Cannibalism! The breakdown of civilization! Gross-out scenes of organ-munching undead.
Zombie-mania is upon us.
Flesh-eating hordes are on the loose. They can be killed only by having their brains destroyed or by incineration. And they’re not just a run-up to Halloween.
The Zombie Apocalypse has captured the popular culture, trumping vampires for the moment and leaving other goblins and ghouls in the dust.
After AMC’s “The Walking Dead” shattered basic cable ratings records last week, drawing 7 million viewers (4.8 million of them in the advertisers’ sweetspot, age 18-49) for the second-season premiere, zombie-mania took hold with new gusto.
Witness:
•A TV comedy based on the “Zombieland” movie is in the works at Fox.
•Seth Grahame-Smith’s 2009 book parody “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” is being made into a movie.
•Respected (ie. high-brow) novelist Colson Whitehead has written a zombie book, “Zone One.” (He calls his zombies “skels.” The overarching fear of the humans in his story is not that they will be eaten, but that they may already have become zombified.)
“The Walking Dead,” 7-8 p.m. Sundays on AMC, is compelling enough to some fans that a companion show, “Talking Dead,” hosted by comedian Chris Hardwicke, serves as a debriefing session following the show, at 8 p.m. on Sundays.
Clearly, zombies are very much with us. They have evolved since they first captured the imagination of writers and comic book artists. Zombies originally arose in African-Caribbean culture. They were conceived as brainless workers or slaves, arising out of voodoo folklore of Haiti. Bela Lugosi’s star turn in 1932’s “White Zombie,” about an evil white slave owner in Haiti whose sugar mills are worked by zombies, set the bar.
In more recent years, zombies morphed to represent the results of various biochemical or nuclear accidents, freaks created by science gone wrong. Nowadays, they are usually depicted as brain-eating lifeless creeps staggering ever forward in search of prey. And critics continue to search for allegories to explain their popularity — is there a racial undercurrent? Is the theme anti-robot, anti-technology? Or is it a reference to a self-replicating pandemic?
George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” (1968) is considered the touchstone for the modern zombie movie. By contrast, “The Walking Dead” seems more concerned with visual mayhem than storytelling or character development, more invested in conveying horror than drama.
“The Walking Dead” launched last year with County Sheriff Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) waking from a coma to find the world ravaged by a zombie apocalypse. A band of determined survivors begins a push toward the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, only to find that the CDC was no help (it was blown up in the end). This season, the survivors changed their destination to Fort Benning. Like that’ll work.
As new obstacles crop up, the level of gory violence seems to amp up, too. Unlike HBO’s “True Blood,” any traces of self-aware humor here are faint.
In what has become the “Walking Dead” season-premiere episode’s most-talked-about moment, two survivors worry that someone they love has been eaten by a zombie. They gut the zombie (to loud, squishy sound effects) and are relieved to discover a woodchuck inside.
Now they know! Does that count as comic relief?
AMC contends that “The Walking Dead” is “a survivalist story at its core.” Really, it’s a horror show, a fun romp for those who like to be scared silly, with less drama and more gore per square inch than any series on TV.
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com
