Comedy is Serious Business

*I’m about to nerd it up hardcore, so brace yourselves. Also, let it be known that these are my personal opinions, not to be mistaken as fact nor am I forcing anyone to think the same as me. Especially since it’s a rant about zombies that I’m putting on the internet.

Zombies. You love them. I love them. Who doesn’t? We can’t get enough of the slow yet unrelenting terror of the overwhelming mass that is the living dead. And why is that? Mostly because we get a sick satisfaction of killing something human-esque. A satisfaction that can’t be achieved by killing something impersonal, such as a robot or an alien. However there’s also the lack of guilt that comes with blowing the head off a zombie because, hey, there’s nothing morally wrong with killing someone that’s already dead. So we can gun down hordes of infected until our fingers are sore and still have a clear conscious. It’s the best of both worlds.

And that’s what makes zombies great. Everyone loves watching the senseless violence of something that looks human meet a gruesome demise, be it firsthand through video games or viewing it on television or the big screen.

But recently something has happened to zombies. Something that’s taking away from the mindless enjoyment of gratuitous bloodshed. The one thing we see zombie movies for. It’s gradually shifting focus from the shambling monsters to the humans living amongst the outbreak. It’s stripping away the fundamentals of the classic, B-movie horror genre. And that something is called “story.”

Before you throw your computer at a wall in disgust, let me plead my case. Think about the plot of any “Friday the 13th” or “Nightmare on Elm Street” movie. If you answered “some guy kills a bunch of people,” you’re absolutely correct. Their simplicity is what made those movies memorable. Now, think of the plot to “The Walking Dead.” It’s okay, I’ll wait. If you’re not familiar with the series, it’s such an intricate combination of a constantly changing, ensemble cast with complicated relationships between characters based on lies and deception built on a heavy, brooding plot that you forget zombies are even a threat. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that this is the reason this series is so popular, and I respect the art of character development and story telling. But I wanted zombies. If I wanted character arcs and sophisticated plots, I’d watch a soap opera. And that’s exactly what “The Walking Dead” is. A soap opera. In the foreword by the series’s author, he blatantly states that he wanted the focus to be on the humans rather than the zombies. It’s a soap opera where the characters occasionally run into some zombies. That is, if we’re lucky.

At first, the movie “Zombieland” looked like it had everything I could want in a movie about the undead. Over-the-top violence, a quirky, well-balanced cast, and it even had a cameo from Bill Murray, who stars has himself. But the Bill Murray scene goes on for so long that he stops being a cameo and turns into a costar. They were so busy palling around with Bill Murray that, when I first saw this movie, I actually forgot that I was watching a movie called “Zombieland” and that the characters were in fact looking for a safe haven from the zombie apocalypse.

I’m not bad mouthing Bill Murray. If you’re still reading, then you probably understood that. It’s that his scenes take so much away from an otherwise entertaining film. It seemed like the only reason Bill Murray’s scenes were in the movie was to wave him in front of the audiences faces’ as if to say “Look who we got to do the movie!” One of the main characters literally gushes over the fact that he’s meeting Bill Murray. To Bill Murray. On screen. The scenes advance the plot in no way and only end when (spoilers) one of the main characters accidentally shoots Bill Murray. Had his abrupt death not happened, the movie could have ended when the main characters first arrived at his house and the movie could have been retitled as “Bill Murray and Friends! (also some zombies?)”

This is just one movie and one graphic novel turned television show amongst dozens that boast the word “zombie,” “28 (period of time) later,” or “(noun) of the dead” in the title yet the actual undead have the least bit of screen time. The rest of the time, the main characters are too busy fighting amongst themselves to even care about the dead who have risen to feast on their insides. And I get it. “Man is the real monster.” Okay, the original “Night of the Living Dead” covered that. Can we just have scenes of zombies dying in ridiculous ways for two hours?

So far, the only pieces of zombie media that that has gotten it right are the video games “Dead Rising” and “Left 4 Dead.” Little to no story. Extremely violent. Hordes of zombies. Thoroughly entertaining. You learn about characters through their dialogue as they kill zombies, rather than setting aside 45 minutes of character development before even mentioning the z-word.

In short, I like “zombie movies.” Not dramas with moral lessons about society where the undead occasionally make an appearance. Why is it that zombies are the only monsters whose movies serve as a metaphor for humanity? That doesn’t happen with any other B-movie villain, so why zombies? No one is expecting a zombie movie to be thought provoking and emotionally moving so stop trying to make them that way. I want characters one-dimensional, the number of infected overwhelming, and my onscreen executions stomach-churning. And, honestly, shouldn’t all movies be that way?