the lobby contemplating how to of the building. At this point, while not clearly in focus of the shot, we see a body fall down in the middle of the staircase, landing with a loud bang and everybody starts panicking (00:18:27). One of the firemen had stayed upstairs and for a reason unknown he fell down the staircase of multiple floors. With the examples I have given so far I do not want to argue that REC tries to create a zombie copy of 9/11. What I want to argue is that REC references the iconic images of the World Trade Center attack. These images have created a collective with modern western audiences: a cognitive structure. And by invoking these images REC engages these post-9/11 audiences by referencing societal fears and traumas. Also, instead of portraying a big zombie apocalypse and societal breakdown, REC keeps things small and intimate by creating a zombie invasion of an apartment building. While a full apocalypse seems like something less plausible, a terrorist attack on an apartment or public building is something a modern audience is more used to seeing on the television. In a scene later on in the movie (00:34:10), while the protagonists are still trapped in the building, Ángela wants to conduct interviews with the tenants of the building. One of the tenants, a mustachioed old man, explains how he thinks that his Chinese neighbors are the cause of the zombie outbreak. It is unknown to him that the camera is already recording and he goes on saying that his neighbors are not the nice kind of Chinese that practice feng shui, but the kind that screams and makes smelly food. This scene forms a very strong allegory for the increasing xenophobia in western society as a response to social unrest. Finally I want to discuss the cause of the zombie plague that REC’s narrative contains and how it diverges from the classic zombie invasion narrative. Near the conclusion of the movie Ángela en Pablo are the only survivors left, as the rest of the group has been turned into zombies. They find refuge in the penthouse of the building that was supposed to be vacant. The apartment turns out to be owned by a now absent agent of the Vatican. They find a tape recorder that contains a record where the agent explains he was looking for a cure for a demonic possession. In order to so, the Vatican kidnapped a possessed girl to experiment on. While the girl was in the agent’s captivity the virus became contagious and the agent left, sealing off the penthouse. After he left the virus spread throughout the apartment building. This narrative is related to what Noël Carroll would call the “overreacher plot” (Carroll, 1990: 118). The main character of this plot style is always a mad scientist or a necromancer whose experimenting creates an uncontrollable monster. When Ángela en Pablo enter the apartment they find all kinds of experimenting equipment and even a room with a chair with straps to hold down the possessed girl. It turns out the girl is somewhere in the house and what follows is a suspenseful where Pablo has to use the infrared mode of his camera because the lights are

32 out. Pablo is eventually killed, and the spectator is left unsure of the faith of Ángela. In the case of REC the mad professor is an agent of the Vatican, which also ties the cause of the outbreak to the Catholic church and to stories of demonic possession comparable to classic The Exorcist(1973, dir: William Friedkin).

Image 3: Shot made by Pablo inside the laboratory in the penthouse. The equipment reveals how the Vatican agent was doing some sort of experiments on a captured girl. REC: 01:00:35.

As this analysis shows REC, while being in many ways a zombie film, also firmly draws inspiration from other types of narratives of the horror genre creating a new kind of zombie film. REC also shows its awareness of the post-9/11 collective consciousness of modern audiences. This places the film within Bishops zombie renaissance but without the usual narrative of an apocalypse.

4.2 Train to Busan, dir: Yeon Sang-ho, 2016

Train to Busan is the most recently released zombie movie I am going to discuss in this thesis. When it was released it broke all box office records (Variety 24-7-2-16) and it is also the first South Korean made zombie apocalypse film. Train to Busan shows how the zombie genre is perfectly adapting to new social changes and how the zombie narrative can be effective outside of western countries. In this analysis I am going to show how Train to Busan references recent important South Korean social topics, while at the same time introducing new elements to the classic zombie apocalypse story. Train to Busan starts out with a scene of a truck driver approaching a roadblock. After his truck gets stopped, a shot is shown of the truck passing through what seems to appear as a decontamination shower. After the truck is decontaminated, the driver is approached by men in white

33 hazmat suits and breathing masks1. One man explains to the driver he cannot pass, saying that he has to turn around. But after the driver complains about being late, the man agrees to let him pass just this one time. As the driver continues he gets startled when he accidently hits a crossing deer. He stops his car to see what has happened after which he finds the dead deer in a puddle of blood. He assumes it is dead and gets in his truck to continue his journey. In a medium long shot we see the truck drive off while panning to the right to bring the lying deer in the shot. All of a sudden the deer stands up and there is a cut to a close-up of the deer’s head. It is now shown that the deer’s eyes have turned white. Because the film is branded as a zombie, a spectator with knowledge of the genre can draw the conclusion that the deer has turned into a zombie deer (which is a first in zombie movies) because of the contaminated area. This suggestion also immediately creates suspense as we are now expecting that the virus will contaminate humans as well. These images immediately draw a parallel between a zombie outbreak and the deadly outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome2 in South Korea in 2015. This was a year before this film was released in South Korea. MERS is a virus related to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome and is highly contagious, also having a mortality rate higher than 30% (World Health Organization 2017). The outbreak in South Korea started when a contaminated man traveled back from the Middle East to South Korea and was reported to have caught MERS on the 20th of may 2015 ( 8-6-2015). The outbreak eventually led to the contamination of 186 people while 36 have died. As of yet there is no cure for the virus, so the South Korean government tried to halt the virus by disinfecting public locations. The opening scene of Train to Busan bears a striking resemblance to the photos of the disinfection process of different public transport vehicles (see image 4, image 5, and image 6). The audience is immediately reminded of newspaper photographs of the MERS outbreak even before the main characters have been introduced.

Image 4: Shot from the opening scene were government workers decontaminate the truck. Train to Busan 00:01:10

1 A hazmat suit provides its wearer protection from biological agents. 2 It is also known as MERS

34

Image 5: “Workers disinfect a Korean Air aircraft at Incheon international airport. South Korea reported a fourth death from Middle East Respiratory Syndrome prompting ’s mayor to declare “war” on the virus. Photograph: YONHAP/AFP/Getty Images” ( 5-6-215).

Image 6: “A worker disinfects a subway train carriage in Seoul. Photograph: Yonhap/AFP/Getty Images” (The Guardian 5-6-215).

After this introduction the opening credits start to roll and the main narrative starts. We are introduced to Seok-woo and his daughter Soo-an. Seok-woo is portrayed as a young fund manager and workaholic who lives and works in Seoul. His daughter complains he never has time for her and how she misses her mother, from whom Seok-woo has divorced. Because it is her birthday she want to take the train to Busan to visit her mother. Seok-woo reluctantly agrees and they board the train the next

35 day. When the train leaves the station Soo-an sees a man being jumped on by a zombie on the platform. As it turns out, a girl with a fever also got on the train. After a short while the girl starts getting convulsions and turns into a zombie. She starts to bite the passengers and zombie epidemic spreads throughout the train. The passengers that are still healthy and alive manage to isolate the zombies in a few wagons of the train, as they discover the zombies are not able to open doors. The passengers are made aware of the developments in the rest of the country through watching the news footage that is shown inside the train. Of course in the previous chapter I argued that the use of newsreel footage is a typical characteristic of zombie movies since the zombie renaissance. It is used to signal the apocalypse and to show that society is breaking down, as the authorities cannot contain the zombie crisis. On the newsreel footage shown in the train the government is clearly disclosing wrong information as they label the zombies as rioters. They also state that people must remain calm and have confidence the authorities will solve the problem (image 7). At the same time the train passengers start watching YouTube videos of zombie attacks that totally contradict the government’s claim that everything is under control. These statements are in some way comparable to the statements released by the real South Korean government when MERS epidemic started in may 2015. When the news of the epidemic broke, the Government refused to disclose the names of the hospitals affected by the virus (Korea Herald 2-6-2015). This in turn caused public outcry and has led to an increased distrust of the government in South Korea. This reference will probably resonate more with the Korean audience than the audience in Western countries.

