by Wayne Reeves

Created on: June 08, 2010

Horror fans have delighted in the nonsensical myth of zombies for decades; earlier movies like ‘Night of the Living Dead’ and ‘Dawn of the Dead’ were taken as templates to what made a zombie a zombie.  The dead re-walk the Earth to feed on the living, shuffling on regardless to the nearest humans available.

Following on with Hollywood-style zombie logic, a corpse is re-animated in its decayed form, technically lacking any serviceable organs, ligaments or muscles to function as a normal human being again.  Yet bizarrely, they can traipse around as broken-down forms of their healthy-selves, albeit in a slow, meandering type of way.

Now the undead are apparently evolving; many are quite capable of running after potential victims (as seen in the remake of ‘Dawn of the Dead’).  Quite how the new breed of Olympic-trained zombies are capable of such feats is a big mystery.  As if the old lazy days of the slow plodding zombies were a confusion of biological facts, the new and improved model is only hindered by a small, but important factor, they’re undead and still hungry for flesh.

The slow zombie has indeed had its time and place, their effectiveness was always an exploitable one - only good in large hordes, anyone threatened by them had a fair chance of escape (due to the delayed reactions of said zombie groups).  The fast zombie is a very real threat to mankind, exhibiting the reactions and durability never seen in a old ‘shuffler’ (slow zombie).

Acting as though they’re jacked up on some drug or other, these new high-energy, bloodlusters are every bit an equal, if not more, to the human race.  The do have one benefit over the living though, being able to take incredible amounts of damage and still keep going for more.

There has always been a weak-spot associated with all zombies - the head.  Movie lore has it that a shot or excessive blow to the head will stop a zombie ’dead’.  If the organic living body is already a decaying entity, why is the brain still considered a viable target?  Energetic zombies are still a prime target then (in this way of thinking), although they have the agility to be a tough opponent to take down in a hurry.

Arguments for fast zombies are strong, ultimately though, they are still driven on by the feeding frenzy plaguing their older, more ’civilised’ predecessors of zombie past.  Any zombie couldn’t be thought of having too much going on in their mush of a mind, the faster undead just get into the action in five seconds rather than five minutes.  

Horror won’t forget the old rotten shufflers, their purpose is more to serve as a throw-back comedic-element - in most cases as on-screen cannon fodder - than any real danger anymore.  It is the 21st century zombies who now exist to thrill, in a new genre of quick-cut, edited fright-fests; where they could be seen as a reflection of the darker side of the human condition.

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