![\"returnof\"](\"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/returnof.jpg\")
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I really like zombie films. Not because I find the creatures interesting, but because these films tend to be open and blunt about their ideas. The first three of Romero\u2019s Dead movies are not really about the zombies themselves\u2014they\u2019re about how, in many ways, we\u2019re zombies already. Dawn of the Dead<\/a>\u2019s shots of zombies milling around in a shopping mall is one of the most haunting things I have ever seen.<\/span><\/p>\n What I don\u2019t like, however, is a particular brand of zombie fan\u2014the ones who obsess over the idea<\/i> of the zombies themselves, like they\u2019re some kind of mathematical puzzle that can be \u2018solved\u2019. This leads to the creation and popularization of books like The Zombie Survival Guide<\/a>. This completely misses the point of the films these fans supposedly like, and has led to a school of film viewership I will hereby refer to as \u2018Tactical Realism\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Tactical realism doesn\u2019t just apply to zombie films\u2014treating any film as a simulation of some theoretical \u2018real\u2019 event is always stupid in any case, because films are, necessarily, not real<\/i>. The symbolic weight of the dead rising is lost when it\u2019s covered by a web of Bare Facts, like \u2018shoot for the head\u2019 or \u2018don\u2019t be a hero\u2019 (Zombieland<\/a> excellently satirized this mindset through its dumb, sociopathic main character with no attachment to humanity).<\/span><\/p>\n These fans regularly ignore the artistic qualities of the film in order to do this. Almost everything filmic about films\u2014cinematography, symbolism, and even characters\u2019 emotional states are discarded as unimportant. \u00a0 Scenes like the one in the Dawn of the Dead remake<\/a>, where a woman risks her life to save a poor animal, confound these filmgoers. It\u2019s amazing how sociopathic people become when confronted with an act as simple as sympathy.<\/span><\/p>\n With this in mind, my favourite zombie film, and the ultimate cure for this crappy subculture, is a movie called Return of the Living Dead<\/a>. It\u2019s written and directed by Dan O\u2019Bannon, who also wrote Alien<\/a>. The film takes Romero\u2019s films and follows them to their logical conclusions, doing them better than their originator ever did (or ever has\u2014I\u2019m looking at you<\/i>, Diary of the Dead).<\/span><\/p>\n In Return, zombie-itis is explicitly caused by a military-developed chemical known as Trioxin, of which there was an accidental outbreak. This outbreak, according to characters in the film, is what inspired Romero to make Night of the Living Dead<\/a> in the first place. This should make the zombies surprisingly easy to deal with, right? All the characters have seen the movie \u2018inspired by\u2019 the events, and know all the tricks\u2014go for the brain, trick them into shuffling somewhere out of the way in order to make safe zones, and so on. A tactical realist\u2019s dream!<\/span><\/p>\n So, they go for the brain.<\/span><\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t work<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n This is where the film starts to fuck with the tactical realists in the audience. The zombies cannot die and will not stop, ever. If you cut them into pieces the pieces go for you<\/i>. If you try to burn the pieces, you spread the poison that created them out into the atmosphere, and into the rain. What if it rains on the graveyard next door? The film is a horror-comedy, and both these elements are always hand-in-hand\u2014it\u2019s hilarious watching idiots bumble about making things worse, thinking life works like in a movie they saw, but the concept of confronting an enemy that defies your understanding is horrifying.<\/span><\/p>\n People take it for granted nowadays that zombies eat brains. Even the most blasphemous of blasphemies, the Zombie Survival Guide, makes reference to this \u2018fact\u2019. Well, it wasn\u2019t one until this movie came out. Return of the Living Dead invented<\/i> brain eating. The zombies are even given a motive for doing so: eating brains is a temporary cure for the pain of being dead. Being conscious that you are dead and rotting is horrifyingly painful, and eating living people is a distraction from that. The zombies are tactical realists themselves, in this way\u2014all they want to do is save themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n The theme of attempting to distract oneself from pain or terror runs deeply through the film. Characters have \u2018ironic\u2019, postmodern names like Trash and Suicide, and talk about how much they enjoy dancing