Image 7: Newsreel footage of a press officer encouraging the citizens of South Korea to have faith in the government. Train to Busan 00:30:01.

Another theme presented in Train to Busan is the immorality of big corporate businesses and the people that work for them. This is shown through multiple elements and scenes in the movie. The first element being one of the main characters: Seok-woo. At the start of the movie the audience already learned about him that he is a fund manager at a big corporation and that he is more concerned

36 with his work than his family life. Later on in the movie, after the newsreel scene I just discussed, there is a scene where Seok-woo and Soo-an are looking for a place to sit in the crowded wagon. Just as Soo-an has found a chair for herself an old lady walks by. As a kind gesture Soo-an offers the old lady her chair to sit in. After this happens, Seok-woo takes here apart explaining to her that in times of crisis, you cannot go and help others: you have to look out for yourself. The same happens when the train first stops at . The city authorities have supposedly created a sanctuary, but Seok- woo learns through a telephone call from a colleague that everyone entering the city will be quarantined. Seok-woo arranges for him and his daughter to be picked up by this colleague so they can bypass this quarantine. As soon as Soo-an finds out about his plan she wants to take other passengers with them. Again Seok-woo explains to her that she has to stop caring for others and take care of herself. As the story progresses Seok-woo even discovers to his devastation that he may himself have contributed to the cause of the zombie outbreak. At 01:24:11 he receives a call from his colleague, who explains to him that their company funded a biological organization responsible for the zombie virus. His colleague then asks Seok-woo to comfort him by telling him it is not his fault and that he was only doing his job. Seok-woo does so. Of course the morale of this plot twist is that individualism and corporate greed can lead to disastrous things. As the story progresses Seok-woo develops into a more compassionate character that sacrifices everything for his daughter. Other humans are sometimes as big of a threat as the zombies, as Bishop has also argued. It will then come as no surprise that the main antagonist in Train to Busan is also a character with a corporate background. Yong-suk is the CEO of a major business corporation named Stallion Express. He is also a passenger on the train and, being a somewhat one-dimensional character, he is mostly concerned with his own survival. During a scene at the beginning of the film, Yong-suk is already portrayed as being a bully when he makes condescending remarks about a homeless man that also boards the train. When the train later on stops at Daecheon station, the train conductor wants to go and look for survivors, but Yong-suk keeps insisting they keep moving and leave the survivors. Near the end of the film Yong-suk develops into a very aggressive man that uses other people as bait for the zombies, to ensure his own survival. Eventually he gets bitten and also turns into a zombie. Both these examples of corrupt and crooked businessmen can be related to a recent scandal at the top of major South Korean multinational Samsung. At the beginning of this year, the acting president of the Samsung Group was arrested on allegations of paying bribes to a close friend of the now impeached president Park Geun-hye. These bribes were meant to secure a fusion between Samsung and another company. President Park was impeached and arrested based on allegations of corruption (Trouw 11-1-2017). Both examples show recent headlines have been dominated by South Korean corruption scandals and illegal links between the government and the business world. Train to Busan seems to be a clear reflection of the current distrust of both institutions. Lastly I would like to take a look at the innovations Train to Busan offers to the classic zombie narrative. In many ways Train to Busan is a typical example of a zombie movie made after the

37 zombie renaissance. Many of the characteristics identified by Bishop can be found in the movie. It contains a fast spreading zombie invasion, a collapse of modern society, failing authorities, danger from other humans and a storyline of survival. It pays tribute to the movies made by Romero while at the same time introducing new elements to the classic zombie narrative. What is most unique about Train to Busan is of course the fact that it situates a zombie story on a train. Instead of being fortified in a mansion or a shopping mall, the protagonists are on a train that moves through a collapsing country. In that way Train to Busan can also be related to the tradition of train suspense stories that go all the way back to The Great Train Robbery (1903 dir: Edwin S. Porter). The paradox of being stuck on a moving vehicle together with monsters gives the story an extra layer of suspense. The protagonists are stuck in the limited space of the train, which forces them to confront the zombies face to face. Image 5 and image 6 that I discussed earlier also create a close tie between contamination and public transport, as the images show, respectively, a plane and a subway wagon being disinfected. The zombies themselves are of the modern and fast type, like those introduced in 28 Days Later. Zombies can be seen running, jumping, and climbing, making them even more dangerous than before. As can be seen in the scene at Daecheon station, the zombies also seem to be able to climb on top of each other to form one big moving mass of multiple zombies, thereby creating an almost unstoppable force. The same phenomenon occurs near the end of the movie, as a huge group of zombies grabbing hold of the train, slowly bringing it to a halt (image 8). Another new characteristic that is introduced in Train to Busan is the fact that the zombies do not seem to be able to see much in darker conditions. After Seok-woo and a small group of cut-off passengers discover this, they come up with a plan to move through a wagon full of zombies to reach the other passengers again. Every time the train goes through a tunnel, they move a few meters before hiding from the zombies. Doing this, they slowly make their way through the wagon safely, finally rejoining the other passengers after a suspenseful scene.

Image 8: A growing group of zombies is grabbing hold of the train, thereby slowing it down. Train to Busan 01:39:26.

38 In this analysis I hope to have shown how a zombie narrative can be used, not only to create a thrilling suspenseful movie, but also to address social unrest outside of the western world. Train to Busan is an Asian film that appropriates the zombie narrative and relates it in an effective way to South Korean social unrest and political scandals. It stands in the tradition of the zombie renaissance while at the same time introducing new elements to the classic zombie invasion story.

4.3 Land of the Dead, dir: George A. Romero, 2005

Land of the Dead is the only American zombie film featured in this chapter’s triple analysis. I selected the titles in this chapter based on the fact that they are using new narrative and cinematographic techniques to innovate the genre while still being a barometer for society. This led me to selecting two films made outside of the US and that had not been discussed yet in academic research on zombie movies. But it was the godfather of zombie cinema himself, Romero, who provided fresh new ideas to the genre in 2005. Instead of dwelling on his own legacy, he uses Land of the Dead to further explore new possibilities for zombie narratives. Land of the Dead begins with small snippets of news radio broadcasts that describe the outbreak of the zombie epidemic preceded by a title saying “some time ago”. As has been discussed, the use of news material to signal the apocalypse has been typical of zombie movies since the zombie renaissance. We hear quotes like “unburied human corpses are returning to life and feeding on the living”, “do not try to leave your homes”, “everyone who dies will become one of them”, and “they’re not your neighbors and friends, not anymore”. There also some quotes in French and Russian that may hint at the idea that the zombie outbreak is worldwide. All these quotes indicate to the spectator that he or she is indeed watching a zombie genre film and the story will start when the apocalypse has already commenced. After the introductory credits there is a cut to a crane shot of a deserted village (another typical element that I used as category in the previous chapter). An off-key sounding tuba is heard, and as the shot keeps panning right, a group of zombies is shown holding instruments. While they are not really playing their instruments, it looks as if they are trying to do so (image 9). Next we see a shot of a boy and a girl zombie holding hands. Then there is a cut to a big zombie who is holding a petrol hose, looking as if he is a petrol pump attendant (image 10). After this shot, we see one of the protagonists, Riley, spying on the zombies together with a buddy. His buddy remarks “it’s like they’re pretending to be alive” and Riley comments “isn’t that what we’re doing, pretending to be alive?” With this scene Romero immediately compares humans to zombies, as he did before in Dawn of the Dead. With this scene he also immediately introduces the concept of zombies having a memory of their previous life, almost as if they are not totally dead. The story of Land of the Dead, while not exactly specified, is set some time (possibly years) after the zombie apocalypse. Surviving humans have created strongholds and scavenge abandoned

39 villages for food and supplies. Riley is one of these scavengers and he is contracted by a man named Paul Kaufman. Kaufman is the leader of a sanctuary in the former city of , . While the poor people and minorities have to live on the outskirts of the city, Kaufman has set himself up with other rich upper class people in a luxury high-rise building named Fiddler’s Green. While still dangerous, the zombies are not a direct threat anymore, because of an electric fence and high security around the sanctuary.

