What I Didn’t Like about World War Z

The zombies didn’t eat anybody.

They’re the polar opposite of zombies in The Walking Dead. The WWZ zombies run fast, bite their prey—once—and then move on. You don’t become a zombie when you die; you become one immediately. In as much as they a) bite people and b) can’t be reasoned with and c) look freaky, I guess they’re zombies. But that movie could have been made using different make-up and a different word, and it wouldn’t be a “zombie” movie any longer.

I respect that there needs to be different kinds of zombies in the zombie meta-verse. I applaud those who made the movie for trying something different. But at the point where I realized the zombies don’t eat people, I stopped being horrified. It was just scary. Like war is scary—so I guess it was a good title after all.

Now, for my money, the zombies in The Walking Dead are quintessential zombies. Slow, inexorable, and almost always dripping gore. Dress ‘em up in clown suits, call ‘em ballerinas, and they’re still zombies. Its that “inexorable” that I like. They’re dependable. They will always be there to mess things up.

Because I sort of find The Walking Dead boring. I know, zombie stories are about the people, not the shamblers (with exceptions like Monster Island and my own stories). But TWD has become a real soap opera. I get bored watching The Governor and Rick gaze at each other with tired eyes. Luckily, those inexorable zombies eventually come along and do what they do to the best laid plans of men.

I’d love to see a mashup of the two. Give me gore-chomping zombies versus humans who are solving a mystery Give me something. TWD is just One Life to Live with guts and guns. WWZ is just The Big Red One with nibblers for Nazis. I want The Usual Zombie Suspects. Or even Zombiedeus.

I’m a picky eater; I’d make a lousy zombie.

On the Difficulties of Creating a Zombie Taxonomy

Any approach to classifying different types or kinds of zombies is already working in the realm of meta-fiction. This is to say that comparing two different kinds of zombies requires comparing two different ideas created by two different people. Therefore, internal consistencies will the greatest challenge to establishing a robust taxonomy. Perhaps one way to mitigate this challenge is to base a zombie taxonomy not on the zombie creator but on the zombie consumer. What does the consumer know a zombie to be, and how does a consumer choose one kind of zombie as more “authentic” than another?

For example, consider the first popularization of zombies, in George Romero’s classic Night of the Living Dead. The original consumer would have come to the film without any context besides other horror films, and may have considered these zombies “vampiric.” And now consider the recent update of The Omega Man, called I Am Legend. In this movie, the vampires have all the appearance of zombies, and this is how many people refer to them.

This is because, due to the ongoing popularization of zombies, the modern consumer comes to a film or other zombie entertainment vehicle already equipped with a full collection of zombie tropes. The zombie consumer classifies the zombies by what she already knows, adjusting only as much as is required by the films’ adherence to revelation and consistency.

Zombies in Romero’s film eat only brains. In The Walking Dead, they eat human flesh. In World War Z, zombies bite, but they do not consume flesh or brains. Are these aspects of the zombie integral to the overall horror felt by the consumer? If so, she may classify zombies by what they eat.

In World War Z, 28 Days Later, and the video game Left 4 Dead, zombies run at top speed. In The Walking Dead and Shaun of the Dead, the zombies are slow shufflers. Whether or not zombies “should” be able to run quickly is a hot topic for debate among fans of zombie consumption, so the zombie consumer will certainly classify zombies by their ambulatory agility.

And how are zombies made? By chemicals in Return of the Living Dead. A bite resulting in death will make a zombie in Night of the Living Dead. Just a single bite will do the trick in World War Z. And while we don’t know why, in The Walking Dead, anyone who dies comes back as a zombie, no matter what the cause of death.

These three axes alone make zombie classification difficult enough. But other creative choices by zombie makers further complicate the issue. Some zombie vehicles include sentimental or even sentient zombies (Shaun of the Dead, Fido, Warm Bodies). Do zombies eventually rot away to nothing, or can they “grow” (as in David Wellington’s novel Monster Island)? And just what do we do with super-heroes turned undead in Marvel Zombies?

I began this essay as an introduction to creating my own zombie taxonomy, but I’m afraid my brains have been consumed by all of these different zombie types. Like a horde descending upon me, I’m succumbing to the realization that no single taxonomy will ever do justice to understanding zombies.