in graveyards and would love<\/i> to be eaten alive. This is revealed to be a front\u2014they\u2019re trying to squelch their fear of the inevitable by appearing to embrace it. It is only once they face the fact that dying still scares them that they really start to be alive at all. This shines a mirror on the tactical realists in the audience\u2014when you take the zombies \u2018seriously\u2019, criticizing a film if the main characters make \u2018mistakes\u2019 that don\u2019t go with the optimal survival method, isn\u2019t that really just a strategy to avoid<\/i> engaging with the fear and terror being illustrated on the screen? Ironically, despite their knowing of all the \u2018tricks to survival\u2019, they\u2019re probably the one group of people I\u2019d least<\/i> want to hang around if the dead ever really started rising. And if I was a zombie, I\u2019d target those guys out of spite.<\/span><\/p>\n One of the best scenes in the film is when two cops arrive on the scene to try to make sense of what\u2019s going on, and are quickly consumed by the horde. Then, a zombie enters the cop car and gets on the radio, telling the operator to send more cops<\/i>. It\u2019s a fantastic message: the zombie horde is a horrifying black hole of violence that absorbs all attempts to contain it\u2014and dares you to try. All attempts to do so only feed the madness and make you more like them, either by figuratively changing you into an amoral tactical realist or literally killing and resurrecting you as one of them. It\u2019s another version of an idea O\u2019Bannon also expressed in Alien, wherein the evil corporation wanted to study the alien, adopt its strategies, and become better killing machines, whereas the real goal should be to become less <\/i>like them.<\/span><\/p>\n Don\u2019t we want to be less like the zombies, and transcend bare survival instinct? Remember, this film came out right at the end of the Cold War era, where the tactical realist attitude of having more nukes than the enemy \u2018just in case\u2019 almost got the entire world killed. If we all treated each other with a little more humanity, things would be better. In this movie, the military created the zombies. Which is why, fittingly, it ends with the military making a last-ditch attempt to end the outbreak by using nuclear arms. The zombies are incinerated, and for a moment, you might be convinced that everything might be okay\u2014but then, in a scene that manages to be terrifying in spite of its actual content, it starts raining<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n The zombies win, because the methods applied to dealing with them can only ever make it worse. The film even replays key scenes from the film over the end credits to hammer this home. You can never send enough cops. The era of man is over, and we\u2019re fucked. Any honest sequel to this film would take place in a wasteland with no humans left at all, just a seething mass of immortal, rotting humans in constant pain. The film imparts a grim warning\u2014not about how to effectively deal with a trioxin zombie invasion, that would be asinine\u2014but about losing sight of what it means to be human and playing the zombies\u2019 game. It also has a kickin\u2019 rad soundtrack\u2014the film\u2019s theme song<\/a>, composed by Francis Haines, is simply the best thing. I listen to it all the time.<\/span><\/p>\n Watch Return of the Living Dead, and embrace your humanity.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I really like zombie films. Not because I find the creatures interesting, but because these films tend to be open and blunt about their ideas. The first three of Romero\u2019s Dead movies are not really about the zombies themselves\u2014they\u2019re about how, in many ways, we\u2019re zombies already. Dawn of the Dead<\/a>\u2019s shots of zombies milling around in a shopping mall is one of the most haunting things I have ever seen.<\/span><\/p>\n What I don\u2019t like, however, is a particular brand of zombie fan\u2014the ones who obsess over the idea<\/i> of the zombies themselves, like they\u2019re some kind of mathematical puzzle that can be \u2018solved\u2019. This leads to the creation and popularization of books like The Zombie Survival Guide<\/a>. This completely misses the point of the films these fans supposedly like, and has led to a school of film viewership I will hereby refer to as \u2018Tactical Realism\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,3268],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts","category-harrys-essays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5175"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5181,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5175\/revisions\/5181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n