Image 9: A group of three zombies still holding their instruments, pretending to play. The zombies seem to remember their previous life. Land of the Dead 00:03:08.

Image 10: The zombie named Big Daddy pretending to work at a petrol station. Land of the Dead 00:03:44.

In Land of the Dead Romero is introducing a new kind of zombie, one that that appears to remember parts his previous human life. The zombie that is operating the petrol station, called Big Daddy, is especially clever. Big Daddy seems to have sympathy for his fellow zombies, and is increasingly frustrated by the killing of other zombies. Riley and his colleagues are used to distracting the zombies with fireworks before they go on a supply raid. In an early scene of one these raids it is shown how Big Daddy has learned to ignore the fireworks and tries to communicate with the other zombies to do the same. By introducing all these new zombie characteristics, Romero creates sympathetic zombie protagonists, something totally original in the genre. Land of the Dead contains a subplot of a zombie uprise against the humans led by Big Daddy.

40 Romero also uses these sympathetic zombies to express social critique. Land of the Dead was released during the height of the reign of the Bush administration in 2005. It was also a year after the public disclosure of tortures of Iraqi prisoners that took place in the Abu Ghraib prison by American soldiers. The American soldiers had taken pictures of themselves happily posing next to tortured naked prisoners (image 11). Personal photographs of the soldiers also showed how prisoners were used for target practice (image 12) and sometimes hung upside down for hours on end. There was an international outcry when the first of these photographs were shown on the American television program 60 Minutes 2 (The New Yorker 10-5-2004). Romero invokes theses images in scenes where the humans use the zombies to make fun of. The zombies are chained by the neck so that people can pose for a photograph (image 13). There are scenes with zombies being used for target practice and being hung upside down to shoot at (image 14 & image 15). While the zombies are dehumanized by the humans, Romero is employing new focalization techniques to humanize the zombies while drawing a link to real life events.

Image 11: Iraqi prisoners stacked on top of each other with the American guards happily posing behind them. (Wikipedia).

Image 12: Iraqi prisoner after being used as target practice for the American guards. (Wikipedia).

41

Image 13: At an underground party, zombies are chained by the neck and used to go on a photograph with. Land of the Dead 00:26:00.

Image 14: A chained zombie is being used as target practice at and underground party. Land of the Dead 00:26:08.

Image 15: Zombies hung upside down with bags over their heads and with bulls eyes on their bodies. Land of the Dead 00:34:02.

A colleague of Riley named Cholo dreams of gathering enough money so he can move into an apartment in Fiddler’s Dream. In a scene where Cholo pays Kaufman a visit to ask if he can move

42 into an apartment, Kaufman explains to him that he would not fit in, implicating his Hispanic background would not fit in with the other tenants. At the end of the film Cholo has turned into a zombie and comes after Kaufman to take his revenge. As soon as Kaufman recognizes Cholo he calls him a ‘spic’ before shooting him in the chest. As ‘spic’ is a derogatory term for a Hispanic person, this scene proves Kaufman’s reason for not admitting Cholo earlier was based in Cholo’s ethnic background. It soon becomes clear to Kaufman that Cholo is now a zombie, after which Cholo attacks him, aided by Big Daddy. Kaufman’s character (skillfully played by ) is the film’s symbol of the xenophobic attitude of the American government. “Kaufman, the ‘Donald Rumsfeld’ of the Fiddler’s Green tenants board, has created a dystopian society in which the wealthy live in stylish opalescence while the masses barely eke out a pitiful existence on the streets” (Bishop 2010: 193). The electrical fences used to keep the zombies out can nowadays even be re-interpreted today as a symbol of American president Donald Trump’s plans to construct a fence between the American and the Mexican border to keep foreigners with Hispanic roots out. This analysis shows that it took the return of George A. Romero to once again introduce new elements to the genre zombie films. While the premise of most zombie movies is the presence of undead irrational zombies, Romero sought to reverse the roles between humans and zombies even more than in Dawn of the Dead. By creating a conscious and sympathetic zombie protagonist, Romero has been able to critique and reflect American society of the Bush era.

43 Conclusion

In answering the question ‘how has the zombie movie as a genre developed?’ I looked at the genre from multiple angles before doing my own research. Because I am researching the functioning of the zombie film genre, I first needed to investigate prominent theories on film genre. Stephen Neale describes how film studies have evolved over the years, and how in the sixties the focus on the auteur was the foremost way to consider a film title. Although this led to new and productive ways to approach film, a focus on did not consider how the institutional aspects of especially Hollywood cinema functioned. This led to the invention of genre studies for film. Genre studies has come a long way but Neale thinks the main problem that is still plaguing genre studies is its emphasis on “[c]anons of critical preference” (Neale 2000: 3) and thus a cherry-picked corpus. Rick Altman adds to this that genres are often treated by scholars as trans-historical instead of part of an evolving process. Neale explains that if you want to research genre, you have to investigate the institutional conditions. For example posters, advertisements and even screening venues are part of a film’s ‘inter-textual relay’. And because these factors all contribute to and shape the spectators’ expectations, they can contribute to the generic status of a film. In 1984 Rick Altman tried to create a model that recognized the importance of the textual elements that account for the generic status of a film. What he proposed was a ‘semantic/syntactic approach to genre’. The two terms stem from semiotics. In short “the semantic approach [...] stresses the genre’s building blocks, while the syntactic view privileges the structures into which they are arranged” (Altman 1984: 10). While an effective method for accounting the generic elements of a text, it does not account for the often-complex ways the audience interacts with generic texts and genres as a whole. He later updated his approach in calling it “semantic/syntactic/pragmatic approach to genre”(Altman 1990: 207). With this pragmatic dimension Altman tries to recognize how “multiple users of various sorts – not only various spectator groups, but producers, distributor, exhibitors, cultural agencies, and many others as well” (Altman 1990: 210) engage with generic texts. After establishing a base for analyzing genre I went on to delve deeper into the history of zombie films and the way they have been studies by scholars like Peter Dendle and William Kyle Bishop. The origins of the zombie can be traced back to colonial history and the Caribbean islands. A fusion of African and new world culture led to the creation of the zombie: a dead body reanimated and under the control of a voodoo witch doctor. In the 1920s there was an increase in interest in Haitian culture stirred amongst others by the travelogue The Magic Island (1929) written by William Seabrook. Hollywood picked up on this increased interest and turned the folklore of the zombie in into a blockbuster story with White Zombie (1932). Many films of this kind followed but interest waned after the forties.

