If you were around in the mid-to-late-aughts, you were aware of the zombie apocalypse fad. Much like the shambling undead hordes it depicted, the trend was inescapable.
As with most pop phenomena, a lot of ink has been spilled on why the zombie horror subgenre became so dominant when it did. Culture critics have yet to produce a satisfactory answer, which suggests that the real reason involves facts we’re not allowed to talk about.
The obvious suspect is Gen Y nostalgia. That answer is a little too obvious, as it turns out, since then-college-age Ys wouldn’t have had strong memories of zombie films from their formative years. The zombie franchises that made the biggest impact in the 80s and early 90s were the Night of the Living Dead series and its spinoff property Return of the Living Dead. Between the two of them, they only had three movies throughout the 1980s and one in 1993, which opened in just nine theaters.
At best, we can call that level of market penetration a cult hit; hardly the stuff of a Star Wars-caliber nostalgia revival.
So the driving force behind the aughts zombie craze must run broader and deeper than mere Gen Y pop cultism.
But what is it?
To find the answer, let’s go digging back into the zombie subgenre’s film origins.
Ask a horror movie buff, and odds are he’ll tell you that the granddaddy of the zombie genre is the 1932 Bela Lugosi vehicle White Zombie. In addition to being fodder for a 90s band name, this movie typified the zombie concept as it then existed in the Western mind.
Because the initial depiction of zombies in pre-code Hollywood wasn’t as rotting undead cannibals. Instead, they were portrayed as living victims enslaved by voodoo rituals and the like. In particular, White Zombie features a young American woman who ends up zombified when a man tries to steal her away from her husband with a potion obtained from a slaver in Haiti.
Zombies didn’t gain fame as mindless risen corpses until the original Night of the Living Dead premiered in 1968. That was three years after Congress passed the Hart-Celler Immigration Act, but more on that later.
NotLD creator George Romero didn’t follow up on his seminal work until ten years later. The sequel, Dawn of the Dead, famously characterized zombies as compulsive consumers that amble through shopping malls engaged in aimless materialism. A pattern starts to emerge.
In 1985, a dispute over the rights to Night of the Living Dead split the IP into parallel franchises. Dan O’Bannon of Alien fame helmed the first Return of the Living Dead film, which introduced zombies’ well-known penchant for brain eating but also made them intelligent. It’s worth noting that among this film’s first batch of zombies is a gang of punks in open rebellion against society. In sharp contrast to Romero’s zombie conformists, O’Bannon gives us zombies as anti-social elements.
Another puzzle piece falls into place.
Most critics would say that the zombie genre went dormant throughout the 90s and the early aughts. But they fall prey to the false dichotomy that separates fantasy, horror, and science fiction into separate genres.
Zombies didn’t go away. They just invaded science fiction.
One could argue that Romero style zombies were a sci fi trope from the start. Night of the Living Dead makes brief mention of radiation from a space probe recently returned from Venus. Return of the Living Dead states outright that zombification is caused by a hazardous chemical. Since the zombie apocalypse fad kicked off, rabies-adjacent viruses have been the cause célèbre.
But between RotLD and the zombie apocalypse of the aughts, pasty white slaves stripped of their individuality and absorbed into a pillaging, locust-like mob attained new heights of popularity via the sci fi TV institution, Star Trek.
Before anyone objects that the Borg aren’t technically zombies, recall that Lily from Star Trek: First Contact straight up identifies them as such.
By the way, First Contact is another Wrath of Khan remake, only inverted. But that’s a story for another time.
Anyhow, the RotLD sequel from 2005 brings us full circle and bridges both subgenres by featuring trioxin zombies that are unabashed ST Borg ripoffs.
Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis itself counts as part of the zombie apocalypse fad, since it follows movies that kicked off the craze like 28 Days Later and the parody Shaun of the Dead. Both of the latter involve the UK being overrun by zombie hordes with scientific causes.
That formula was brought to America by the IP that embodied the fad’s final form, The Walking Dead. Everybody remembers that show, which started out as a slick Frank Darabont-run production but degenerated into abject wokeslop by the end.
There’s another piece of the puzzle, and astute readers will have already seen the Death Cult‘s fingerprints at the crime scene.
So, what sociological force drove the zombie apocalypse phenomenon?
The fad’s roots in the horror genre tell us the impetus was fear. But fear of what?
That’s the blank which the whole body of zombie fiction fills in.
What’s scary about zombies – apocalyptic zombie hordes in particular?
- They look basically familiar but with easy to identify, distinctive differences. I.e., they’re you, but not you. That contradiction messes with people’s heads on a primal level.
- Chief among those differences is a near-total inability to be reasoned, bargained, or negotiated with. Zombies want what they want, and they won’t be deterred from their goal.
- Even worse, what zombies want is to consume you, your family, and your whole civilization. In large enough numbers, they are indeed an apocalyptic force.
- Worse yet, zombies can be anyone. Sure, the initial batch that just dug themselves out of their graves are pretty easy to spot. But if your friend gets bitten, you may not realize what he’s become until it’s too late.
What then, do zombies represent?
You could argue that they’re manifestations of the fear of Western civilization ending.
And that’s fair. It also explains why the zombie apocalypse was the first ubiquitous entertainment sensation after Cultural Ground Zero. People sensed that our artistic capital was used up, so the only thing people could come together over was the mutual observation that everything was falling apart.
But that’s a major symptom, not the root cause.
The zombies might have been stand-ins for third-world invaders, collapsing social trust, and younger generations’ rejection of tradition. But then what was the underlying ritual/chemical/virus?
It was a force that encompassed all dyscivic outcomes, so it is the sum of all errors and the sum of all fears.
The answer is Modernism and its disastrous consequences.
Stop to think about it, and you’ll see that the zombie is the perfect avatar of the Modernist.
Succumbing to the apocalypse vector frees him to indulge forbidden urges, but at the cost of his humanity.
For decades, Modernist heretics promised us that a bright, sexy utopia was just around the corner. All we had to do was change one little part of the Church’s Tradition.
Then another.
And another …
Cultural Ground Zero was when people started to realize that there would be no shiny earthly paradise. Instead, they’d sold their inheritance for antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis and hobo camps.
Of course the real zombie outbreak would take the form of a heresy. It’s right there in the “apocalypse” keyword.
“Apocalypse” means “unveiling”.
A lot of folks saw their true selves in those movies and despaired.
But there’s always time to turn back and embrace the Traditions the West abandoned in our hubris.
It’s tricky, though. Because Christ will forgive any sin but despair, because despair is the refusal to accept that mercy is possible.
So most people are stuck in this downward spiral, and the rest of us are along for the ride.
Until reality slaps the sociological zombies so hard they come back to their senses.
Pray that day isn’t far off.
And arm yourself with the knowledge to live your faith in the chaotic times ahead.
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