“Kua aa ah.”
“Ahh…ahhh…ahh…hh…”
The CONCATENATE’s slowly approached, making unrecognisable sounds. Great, it’s a retro style zombie. Today, the image of zombies that many people think of has its origins in George A. Romeros’ ‘Night of the Living Dead’ (hereon referred to as NOTLD). The zombies in NOTLD didn’t run. The setting was that the corpses were moved by supernatural forces or viruses, so they couldn’t move their muscles as skillfully as a living person and were subject to decay and stiffness after death. As a result, they couldn’t run, only walk slowly, as if dragging their feet. This was a retro style zombie.
It wasn’t the same in modern stories though. In Danny Boyle’s ’28 Days Later…’ the zombies just ran. The surviving protagonists and the zombies would run around with the music giving a sense of speed. The scene where the zombies are running through a tunnel with their shadows illuminated is burned into my mind. However, the setting is a bit awkward as the zombies after 28 days aren’t technically zombies, but living humans infected by a virus. Whether or not zombies are allowed to run has always been a topic of debate among zombie enthusiasts.
However, it could be said that the majority of people were now leaning towards running zombies. ‘Dawn of the Dead’, released in 2004, was a remake of Romero’s second film from the NOTLD series. However, Romero’s insistence on zombies not running was in vain, and the zombies were running at full speed from the beginning. The movie was extremely interesting. You could say it was the perfect version of the zombie movie template.
Even in ‘World War Z’, which became a hot topic, starring Brad Pitt, the zombies just ran. Running down slopes, falling over each other to create slopes, and running up walls. However, Max Brooks, who wrote the original novel ‘World War Z’ also argued in his first book, ‘Zombie Survival Guide’, that zombies shouldn’t run. That said, it was a different kind of work, as it only discussed the essence of how zombies should be dealt with while taking into account the political situation in various countries around the world.
The argument that zombies should or shouldn’t run has already been given up for entertainment value. Zombies can run faster than humans because they don’t get tired. But in this world, that’s not the case, which is really helpful. Thrusting my crowbar into the eye socket of a CONCATENATE, I gouged out its brain. I’ll deal with it later. As it progressed, I became like a protagonist from ‘The Walking Dead’, silently crushing the heads of the CONCATENATE’s like I was farming them.
※Reference Material
Zombie Survival Guide (Max Brooks)
WORLD WAR Z <First Half> <Second Half> (Max Brooks)
Zombie Movie Encyclopedia (Movie Treasure Collection) (Miwa Ito)
Theories of International Politics and Zombies (Daniel Drezner)