44 Peter Dendle describes how director George A. Romero combined elements of the early zombie movies together with the alien invasion films of the fifties to inspire his horror debut Night of the Living Dead in 1968. Dendle also describes how Romero was very much inspired by the post- apocalyptic novel I Am Legend (1954). Almost all scholars agree on the fact that Romero single handedly invented the new zombie genre. Bishop also states that this new style of zombie films can be placed in the tradition of . An important feature of works of the Gothic is their ability to form an allegory on the anxieties of society. In other words zombie films are a reflection of their times and reflect the social context in which they are released. In 2009 Bishop wrote an article to try to account for the sudden explosion of zombie movies in the first decade of the new millennium. It was Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (2002) that spearheaded the zombie that Bishop has baptized (pun intended) the zombie renaissance. The only way that he could explain this new popularity was because of the way western society has changed since the 9/11 attacks. The modern audience has gotten used to newsreel images of war, terrorist attacks and ecological disasters. In other words, the modern audience has the apocalypse on its mind, and, according to Bishop the zombie films are a clear expression of these anxieties. I decided to take these claim to the test when conducting my own quantitative research. Do these apocalyptic zombie films have indeed increased in number since the new millennium? I decided to test the most popular zombie films from the eighties and the 00s for semantic and syntactic elements that reflect the anxieties of modern audiences. These included an invasion narrative; fast zombies; the use of newsreel footage and shots of deserted streets amongst others. What came out of the investigation was that almost all elements saw a significant increase from the eighties to the 00s, especially the ‘zombie invasion narrative,’ which increased from 32% to a staggering 88%. We can agree with Bishop that this data leads to the conclusion that indeed the interest in apocalyptic zombie films has increased. Bishop also stated that the narratives have stayed the same over the years and that the socio-political changes have led to the re-appreciation of the genre. My data clearly contradicts that the zombie narratives have stayed the same by showing how a multitude of zombie narratives have condensed over the years into the narrative of the zombie invasion. This then raises question about the way the genre has evolved over the years. The data may suggest that what is now considered as the zombie genre by scholars and critics was not the same in the eighties. Romero did indeed invent a new zombie narrative that has become the prototype for the majority of the modern zombie movies. But this does not automatically mean that scholars should not investigate the zombie movies that were not inspired by Romero’s zombie apocalypse. My data shows there was more to the genre than zombie invasions. It may be a bit bold to accuse zombie scholars of cherry-picking titles in the style of the Romero narrative, but maybe the development of the genre needs to be reconsidered and further researched. It may be so that we can discover something along the lines of Altman’s research on the musical film. Altman discovered how in the earlier years, the term ‘musical’ was never applied on its own, as a noun, but always used as an adjective to other genres such as melodrama or comedy. It was

45 only after films with singing and dancing became less popular, that the term ‘musical’ started being used solely to describe a feature film. Altman has warned us to avoid thinking of genres as being trans-historical. My findings suggest that this teleological way of thinking has also been applied to zombie films, simplifying what the genre may have constituted in earlier years. To round off my research I decided to take a look at the present and the future by analyzing three recent zombie titles. On the one hand these titles clearly display what Bishop called the Gothic in the zombie renaissance: a reflection of societal fears in a post-9/11 western society. On the other hand my analysis showed how these movies employ new narratives and cinematographic techniques to evolve the genre beyond the prototype of the classic Romero movies. Zombie films are constantly evolving and, like other genres, are firmly grounded in the societal context of their production, reflecting fears, and engaging with their users. For now it seems the genre has not yet exhausted its use, and the dead probably are going to keep on walking the earth for a while.

46 Bibliography

Altman, Rick (1996). “Cinema and Genre”. The Oxford History of World Cinema. Ed. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith. Oxford: Oxford UP. 276-285.

Altman, Rick (1999). Film/Genre. London: .

Author unknown (2017). “Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV)”. World Health Organisation. 29-6-2017. .

Author unknown (11-1-2017). “Topman Samsung Verdachte in Politiek Schandaal Zuid-Korea”. Trouw. 28-6-2017. .

Bishop, Kyle William (2009). “Dead Man Still Walking: Explaining the Zombie Renaissance”. Journal of Popular Film and Television 37.1: 16-25.

Bishop, Kyle William (2010). American Zombie Gothic: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Walking Dead in Popular Culture. Jefferson NC: Mcfarland.

Bishop, Kyle William (2015). How Zombies Conquered Popular Culture: The Multifarious Walking Dead in the 21st Century. Jefferson NC: Macfarland.

Carroll, Noël (1990). The Philosophy of Horror or Paradoxes of the Heart. New York: Routledge.

Carroll, Noëll (1992). “Cognitivism, Contemporary Film Theory and Method: A Response to Warren Buckland”. Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism Spring: 199-219.

Dendle, Peter (2001). The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia. Jefferson NC: Macfarland.

Grant, Barry Keith (2007). Film Genre: From Iconography to Ideology. London: Wallflower Press.

Hersh, Seymour M. (10-4-2004). “Torture at Abu Ghraib”. The New Yorker. 29-6-2017. .

International Movie Database. 1990. .com. 29-6-2017. .

Ji-hye, Shin (2-6-2015). “Korea Mulling Disclosure of MERS-affected Hospitals”. The Korea Herald. 28-6-2017. .

47 Kil, Sonia (24-6-2016). “Korea Box Office: Runaway ‘Train to Busan’ Smashes Records”. Variety. 29-6-2017. .

Kwaak, Jeyup S. (8-6-2015). “South Korea MERS Outbreak Began With a Cough”. The Wall Street Journal. 28-6-2017. .

Langford, Barry (2005). Film Genre: Hollywood and Beyond. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP.

McCurry, Justin (5-6-2015). “South Korea declares 'war' on Mers virus as death toll rises”. The Guardian. 29-6-2017. .

Neale, Steve (2000). Genre and Hollywood. London: Routledge.

Newitz, Annalee (2008). “War and Social Upheaval Cause Spikes in Zombie Movie Production”. io9 gizmodo. 1-3-2017. .

Russel, Jamie (2005). Book of the Dead. Surrey: FAB Press.

Walker, Joe (4-9-2011). “Tribute to 9/11 victim Father Judge: jacket, helmet placed in NYC Fire Museum”. The New York Post. 23-6-2017. .

Warren Buckland (1989). "Critique of Poor Reason". Screen vol. 30, no. 4.

Wikipedia (25-6-2017). “Abu Ghraib Torture and Prisoner Abuse”. Wikimedia Foundation. 29-6- 2017. .

Wikipedia (22-6-2017). “List of Zombie Films”. Wikimedia Foundation. 29-6-2017. .

Wikipedia (21-6-2017). “Wikipedia:Identifying Reliable Sources”. Wikimedia Foundation. 29-6-2017. < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources>.

48 Filmography

28 Days Later. Dir. Danny Boyle. Fox . 2002.

Day of the Dead. Dir. George A. Romero. United Film Distribution Company. 1985.

Dawn of the Dead. Dir. George A. Romero. United Film Distribution Company. 1978.

Dawn of the Dead (remake). Dir. Zack Snyder. . 2004.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Dir. Don Siegel. Allied Artists Pictures. 1956.

I Was a Teenage Zombie. Dir. John Elias Michalakis. Horizon Films. 1987.

Land of the Dead. Dir. George A. Romero. Universal Pictures. 2005.

Night of the Living Dead. Dir. George A. Romero. The Walter Reade Organization. 1968.

REC. Dir. Jaume Balagueró, Paco Plaza. Filmax International. 2007.

The Earth Dies Screaming. Dir. . Twentieth Century Fox. 1964.

The Return of the Living Dead. Dir. Dan O’Bannon. Orion Pictures. 1985.

Train to Busan. Dir. Yeon Sang-ho. . 2016.

White Zombie. Dir. Victor Halperin. . 1932.

World War Z. Dir. Marc Forster. . 2013.

Zombieland. Dir. Ruben Fleischer. Colombia Pictures. 2009.

