Zombie Love.

There was an article in The Guardian a while ago wondering why Resident Evil Afterlife was doing so well at the box office despite its poor critical reception. This immediately merited a deluge of bitching in the comments about the supposed intellectual elitism of the journalist. The main gist of the rebuttal was that this is just a good pop corn movie, so can we please just enjoy it as such.

But I’m not sure our pleasure is as simple as that. Pleasure rarely is. Personally, I think that we love all things zombie because zombies are comforting, and the reason zombies are comforting is because they don’t have a subtext. Compare them with the other main monster groups: vampires are a metaphor for sex as death, werewolves are metaphors for our sublimated feral nature, aliens are a metaphor for otherness and Frankenstein’s monster is a metaphor for the hubris of Promethean ambition. Zombies, on the other hand, do precisely what it says on the tin (of zombies): they want to eat your brains, and they will follow you slowly and predictably and with surprising, almost endearing, patience in order to do so.

Sure, they can make us shriek if they lurch unexpectedly out of a doorway. But they also make us laugh. And if you get caught by a zombie, well, ultimately it’s your fault. You were too slow, or too cocky, or you were distracted by having sex. It’s as simple as that. And, in an age when we’re seriously afraid, of everything, a little simplicity, a little controlled fear presented to us in a safe and unambiguous package, can go a very long way.

Of course, every zombie needs someone who understands him. And that’s why God made Ash.