Bob, I think you address the most crucial point in your first sentence - that people become zombies post-mortem. Zombies are, in the general tradition, walking corpses, the dead walking - note that Romero's films almost never use the word 'zombie', but refer instead to the living dead. Being dead is what makes you a zombie, and you become a zombie when you die, whether it be of old age or zombie attack.
All this talk of a virus seems rather confused, rather all-the-fault-of-28 Days Later. Is it surprising that people seriously bitten by animated corpses die quickly? It implies some extra virulence, but that doesn't have to mean a virus, and the idea of a virus having any impact on a corpse is as silly as thinking a mosquito could feed on coagulated blood. Perhaps there is a virus - but that would do no more than kill you, it certainly couldn't animate your corpse, so as you say, it's being dead that makes you zombie, not having a disease (which by definition requires a living system to exist in).
By this point the zombie apocalypse is such a well-established scenario that explanations are only necessary if the film declares it to be necessary. Even the original Night of the Living Dead didn't need much of an explanation - that was never the point.
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bobthegrinch
15 years ago
You're right, it wasn't the point. It's just a bit of fun to speculate. Like I said though in response to the idea that's a virus, if they fell into a coma rather than died it would explain how the brain is still active on any level. If they're dead the brain would be dead and unable to control the rest of the body so the idea of anything making a dead body get up and function on any level is also silly. They're never referred to as zombies by the characters these days anyway so if you're a purist who sticks to the idea that they're only zombies if they're dead and slow you could argue that 28 Days Later, Dawn remake and Dead Set aren't zombies. I don't get Simon Peggs argument in a guardian article that death doesn't make them superhuman because the chemicals that give us muscle fatigue wouldn't affect a corpse so they would run through pain and rigor mortis isn't permanent. However the idea of a corpse getting up anyway is inherently ridiculous so why get hung up on it?
I refer to this type as modern zombies and the old type as Romero zombies (seeing as his films made them most famous). Evil Dead zombies are demonic in their source. Considering the monsters used share so much in common it seems daft to me to say one is a zombie and the other is something else. They're different interpretations on the same basic idea. Like the vampires in Buffy being different to the vampires in Blade, still basically vampires.
As I said though, I agree the source of the zombie hordes is not the point. Romero used them for social commentary and others use them for scares which they achieve without explanation.
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combatreview
15 years ago
You're quite right, of course, that the idea is inherently silly any way you look at it, which undermines some of my criticisms. I suppose just find it a bit... head-scratching that people talk about viruses in relation to zombies, because it seems to me that whatever similarities may exist, the idea of Infected humans (in their various forms, e.g. Rabid as well as 28DL) is a seperate (though parallel) one. I'll admit, REC clearly ploughs through this distinction, and REC is fantastic. But hey. I'm grumpy, I confess it.
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