But it isn’t. What is the most frightening thing about zombies. And that’s George Romero’s zombies, not the fast sort you see in remakes. Is it the shambling incessant nature of their attack. Is it the horror of them ripping the flesh from the bones of the living. Is it the poor make-up? Or is it that this braindead hulk of flesh-eating shambles used to be us, and could well be what we turn into?
It is the latter, and all the implied satire of a zombie flick cannot overwhelm the transformative aspect of zombieism: losing our faculties and being reduced to our base desires. Perhaps Romero’s Land Of The Dead understands this, which is why it is not all that scary. But the slow birth of intelligence in his zombies, just like the smarts in the sharks in Deep Blue Sea actually make the creatures less frightening. Sure they work out how to attack the city, they work out how to use guns. But is a zombie with a gun really more scary that a zombie coming at you with his broken fingernails and teeth. Nope.
But then Romero’s zombie films were never all that scary anyway. Land Of The Dead ends with the hero and his souped up lorry (its a rubbish plot device) letting a whole load of zombies go. They can think, they can reason, do they deserve a right to live? More importantly what do they remember? Are they really brainless zombies any more, or with reasoning comes personality, comes rights.