Comedy is Serious Business

Well it's October so it's time for an obligatory Halloween centric blog post. Instead of talking about my favorite horror movie, however, I'm going to do what I do best: talk about things that annoy me.

I appreciate a good scary movie now and again. I just recently watched George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" for the first time and I absolutely loved it. It had all the right ingredients for not only a great horror movie, but a great movie in general: fantastic story, a perfectly suited atmosphere, and to top it all off, it had an African-American in the lead role who was smart, well-spoken, and didn't die in the first ten minutes of the movie. Even more impressive was the fact that this movie was shot in the late 60s amongst extremely high racial tension. I don't know why it took me so long to see this movie, given my pro-zombie disposition, but I'm a better person for doing so.

The plot of all the great slasher movies from the late 70s into the 80s were all the same, but they were the pioneers of that genre and movies were (and still are) very entertaining. It's now about 30 years later and horror movies now just rehash the same story: there are a group of people who wander somewhere unfamiliar and they are killed one by one until the movie ends. Thing is, writers and directors of current movies do nothing to improve the genre; if anything, the movies now are worse. There is no time spent building up tension with foreboding set and developing a well established threat or villain. The concern now is more on how gruesome the deaths can be or there are "jumpers" every five minutes than actually making a good movie.

Nothing bugs me more than "jumpers" in horror movies. "Jumpers" is the name for when there's a long period of silence in a movie before something jumps out (hence the name) to startle the audience. Bottom line: jumpers are cheap, lazy ways to scare movie goers. There's no need for foreboding sets or well established threats when these movies are doing the equivalent of what a child does to scare a sibling. The worst part is that now the entire remainder of the movie is spent in anticipation, waiting for something to pop out unexpectedly. I get that's the point of the movie and that's why people see these movies in the first place, but for me, as soon as the first jumper appears, my focus shifts from the dialogue or plot to wondering which dark corner the killer will jump out from behind next.

What I think is truly scary are psychological thrillers. The horror movie slasher can always be defeated or outran, but what if the true horror is all in your mind (cue lightning and maniacal laughter)? Almost every episode of "The Twilight Zone" dealt with someone going losing their sanity but that's what made them equally terrifying and entertaining. Whatever was menacing them was all in their mind, therefore making the threat unescapable thereby making it even more terrifying. It takes actual writing skill to develop characters and then gradually break down the human psyche over the course of a movie.

A horror movie should not be about how much blood is shown on screen or how brutal a certain kill was, but rather making the audience feel unsettled and uncomfortable in their own mind. That's why so many people are afraid of the dark; they know nothing is there, but they're terrified of what could be there. And the best part is: whatever unseen, unspeakable thing is lurking in the unknown is being imagined by the scared party themselves. The best horror movie words to live by? Nothing is scarier.

*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?