49 Appendix A: The top-25 zombie scoring lists

Graph 8: Excel scoring sheet for top-25 zombie films from the eighties. (c) Jasper Wezenberg.

50

Graph 9: The continued excel scoring sheet. This part contains the top-25 zombie movies from the 00s. (c) Jasper Wezenberg.

51 Appendix B: The full Wikipedia zombie film list

This list was used to create my zombie movie production graph. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_zombie_films

Title Director Year Notes

Patient Zero Stefan 2017 Ruzowitzky

Cell (film) Tod Williams 2016

The Girl with All the Gifts Colm 2016 McCarthy

I Am a Hero Shinsuke Sato 2016

Miruthan Shakti 2016 First Tamil zombie film Soundar Rajan

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (film) Burr Steers 2016

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter Paul W. S. 2016 Anderson

Seoul Station Yeon Sang-ho 2016

Train to Busan Yeon Sang-ho 2016

Zoombies Glenn R. 2016 Miller

Dead 7 Nick Carter 2016

Diao Chan Vs Zombie Ma Le 2016

The Burning Dead Rene Perez 2015

Flesh of my Flesh Edward 2015 Martin III

JeruZalem Doron Paz 2015 and Yoav Paz

Maggie Henry 2015 Hobson

Night of the Living Dead: Darkest Dawn Zebediah de 2015 Soto

52 Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse Christopher 2015 B. Landon

Vere Vazhi Ille M.S. Prem 2015 Nath

Z Island Hiroshi 2015 Shinagawa

The Rezort Steve Barker 2015

Don't Grow Up Thierry 2015 Poiraud

Kampung Zombie Billy Christian 2015 First Indonesian zombie film

Phi Ha Ayodhaya (The Black Death) Chalermchatri 2015 Thai film, mixture of zombie Yukol film and historical epic

Extinction Miguel Angel 2015 Vivas

Freaks of Nature Robbie 2015 Pickering

Army of Frankensteins Ryan 2014 Bellgardt

Burying The Ex Joe Dante 2014

The Dead and the Damned 2 Rene Perez 2014

Dead Within Ben Wagner 2014

Dead Snow: Red vs. Dead 2014 Wirkola

Doc of the Dead Alexandre O. 2014 Philippe

Goal of the Dead Thierry 2014 Poiraud and Benjamin Rocher

Life After Beth Jeff Baena 2014

Night of the Living Dead Chad Zuver 2014 remake

Ojuju C.J. Obasi 2014

REC 4: Apocalypse Jaume 2014 parallel stories to REC

53 Balagueró

Reichsführer SS David B. 2014 Stewart

Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead Kiah Roache- 2014 Turner

Zombeavers Jordan Rubin 2014

Zombie Fight Club Joe Chien 2014

Bath Salt Zombies Dustin Mills 2013 drug turns people into flesh- eating zombies

Cargo Ben Howling 2013 & Yolanda Ramke

The Dead 2: India Howard J. 2013 Ford & Jonathan Ford

The Dead Inside (2013 film) Andrew 2013 Gilbert

Evil Dead Fede Alvarez 2013 reboot

Germ Z J.T. Boone 2013 infected humans

Go Goa Gone Raj Nidimoru 2013 publicized as India's first and Krishna "zom-com" D.K.

The Last Days on Mars Ruairí 2013 Robinson

Miss Zombie Sabu 2013

Open Grave Gonzalo 2013 López-Gallego

Pro Wrestlers vs Zombies Cody Knotts 2013

The Returned Manuel 2013 Carballo

Stalled Christian 2013 James

Warm Bodies Jonathan 2013 Levine

54 World War Z Marc Forster 2013

The Zombie King Aidan 2013 Belizaire

Zombie Massacre Luca Boni and 2013 Marco Ristori

Zombie Night (2013) John Gulager 2013

Dead Sands Ameera Al 2013 Qaed

KL Woo Ming Jin 2013 Malaysian film

Run! Oudom Touch 2013 First Cambodian zombie film

Zombie Hood Steve Best 2013

Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies Richard 2012 Schenkman

The Amazing Adventures of the Living Justin Paul 2012 Corpse Ritter

The Battery Jeremy 2012 Gardner

Cockneys vs Zombies Matthias 2012 Hoene

Dead Before Dawn April Mullen 2012 half-zombie, half-demon

Decay Luke 2012 Thompson

Detention of the Dead Alex Craig 2012 Mann

Evil Head Doug 2012 Adult parody of The Sakmann

A Little Bit Zombie Casey Walker 2012

Night of the Living Dead 3D: Re- Jeff 2012 prequel to Night of the Living Broadstreet DE3D

ParaNorman & 2012 described as a "zombie movie Chris Butler for kids"

Portrait of a Zombie Bing Bailey 2012

REC 3: Genesis Paco Plaza 2012 parallel stories to REC

55 : Retribution Paul W. S. 2012 Anderson

Resident Evil: Damnation Makoto 2012 animated Kamiya

Rise of the Zombies Nick Lyon 2012

Sick: Survive the Night Ryan M. 2012 Andrews

Zombie 108 Joe Chien 2012 First Taiwanese zombie film

The Kirishima Thing (Kirishima, Bukatsu Daihachi 2012 The male protagonist is an Yamerutteyo) Yoshida admirer of George Romero’s zombie film and try to shot a student zombie film with his schoolmates

The Zombinator Sergio Myers 2012

Bled White Jose Carlos 2011 Gomez

The Cabin in the Woods Drew 2011 Zombies only peripheral to Goddard plot.

Caustic Zombies Johnny 2011 Daggers

DeadHeads Brett Pierce & 2011 Drew T. Pierce

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night Kevin Munroe 2011

Fading of the Cries Brian A. 2011 Metcalf

First Platoon Chris Gabriel 2011

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides Rob Marshall 2011

Pop Punk Zombies Steve Dayton 2011

Quarantine 2: Terminal John Pogue 2011

Remains (' Remains) Colin Theys 2011

Schoolgirl Apocalypse John S. Cairns 2011

State of Emergency Turner Clay 2011

56 War of the Dead (Stone's War) Marko 2011 Makilaakso

Zombie Apocalypse Nick Lyon 2011

Zombie Ass (Zombie Ass: Toilet of the Noboru Iguchi 2011 Dead)

The Zombie Diaries 2 Michael 2011 sequel Bartlett & Kevin Gates

The Zombie Farm Ricardo Islas 2011

Zombie Undead Rhys Davies 2011

Beverly Lane Joshua Hull 2010

Big Tits Zombie (Big Tits Dragon: Hot Takao Nakano 2010 Spring Zombie Vs. Stripper 5)

The Dead Howard J. 2010 Ford & Jonathan Ford

The Dead and the Damned Rene Perez 2010

Devil's Playground Mark 2010 McQueen

Die-ner (Get It?) Patrick 2010 Horvath

Horrorween Joe Estevez 2010

Island: Wedding of the Zombies (Ada: Murat Emir 2010 Zombilerin Düğünü, The Zombie Wedding) Eren, Talip Ertürk

Juan of the Dead (Juan de los Muertos) Alejandro 2010 Cuba's first zombie movie Brugués

L.A. Zombie (Gay of the Dead) Bruce 2010 Adult film LaBruce

Pushin' Up Daisies Patrick 2010 Franklin

Rammbock Marvin Kren 2010

Resident Evil: Paul W. S. 2010 Anderson

57 Sint (Saint, Saint Nick) Dick Maas 2010

Survival of the Dead George A. 2010 fifth sequel to Night of the Romero Living Dead

They Walk Charles House 2010 II

The Dark Lurking Greg Connors 2010

Autumn Steven 2009 Rumbelow

Blood Creek (Creek, Town Creek) Joel 2009 Schumacher

The Book of Zombie Scott 2009 Kragelund, Paul Cranefield, Erik Van Sant

Broken Springs (Broken Springs: Shrine of Neeley 2009 the Undead Zombie Bastards) Lawson

The Crypt Craig 2009 McMahon

Dark Floors Pete Riski 2009

Dead Air Corbin 2009 Bernsen

Doghouse Jake West 2009

Eat Me! (The Eaters) Katie Carman 2009

Evil: In the Time of Heroes (To Κακό 2: Yorgos 2009 sequel to "To Κακό" Στην Eποχή Tων Hρώων) Noussias

Gallowwalkers Andrew Goth 2009

George: A Zombie Intervention J.T. Seaton 2009

The Horde (La Horde) Yannick 2009 Dahan & Benjamin Rocher

Mutants (2009 film) David Morlet 2009

Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated Mike 2009

58 Schneider

The Night Shift Thomas 2009 Based on a 2009 of Smith the same title.

