There’s a caricature of conservative cultural critics where they hate absolutely everything, and like all caricatures, it has a basis in fact. There are a lot of things about popular culture to hate these days, especially what has happened to so many beloved stories and characters.
But the proof that this is lie is in how many ways I’m seeing conservative critics struggling to find something good to say about 28 Years Later. A lot of them really wanted this to succeed, felt that there were parts when it almost worked, but in the end we had just another mediocrity.
I’m going to go on and say that the poor reception of the film is not just going to end the franchise, it’s going to shut down the zombie genre for a while.
The Zombie Age Is Over
Every era seems to have a fixation on a particular monster in the popular mind. In the 1990s, it was the Golden Age of Vampires. Ann Rice, Vampire: The Masquerade, Blade, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Underworld, The Vampire Diaries – you get the picture. (Dare I mention The Vampires of Michigan?)
As the vamps faded from view, they were replaced by zombies.
Why were vampires so big? It was a combination of things. Vampires had always represented a forbidden type of sensuality and the 1990s was just about peak hedonism. Combine that with dark intrigue, intense fight scenes and of course hot, young women, and you’ve got a potent formula that hits most of the demographic groups – women loving the romance and guys digging the hot chicks and combat.
Of course, zombies are anything but sexy, representing the ugly, putrid side of death. While vampires live in a shadowy world of affluent decadence, zombies are a sign of civilization collapse, a visible symbol of society’s decay.
Instead of the push-pull of vampiric seduction vs resisting evil, zombies are purely horrific, attacking every kind of relationship.
Zombie Symbolism
Because they are primary symbolic, there are more varieties of zombie than vampire. Vampires are largely defined by Dracula, and while there are some variations regarding holy water, the efficacy of garlic, sunlight, etc., on the whole there are pretty established rules regarding their need for blood and the difficulty (and imperative!) to destroy them.
Zombies come in many flavors. There are still nods the classic Caribbean ‘raised from the dead’ Voodoo terror, but for the most part zombies are the result of a disease, and experiment that goes wrong, perhaps even divine judgement and it results in shambling creatures who exist only to feed on other humans. Of late we have also seen “fast” zombies who present a considerably different threat. Even Game of Thrones created ice zombies.
While George Romero’s films were a critique on consumer society, the 21st Century version were very much inspired by Global War on Terror and the fear that society was on the brink of Armageddon. At there core, zombies are the ultimate insider threat. What was once your mother, or child, or beloved spouse is now an implacable cannibal, and if infected, can turn on you with any warning.
They were the prefect metaphor for terrorist cells, which had infiltrated society, moved invisibly among us, and then struck out in coordinated attacks, both on Sept. 11, 2001 and intermittently thereafter. Of course, political correctness forbade pointing to Islam or various cultures as being a source of this, so even the US military ran exercises to suppress “zombie infestations.”
Thus we got a bunch of zombie flicks, from The Walking Dead and its spinoffs to 28 Days Later and its two sequels. I Am Legend got dusted off for yet another remake and of course there was World War Z.
Many of these ultimately fizzled out due to a combination of obvious plot armor an terrible pacing, but the real reason 28 Years Later is irrelevant is that we now know what the end of the world looks like: It’s a cop arresting a family for playing on the beach during the Covid pandemic.
The Pandemic Horror Show
One of the iconic images of a zombie infestation is abandoned police cars or military vehicles, which symbolizes the impotence of traditional sources of power and authority. The police can’t protect you; the Army can’t stop it. With the Pandemic, the police were out to get you and the Army itself was targeted. Most media accounts say only 8,500 active duty personnel were purged over the vaccine mandate, but another 60,000 reservists and National Guard members were discharged or forced to separate.
Even the most viral zombies had nothing vs a government who induced food shortage, rampant inflation and denied people the ability to earn a living. Even religious services were shut down as “non-essential.”
We experienced a nightmare beyond even the most heated imagination, a dystopia worse than anyone expected.
How can zombie movies compete with that?
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