Slow

by Elizabeth M Young

Created on: August 12, 2009   Last Updated: March 24, 2011

To meet my zombie movie needs, I want the slow zombies who are far more effective at scaring me to death. While some audiences prefer constant and fast paced action,  those  leaping and cavorting zombies who drop from ceilings, fly through the air, or show up out of nowhere are far less satisfying than the plodding, yet persistent aggression of a classic zombie.

The most important thing happens when the zombies are the staggering and slow types: Our ability to panic is the key to a sure win for the monsters. Nothing is more heart stopping than a scene where the car won't start and the distant zombies are staggering, slowly, toward their next meal.

I scream and hide behind pillows as a perfectly capable young woman falls to the perfectly soft and flat ground, yet  cannot get her self back up and running for some reason.  I also yell at the group who can't  tie up the psycho who is surely going to sabotage the telephone lines and HAM radio setup.

And, of course one couple is going to decide that NOW is the time to go to an isolated spot to skinny dip for an hour, after which will be a long, languid romantic interlude. This can't happen if the zombies are able to cover twenty miles in ten minutes with some kind of special zombie time and space vibe that goes on.

Only slow zombies allow for the stress inducing and obviously inappropriate romance and love scenes that must be included in a proper horror film.

Here's another point. No one will go into a basement to find out why Uncle Ted hasn't come back with the canned peaches if the zombies are as fast as weasels, can get through cinder block walls, and are probably already down there in the dark. It makes no sense whatsoever to go down there if it's likely that a zombie already got Uncle Ted, who is now a zombie, himself.

But, what good is a zombie movie without a basement scene that makes sense. Basement scenes must last, so that the people can talk about their dreams and hopes in life, resolve their love for each other, and otherwise make us care about them. We all know that it is difficult to have zombie-free time without a basement because zombies do not like to do manual labor unless there will be food!

We can't get character and plot development with hopping, cranked up zombies barging into the slower scenes and eating everyone.

And what kind of pivotal climax do we get when the adrenaline has been used up already? If it's all been one high speed battle after another, where is there any room left for tension to build and then resolve?

The fact is that high speed zombies kill far too effectively and turn the entire cast into zombies long before we can figure out whether we care about the main characters or not. This is not as effective as watching people slowly lose all hope as their own faults, mistakes and foibles cause them to fall victim, one by one, until the last few survivors are left to remind us that there will always be an endless cycle of zombie movie sequels.

In the end, give me those classic, slow moving zombies and let the kids deal with the steroid enhanced, high speed supermodels of horror!

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