Pontypool Bruce 2009 zombie appears like infected McDonald human

REC 2 Jaume 2009 sequel to REC Balagueró & Paco Plaza

The Revenant D. Kerry Prior 2009 combination of zombie and vampire

Silent Night, Zombie Night Sean Cain 2009

The Sky Has Fallen Doug Roos 2009

Tormented Jon Wright 2009

ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction Kevin 2009 Hamedani

Zombieland Ruben 2009 Fleischer

Zombie Women of Satan Steve O'Brien 2009 and Warren Speed

Zone of the Dead (Зона мртвих, Zona Milan 2009 Mrtvih, Apocalypse of the Dead) Konjević & Milan Todorović

Colin Marc Price 2008

Dance of the Dead Gregg Bishop 2008

Day of the Dead 2008 remake

Descendents (2008 film) (Solos) Jorge Olguín 2008 billed as first-ever Chilean zombie film

The Dead Outside Kerry Anne 2008 Mullaney

Dead Snow Tommy 2008 Wirkola

Dead Space: Downfall Chuck Patton 2008 animated film based on Dead

59 Space

Deadgirl Marcel 2008 Sarmiento & Gadi Harel

Deep River: The Island Ben 2008 Bachelder

Demon Resurrection William 2008 Hopkins

Diary of the Dead George A. 2008 fourth sequel to Night of the Romero Living Dead

Edges of Darkness Jason Horton 2008 & Blaine Cade

Flick David 2008 Howard

Grave Mistake Shawn 2008 Darling

I Sell the Dead Glenn 2008 McQuaid

Insanitarium Jeff Buhler 2008

Last of the Living Logan 2008 McMillan

Make-out with Violence Deagol 2008 Brothers

Ninjas vs. Zombies Justin 2008 Timpane

Outpost Steve Barker 2008

Plaguers Brad Sykes 2008 alien orb turns people into zombies

Quarantine John Erick 2008 remake of REC Dowdle

Reel Zombies David J. 2008 third installment in Zombie Francis Night series,

Resident Evil: Degeneration (Biohazard: Makoto 2008 animated Degeneration) Kamiya

60 Sexykiller (Sexykiller, morirás por ella) Paco Cabeza 2008

Splinter Toby Wilkins 2008

Stag Night of the Dead Neil Jones 2008

Trailer Park of Terror Steven 2008 Goldmann

Uniform SurviGirl I (Seifuku Survivor Girl, Hiroshi 2008 Seifuku sabaigâru I) Kaneko

Virus Undead Wolf Wolff 2008 and Ohmuti

Yoroi Samurai Zombie (Yoroi: Samurai Tak 2008 Zonbie, Samurai Zombie) Sakaguchi

Zombie Strippers Jay Lee 2008

28 Weeks Later Juan Carlos 2007 sequel to 28 Days Later Fresnadillo

American Zombie Grace Lee 2007

Beneath the Surface Blake Reigle 2007

Black Swarm (Night of the Drones) David 2007 Winning

Brain Blockers Lincoln 2007 Kupchak

Brain Dead Kevin Tenney 2007

Days of Darkness Jake Kennedy 2007

Dead Moon Rising Mark E. Poole 2007

Dorm of the Dead Donald 2007 Farmer

Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Scott Thomas 2007 Plane

Forest of the Dead Brian 2007 Singleton

Forever Dead 2007 Parker

I Am Legend Francis 2007 infected humans Lawrence

61 I Am Omega Griff Furst 2007 remake of the Last Man on Earth

The Mad John Kalangis 2007

Planet Terror Robert 2007 Rodriguez

REC Jaume 2007 original Balagueró & Paco Plaza

Resident Evil: Extinction Russell 2007 Mulcahy

Undead or Alive Glasgow 2007 Phillips

Undead Pool (Attack Girls' Swim Team Kôji Kawano 2007 Versus the Undead)

Urban Decay Harry Basil 2007

Wasting Away (Aaah! Zombies!!) Matthew 2007 Kohnen

Zibahkhana (Hell's Ground) Omar Khan 2007 Pakistan's first zombie movie

Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! Jason M. 2007 Murphy

After Sundown Christopher 2006 Abram & Michael W. Brown

Automaton Transfusion Steven C. 2006 Miller

Black Sheep Jonathan King 2006 zombie sheep

City of Rott Frank Sudol 2006

Dead and Deader Patrick 2006 Dinhut

Fido Andrew 2006 Currie

Forbidden Siren (Sairen) Yukihiko 2006 live-action adaptation of Tsutsumi Siren video game series

62 Gangs of the Dead (Last Rites) Duane 2006 Stinnett

Horrors of War Peter John 2006 Ross & John Whitney

Mulberry Street Jim Mickle 2006

Night of the Dead (Night of the Leben Tod) Eric Forsberg 2006

Night of the Living Dead 3D (Night of the Jeff 2006 Living DE3D) Broadstreet

Pathogen Emily Hagins 2006 documentary Zombie Girl: The Movie covers the making of this movie

The Plague (Clive Barker's The Plague) Hal 2006 Masonberg

Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead Lloyd 2006 Kaufman

The Quick and the Undead Gerald Nott 2006

Shadow: Dead Riot Derek Wan 2006

Slither 2006

Special Dead Thomas L. 2006 Phillips and Sean Simmons

Wicked Little Things J.S. Cardone 2006

The Zombie Diaries Michael 2006 Bartlett & Kevin Gates

Zombie Night 2: Awakening David J. 2006 sequel Francis

Zombie Self-Defense Force (Zonbi jieitai) Naoyuki 2006 Tomomatsu

Zombie Wars David A. Prior 2006

All Souls Day Jeremy 2005 Kasten

63 Beneath Still Waters 2005

Boy Eats Girl Stephen 2005 Bradley

Day of the Dead 2: Contagium Ana Clavell & 2005 Unofficial sequel to Day of the James Glenn Dead. Dudelson

Dead Men Walking Peter Mervis 2005

Die You Zombie Bastards! Caleb 2005 Emerson

Die Zombiejäger Jonas 2005 Sweden's first zombie feature Wolcher film

Doom Andrzej 2005 Based loosely on the 1994 Bartkowiak video game

Evil (To Κακό) Yorgos 2005 Noussias

Hood of the Living Dead Eduardo 2005 Quiroz & Jose Quiroz

House of the Dead 2 Michael Hurst 2005

Land of the Dead George A. 2005 third sequel to Night of the Romero Living Dead

Livelihood Ryan Graham 2005

Mortuary Tobe Hooper 2005

Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis Ellory 2005 Elkayem

Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Ellory 2005 Grave Elkayem

The Roost Ti West 2005

Severed: Forest of the Dead Carl Bessai 2005 not to be confused with Forest of the Dead

