Now don't get me wrong, I don't live, eat and breathe zombies, I don't have zombie bed sheets or spend all my free time plotting my escape plan in the event of a zombie apocolypse (although I would be lying if I said I hadn't thought about it once or twice). I'm no means a zombie expert, but I do like the idea of them, in the same way I like the ideas behind most things fantasy and sci-fi. And over the last couple years especially, thanks to a general increase of zombie popularity, I've been playing a lot of games and watching a lot of movies and recently I've started reading some books about zombies, and so it should be said that probably quite a bit of what I'll review here will contain zombies.
I should also mention that when I use the word 'zombie', I do so generally in a very loose sense of the word. Zombie fanatics will probably tell you that these zombies in that move aren't REAL zombies because blah blah blah. I guess in a nutshell, the way it seems to be is, a traditional zombie is someone that has died, and has been reanimated, and is therefore usually slower and well, dead. An 'infected' new-age zombie person, is a person that has not offically died, but has been overtaken by some kind of virus or mutation or other outside factor, which has turned the person into a mindless raging violent creature, usually a lot faster, and possibly intelligent. I'm sure there are a whole bunch of other nuances on the matter, but I'm not here to argue semantics right now. The undead, the living dead, the infected, the zombie, if they're after my flesh, then it doesn't make a whole lot of difference to me really. In fact the new infected zombie seems far more interesting to me, as they tend to pose the biggest risk, and seem to be the most plausible type of plague that might actually occur (scroll to the last story). (Or maybe not, supposing they're dumb, and dead, that is). But whatever the zombie type, they can all be portrayed well, or horribly, in media, and I'd like to discuss some of those cases in later posts.
So now that that's out of the way, a bit about what I've played/watched. I guess the big two zombie games I got into first were Resident Evil 4, and Left 4 Dead 2. The Dead Rising series, for all its horrible flaws, was also really, really fun. I recently also got Plants vs Zombies, which is far more addicting and fun then it really ought to be. Also, Crazy Dave is a boss. And CRAAAAAZZYY :)
Look out! He's CRAAZY!
Fido would have to be one of my all time favourite zombie movies. I've heard mixed reviews, but personally, it hits all the right places for me, and I thought it was brilliant (then again, I watched it without knowing anything about it, not even that it was a zombie movie, and I find that films I'm in a black-out about tend to impress me more, but nevertheless, this movie is great). I'm struggling so hard not to start talking about it right now; perhaps I'll have to watch it again this weekend and write up a review on it so I can gush all about it. I also remember 28 Days leaving a big impression on me, but it's been a while since I saw it, so I can't say too much on it just now. In fact, a lot of zombie movies I watched were many years ago, when I was quite a bit younger. I'll have to go back and rewatch them all with older eyes and see how they compare, and what I think about them now that I appreiate the 'zombie' more.
Yeah, Bro, I don't trust the girl in pink either. There's something fishy about her... unlike the zombie standing right behind you...
For Christmas, my boyfriend bought me three zombie books I'm really keen to get into. A Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks, The Zombie Combat Manual by Roger Ma, and another by Brooks, World War Z: an Oral History of the Zombie War. I've started in on the Zombie Survival Guide, but haven't got very far yet. It's been a while since I've read books, and I've fallen out of the habit; but I'm enjoying it a lot so far, while simultaneously freaking myself out at how ill prepared I am
Anyway, that about wraps up my overview on zombies. Like I said, a lot of games and movies I'll talk about wont have anything at all to do with zombies on this blog, but some will, and hopefully you'll look forward to reading those as much as I look forward to writing them.
Cheers for now.
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