"28 Days Later" Zombie Projection

Hands down, my favorite film on the list. I'm a pretty big nerd when it comes to zombie stuff, or really anything apocalypse. But beside Danny Boyle's directorial magic, there's something special about the zombie in 28 Days Later; it’s fast, viral, and even deliberate. Before the era of 28 Days Later, one might think of the Night of the Living Dead type zombie; slow, lumbering nuisances that are only formidable in large numbers. These aren’t exactly the “Braaaaaaaiiiiiiiiins” type zombies. They are particularly terrifying because they are so fast and deadly, and as Munteen and Payne put it, “emotional”. They screech and scream and snarl, they puke blood which is extremely viral and contagious, they literally spew their ideology. So why are these zombies so viral? This is where Munteen and Payne’s article, “Attack of the Living Dead: Recalibrating Terror in the Post-September 11 Zombie Film”, comes into play. They so effably describe the movie zombie as a sort of tabula rasa, a philosophical term made famous by John Locke, literally translated as “blank slate”. This is to say that the zombie is a movie monster that starts as a blank slate, and is projected upon by the social and cultural fears and anxieties of the time. So, this being said, would explain multiple narratives of the movie zombie, starting with the Night of the Living Dead zombie. As it was released in 1968, the most current World event of the time was the Cold War. This was a war that was fought quietly, behind the scenes, via intelligence; if one were to ever think of spies and double agents and what not, this was the war. Part of this style of “warfare” was the spreading of ideology, particularly the threat of the spread of communism to the west; i.e. the Red Scare. This threat was a slow and gradual descent, fought off via propaganda and counter-intelligence. Much like this spreading of ideology, the movie zombie at the time was slow, quiet, and lumbering; all while maintaining a menacing appearance. So what makes the 28 Days Later zombie so different: why domestic terrorism! Munteen and Payne posited that the incident of 911, the first example of domestic terrorism in the States, was the social anxiety and fear that penetrated to movie-making world. It gave need for a new, scarier, and in a way, more relatable zombie. That is exactly what the film delivered. A viral, panicked, emotional zombie.