The Stink of Flesh Scott Phillips 2005

Swamp Zombies Len 2005 Kabasinski

64 Tokyo Zombie Sakichi Satō 2005

Zombiez John Bacchus 2005

Bone Sickness Brian Paulin 2004

Choking Hazard Marek Dobes 2004

Curse of the Maya (Dawn of the Living David 2004 Dead, Evil Grave: Curse of the Maya) Heavener

Dawn of the Dead Zack Snyder 2004 remake

Dead & Breakfast Matthew 2004 Leutwyler

Dead Meat Conor 2004 McMahon

Ghost Lake Jay Woelfel 2004

Graveyard Alive: A Zombie Nurse in Love Elza Kephart 2004

Hide and Creep Chuck 2004 Hartsell & Chance Shirley

Die Nacht der lebenden Loser (Night of the Mathias 2004 Living Dorks) Dinter (de)

Oh! My Zombie Mermaid (Â! Ikkenya Naoki Kubo 2004 mermaid is not a zombie, but ) it has a zombie character

Resident Evil: Apocalypse Alexander 2004 Witt

SARS Wars Taweewat 2004 Wantha

Shaolin vs. Evil Dead (Shao lin jiang shi, Siu Douglas Kung 2004 lam geung see)

Shaun of the Dead 2004

They Came Back Robin 2004 Campillo

Vampires vs. Zombies (Carmilla, the Vince 2004 ) D'Amato

Zombie Honeymoon David Gebroe 2004

65 Zombie King and the Legion of Doom Stacey Case 2004 (Zombie Beach Party, Enter … Zombie King)

Zombie Nation Ulli Lommel 2004

Battlefield Baseball (Jigoku Kôshien) Yūdai 2003 Yamaguchi

Beyond Re-Animator Brian Yuzna 2003

Blood of the Beast Georg 2003 Koszulinski

Corpses Are Forever Jose Prendes 2003

Exhumed Brian Clement 2003

The Ghouls (Cannibal Dead: The Ghouls, Chad Ferrin 2003 Urban Cannibals)

Gory Gory Hallelujah Sue Corcoran 2003

House of the Dead Uwe Boll 2003

Undead Michael 2003 Spierig & Peter Spierig

Zombie Night (2003) David J. 2003 Francis

Zombiegeddon Chris Watson 2003

Zombie Planet George 2003 Bonilla

28 Days Later Danny Boyle 2002 Infected humans

Deathwatch Michael J. 2002 Bassett

Necropolis Awakened Garrett White 2002

Resident Evil Paul W. S. 2002 first in Resident Evil series Anderson

Ritual (Tales from the Crypt: Ritual) Avi Nesher 2002

Biohazardous Michael J. 2001 Hein

Children of the Living Dead Tor Ramsey 2001

66 Meat Market 2 Brian Clement 2001

Plaga Zombie: Zona Mutante Pablo Parés & 2001 Hernán Sáez

Route 666 William 2001 Wesley

Stacy Naoyuki 2001 Tomomatsu

Zombie Chronicles Brad Sykes 2001

The Dead Hate the Living! Dave Parker 2000

Junk (Shiryo-gari) Atsushi 2000 Muroga

Machine Head Michael 2000 Patrick, Leonard Murphy

Meat Market Brian Clement 2000

Versus (Vāsasu) Ryuhei 2000 Kitamura

Wild Zero Tetsuro 2000 Takeuchi

I, Zombie: The Chronicles of Pain (I, Andrew 1999 Zombie) Parkinson

Violent Shit III: Infantry of Doom (Zombie Andreas 1999 Doom) Schnaas

Zombie! vs. Mardi Gras Will Frank & 1999 Karl DeMolay

Bio Zombie (Sun faa sau si) 1998

Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island Hiroshi 1998 Aoyama & Kazumi Fukushima

Plaga Zombie Pablo Parés & 1997 First-ever Argentine zombie Hernán Sáez horror film and part of the Plaga Zombie film series.

Premutos: The Fallen Angel (Premutos – Olaf Ittenbach 1997

67 Der gefallene Engel, aka Premutos: Lord of the Living Dead)

House of the Damned Sean 1996 Weathers

Uncle Sam William 1996 Lustig

Legion of the Night Matt Jaissle 1995

Voodoo Rene Eram 1995 Voodoo cult

Zombie Holocaust (Female Mercenaries on Gary Whitson 1995 Zombie Island)

Cemetery Man (Dellamorte Dellamore) 1994

Shatter Dead Scooter 1994 McCrae

Ed and His Dead Mother Jonathan 1993 Wacks

Ghost Brigade (The Lost Brigade) George 1993 Hickenlooper

My Boyfriend's Back Bob Balaban 1993

Ozone J.R. 1993 drug turns people into Bookwalter zombies

Return of the Living Dead 3 Brian Yuzna 1993

Weekend at Bernie's II Robert Klane 1993

Zombie Bloodbath Todd Sheets 1993

Zombie Genocide Andrew 1993 Harrison, Khris Carville, & Darryl Sloan

Army of Darkness 1992 third film in franchise

Braindead (Dead Alive) 1992 First zombie movie from New Zealand

Pet Sematary Two 1992

68 Waxwork II: Lost in Time Anthony 1992 Hickox

Battle Girl: The Living Dead in Tokyo Bay Kazuo 1991 (Batoru gâru) Komizu

Black Demons (Dèmoni 3) Umberto 1991 unrelated to Demoni films by Lenzi Lamberto Bava

Bride of Re-Animator Brian Yuzna 1991

Chopper Chicks in Zombietown Dan Hoskins 1991

Netherworld David 1991 Schmoeller

Night of the Day of the Dawn of the Son of James Riffel 1991 the Bride of the Return of the Revenge of the Terror of the Attack of the Evil, Mutant, Alien, Flesh Eating, Hellbound, Zombified Living Dead Part 2: In Shocking 2-D

Nudist Colony of the Dead Mark Pirro 1991

Teenage Exorcist Grant Austin 1991 Waldman

Zombie 5: (Uccelli assassini) Claudio 1991 Lattanzi

The Boneyard James 1990 Cummins

Frankenhooker Frank 1990 Henenlotter

Maniac Cop 2 William 1990 Lustig

Night of the Living Dead 1990 remake

Voodoo Dawn Steven 1990 Fierberg

Beverly Hills Bodysnatchers Jonathan 1989 Mostow

C.H.U.D. II: Bud the C.H.U.D. David Irving 1989

The Dead Pit Brett Leonard 1989

Night Life David 1989

69 Acomba

Pet Sematary Mary Lambert 1989

The Vineyard James Hong 1989

Dead Heat Mark 1988 Goldblatt

The Dead Next Door J.R. 1988 Bookwalter

The Discarnates (Summer Among the Nobuhiko 1988 Zombies, Ijintachi tono natsu) Obayashi

