All We Wanna Do Is Overanalyze Your Brains

Lately, playing far too much Left 4 Dead and rereading Stephen King's Danse Macabre (not, mind you, at the same time; it's hard to process prose while shooting digital zombies in the face), I've been inspired to get back into my old hobby, Putting Completely Unwarranted Amounts Of Thought Into Things. (Maybe someday I'll post about Owl's Unified Post-Apocalyptic Theory of Indie Rock.)

Look at the difference between the "classic" zombie movie and today's popular zombie movie/video game/etc. The first obvious difference is the speed. Old zombies used to shuffle at you, slow and decrepit and yet completely unavoidable. They were terrifying because they were inevitable: you might be able to outrun one, but eventually the horde would get you. Nowadays, shuffling zombies just don't do it for us. Modern zombies are fast zombies. They come out of nowhere, and when you think you're safe because there's a fence or a boarded-up window between you, you find out they can climb and smash through the boards. They're terrifying because you can never see them coming.

So clearly, slow zombies are the Cold War and fast zombies are terrorists!

Honestly, horror movies always - usually subconsciously - relate to the real-life horrors present in the nation when they're made. That's part of why a movie that was scary 20 years ago may not be as frightening today - beyond the question of special effects, there's the simple fact that we are not the same people as the moviegoers of 20 years ago were. Our collective subconscious has changed. There are and were lots of other things present in the symbolic layers of zombie films (example 1: many of the classics came out in the late '60s and the '70s, when the zombies themselves may have symbolized the assimilation and "rot" setting in as the counter-culture kids grew up and joined suburbia; example 2: modern "fast zombies" are often caused by a mutated strain of a virus - usually rabies - which is both scientifically plausible [a necessity for suspension of disbelief among today's nitpicking public] and provides a convenient bad guy - usually the rabies is being mutated on purpose in a government-funded lab, making our own government ultimately the enemy).

Anyway, back to the subject: Slow zombies are the Cold War's threat of nuclear apocalypse, a death you could see coming a long way off but ultimately can't avoid at all. Fast zombies are terrorists, a threat that comes just when you least expect it. The end.

Zombina & the Skeletones - Nobody Likes You When You're Dead (website)
Tilly and the Wall - Nights of the Living Dead (website)
The Horrorpops - Walk Like a Zombie (myspace)