Zombie Metaphors: An Incomplete History - Part 2

Monday, June 11, 2007 | 12:00 AM

Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Directed by Edgar Wright

The best moment in Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's exceptionally funny multi-genre refresh — or, as they put it, "zom-rom-com" — is the scene in which the titular eventual hero drags himself out of the house after a consolatory night of post-breakup boozing with his best mate. Shaun staggers down the street, snags a Cornetto at the corner store, and heads back, dodging an apparent panhandler on the way. It's almost a replay of the scene that kicked off the day before, except that sometime over the course of the night, England became overrun with zombies, and Shaun, in his generally unaware and, worse, hungover state, doesn't even notice. "Shaun of the Dead" remains so clever and fleet on its feet in its first two thirds that it's easy to overlook how pointed its central observation is — that most of us, shuffling obliviously and unthinkingly through daily routines, are pretty much indistinguishable from the undead that arrive to plague the populace.

They Came Back (2004)
Directed by Robin Campillo

It's hard to parse what the returning dead represent in this introspective French film from Robin Campillo, the screenwriter behind Laurent Cantet's excellent "Time Out." They're used to facilitate some multi-edged social satire; when the millions of "returnees" wander inconveniently out of cemeteries across France, they're more a bureaucratic plague than anything else — do these people need jobs? Where will they live? Ultimately, they're treated as refugees, and left to be claimed by family members unprepared to have their once-deceased lovers, children, spouses, and other relatives back in their lives when their loss has already been mourned. The returnees — sleepless, remote, restless and seemingly sedated — become a physical representation of grief, their return not a gift but a burden to be borne.

Zombie Honeymoon (2004)
Directed by David Gebroe

Like "Shaun of the Dead," the ultra-indie "Zombie Honeymoon" is an unlikely combination of zombie horror flick, romance and purported comedy, though "Honeymoon" is rather lighter on the funny. It follows the absurdist but oddly poignant demise of the relationship of Denise and Danny, newlyweds who have an unfortunate encounter with a zombie in a post-wedding sojourn by the beach. Danny dies, and then returns with an appetite for human flesh, but Denise isn't prepared to let the fact that her husband is undead end her marriage, and so the two soldier on, attempting to domesticate Danny's habit of noshing on the nearest person. It's a silly set-up, but lead Tracy Coogan displays such whole-hearted and sincere commitment to her role that she manages to bring pathos to a film that is, after all, about the way a person you love can turn, over time, into someone else entirely.

Homecoming (2005)
Directed by Joe Dante

"Shaun of the Dead" plays zombism as a metaphor for complacency; Joe Dante's overtly political "Homecoming" — originally aired as part of Showtime's "Masters of Horror" anthology and later released on DVD — uses it to portray exactly the opposite. The current administration's done their level best to keep the bodies and coffins of our war dead away from public scrutiny; too bad for them, you can't keep a good zombie down, and so American soldiers rise from their graves, not to inflict death and destruction on the living, but to vote the man who sent them to die out of office. At times, the politics overpower the filmmaking; it is, after all, a very well-made TV movie. And there's no denying its didacticism — these zombies require no extrapolation because their meaning and message are all made quite clear within the narrative. But what a powerful message it is. Dante's mini-film (just an hour long), is easily one of the fieriest pieces of moviemaking about this or any war.

[Photos: "Shaun of the Dead," Rogue Pictures, 2004; "They Came Back," Fox Lorber, 2005; "Zombie Honeymoon," Fabrication Films, 2004; "Homecoming," Showtime, 2005]

[Back to Part 1]