FleshEater (Zombie Nosh) Bill Hinzman 1988

Maniac Cop William 1988 Lustig

Return of the Living Dead Part II Ken 1988 Wiederhorn

The Serpent and the Rainbow 1988

Waxwork Anthony 1988 Hickox

Zombi 3 (Zombie Flesh Eaters 2) & 1988

Zombie 4: (Oltre la morte, Claudio 1988 Zombie Flesh Eaters 3) Fragasso

Evil Dead II Sam Raimi 1987

I Was a Teenage Zombie John Elias 1987 Michalakis

Killing Spree Tim Ritter 1987

Prince of Darkness ('s Prince John 1987 of Darkness) Carpenter

Redneck Zombies Pericles 1987 Lewnes

Revenge of the Living Dead Girls Pierre B. 1987 Reinhard

The Video Dead Robert Scott 1987

Zombie High Ron Link 1987

70 Deadly Friend Wes Craven 1986

Night of the Creeps 1986

Raiders of the Living Dead Samuel M. 1986 Sherman

The Rape After Ho Meng Hua 1986 & Moon-Tong Lau

The Supernaturals Armand 1986 Mastroianni

Zombie Brigade Carmelo 1986 Musca & Barrie Pattison

Zombie Nightmare Jack Bravman 1986

Day of the Dead George A. 1985 second sequel to Night of the Romero Living Dead

Re-Animator Stuart Gordon 1985

The Return of the Living Dead Dan 1985 O'Bannon

Warning Sign Hal Barwood 1985

Bloodsuckers from Outer Space Glen Coburn 1984

Mutant John Cardos 1984

Night of the Comet Thom 1984 Eberhardt

Surf II Randall Badat 1984 drink turns people into zombies

Hysterical Chris Bearde 1983

One Dark Night Tom 1983 McLoughlin

Wilczyca (The Wolf, She-Wolf) Marek 1983 dead woman comes back as Piestrak an undead

Zeder (Revenge of the Dead) 1983

Creepshow George A. 1982

71 Romero

I Was a Zombie for the F.B.I. Marius 1982 Penczner

Mansion of the Living Dead Jesús Franco 1982

La Morte Vivante (The Living Dead Girl) 1982

Oasis of the Zombies Jesús Franco 1982 French-Spanish co- production

The Beyond Lucio Fulci 1981 second film in The Gates of Hell trilogy

Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror Andrea 1981 Bianchi

Dawn of the Mummy Frank Agrama 1981

Dead & Buried Gary Sherman 1981

The Evil Dead Sam Raimi 1981

Frankenstein Island Jerry Warren 1981

Hell of the Living Dead (Night of the Bruno Mattei 1981 Zombies)

The House by the Cemetery Lucio Fulci 1981 third in The Gates of Hell trilogy

Kiss Daddy Goodbye (Revenge of the Patrick Regan 1981 Zombie)

Kung Fu Zombie (Wu long tian shi zhao ji Hwa I Hung 1981 gui)

Zombie Lake Jean Rollin 1981

Alien Dead Fred Olen 1980

The Children Max 1980 Kalmanowicz

City of the Living Dead Lucio Fulci 1980 first in The Gates of Hell trilogy

Don't Go in the House Joseph Ellison 1980

Erotic Nights of the Living Dead (Sexy Joe D'Amato 1980 Nights of the Living Dead)

72 John 1980 called ghosts in the film Carpenter

Frozen Scream Frank Roach 1980

Nightmare City (City of the Walking Dead) Umberto 1980 Lenzi

Toxic Zombies Charles 1980 McCrann

Zombie Holocaust (Zombi Holocaust) Marino 1980 Girolami

Zombi 2 (Zombie Flesh-Eaters) Lucio Fulci 1979 an unlicensed sequel to Zombi (the Italian title of Dawn of the Dead)

Dawn of the Dead George A. 1978 sequel to Night of the Living Romero Dead

Les Raisins de la Mort (The Grapes of Death, Jean Rollin 1978 Pesticide)

Shock Waves Ken 1977 Wiederhorn

Black Magic 2 (Gou hun jiang tou, Revenge Ho Meng Hua 1976 of the Zombies)

The Cross of the Devil John Gilling 1975

Night of the Seagulls Amando de 1975 Ossorio

Garden of the Dead John Hayes 1974

The Ghost Galleon Amando de 1974 Ossorio

The House of Seven Corpses Paul Harrison 1974

Let Sleeping Corpses Lie Jorge Grau 1974

Sugar Hill Paul 1974 Maslansky

Curse of the Living Dead (Les Jean Rollin 1973 Démoniaques)

The Hanging Woman (Return of the José Luis 1973 Zombies) Merino

73 The Hidan of Maukbeiangjow (Invasion of Lee Jones 1973 aliens possess corpses the Girl Snatchers, Kaspar and Prudence Laugh Till It Hurts at The Killers of the Zombie Plot: A Musical)

Horror Express (Pánico en el Transiberiano, Eugenio 1973 Panic on the Trans-Siberian Express) Martín

House of the Living Dead (Doctor Maniac) Ray Austin 1973

The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires Roy Ward 1973 Baker

Return of the Blind Dead Amando de 1973 second film in Ossorio's Blind Ossorio Dead series

Vengeance of the Zombies (La rebelión de León 1973 las muertas) Klimovsky

A Virgin Among the Living Dead Jesús Franco 1973 main character has visions of zombies

Baron Blood (Gli orrori del castello di 1972 Norimberga)

Blood of Ghastly Horror Al Adamson 1972

Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things 1972

Deathdream Bob Clark 1972

Horror Rises from the Tomb Carlos Aured 1972

Messiah of Evil Willard 1972 Huyck &

Tombs of the Blind Dead Amando de 1971 Ossorio

The Astro-Zombies Ted V. Mikels 1968

Isle of the Snake People (La muerte Juan Ibáñez 1968 viviente)

Night of the Living Dead George A. 1968 First film to depict zombies as Romero reanimated cannibalistic cadavers

The Plague of the Zombies John Gilling 1966

Terror-Creatures from the Grave (5 tombe Massimo 1965 per un medium, Cemetery of the Living

74 Dead) Pupillo

The Earth Dies Screaming Terence 1964 Fisher

The Horror of Party Beach Del Tenney 1964

I Eat Your Skin (Zombies) Del Tenney 1964

The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Ray Dennis 1964 Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Steckler Zombies

The Last Man on Earth (L'ultimo uomo della Ubaldo 1964 Terra) Ragona

War of the Zombies (Rome Against Rome) Giuseppe Vari 1964

Monstrosity Joseph 1963 Shown on MST3K as Atomic Mascelli Brain

Santo vs. the Zombies (Invasion of the Benito 1962 Zombies) Alazraki

Tales of Terror Roger 1962 Corman

The Curse of the Doll People (Munecos Benito 1961 infernales) Alazraki

The Dead One (El Muerto) Barry Mahon 1961

Doctor Blood's Coffin Sidney J. Furie 1961

The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake Edward L. 1959 Cahn

Invisible Invaders Edward L. 1959 aliens possess corpses Cahn

Plan 9 from Outer Space 1959

Teenage Zombies Jerry Warren 1959

Voodoo Island Reginald 1957 LeBorg

The Woman Eater Charles 1957 Saunders

Zombies of Mora Tau Edward L. 1957 Cahn

75 Creature with the Atom Brain Edward L. 1955 Cahn

Zombies of the Stratosphere Fred C. 1952 Brannon

Valley of the Zombies Philip Ford 1946

Zombies on Broadway (Loonies on Gordon Dines 1945 Broadway) & Gordon M. Douglas

Voodoo Man William 1944 Beaudine

I Walked with a Zombie Jacques 1943 Tourneur

Revenge of the Zombies Steve Sekely 1943

Bowery at Wallace Fox 1942

King of the Zombies Jean 1941 Yarbrough

The Ghost Breakers George 1940 Marshall

The Devil's Daughter (Pocomania) Arthur H. 1939 semi-remake of Ouanga Leonard

Revolt of the Zombies Victor 1936 Halperin

White Zombie Victor 1932 Believed to be the earliest Halperin zombie film

Hood of the Dead Snoop Dogg TBA

76