Zombies

SECONDARY RESEARCH

THE GUARDIAN ON ZOMBIES.• “Zombies have dominated mainstream horror for more than half a decade. They're

everywhere: movies, books, videogames, comics, even a new Broadway musical adaptation of Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead. Not only have they replaced previous alpha-monsters such as vampires and werewolves, but are continuing to generate more interest (and revenue) than almost all other creatures put together. Given that several years ago the living dead were considered an obscure and largely underground sub-genre, it would not be an exaggeration to state that they have enjoyed a spectacular rebirth unlike anything in the history of modern horror.” - Max Brooks, the Guardian, Friday 10 November 2006

• The dominant genre for our questionnaire results were horror, for this we decided to improvise and make a zombie film. From the research that I have gathered online, from The Guardian by Max Brooks, helps me identify with how the zombie ‘genre’ came into the media. It is one of the easiest yet difficult “creatures” to mimic, however the results from our questionnaires can determine that this type of film would please our targeted audience. For the questionnaires visit Brooke Selley’s Blog (brookeselley.wordpress.com) titled under Questionnaire and the Target Audience Questionnaire by Leisha Burnett (leishadanielleblog.wordpress.com) which focuses only on our main targeted audiences (teenagers/young adults). For the graphed results visit Elliot Brown’s blog (elliotbrownnn.wordpress.com), to get a clearer understanding of our results.

• “Zombies are fictional creatures, typically depicted as mindless, reanimated human corpses (sometimes animals) with a hunger for human flesh, regularly encountered in horror and fantasy themed works. Some depictions are inspired by Haitian folklore, while others, like the ones in George A. Romero's film Night of the Living Dead, do not have that same direct connection.[1][2] Zombies have a complex literary heritage, with antecedents ranging from Richard Matheson and H. P. Lovecraft to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein drawing on European folklore of the undead. The popularity of zombies in movies has led to them sometimes having been taken out of their usual element of horror and thrown into other genres, for example the comedy film Shaun of the Dead. The "zombie apocalypse" concept, in which the civilized world is brought low by a global zombie infestation, has become a staple of modern popular art.” – Zombie (Fictional) Wikipedia

• Even though the stereotypical image for zombies is “mindless” “reanimated human corpses” many of the films challenge this stereotype such as “World War Z” and “Zombieland”, within these films the zombies develop through illnesses and being bitten by another zombie, in these films the zombies are able to run and understand what they’re looking for which is human flesh, example in “World War Z” the zombies did not eat anyone who suffered an illness, which showed instincts, making the zombie seem smart and challenge that typical “mindless” zombie. We will use inspiration from these films, but we will also have the stereotypical aspects of a zombie e.g. make-up and hunt for human flesh.