Diary Of The Dead (Or What The Ruddy Fuck Has Happened to Zombie Movies?)

A zombie movie should be a pretty easy one to write. Basically, the dead come to life, take over the world, and a rag bag bunch of misfits frantically try to survive in increasingly impossible conditions. You don't have to let anyone reach the end of the final reel, if you don't want to - the nihilism of the zombie movie means there is nothing wrong with killing everyone in the cast. You don't even have to explain why the dead are returning to life - rage filled monkeys, killer viruses, satellites getting too close to the earth - the average zombie fan doesn't give a flying fuck. Explanations are needless exposition before the gut ripping begins.

But something odd seems to have happened to zombie movies recently. For some reason, those making the movies now seem to feel a need to make the movie far more complicated than it actually needs to be. Zombie movies seem not just to have jumped the shark, but rather have jumped the shark, then made friends with it before losing an arm wrestling game to the shark in some tacky bar somewhere.

George A. Romero's (the very king of the zombie movies, natch) Diary of the Dead is a good example. The script is just fucking crap. For example, there is the English film professor - a drunk, lonely old man who is constantly on the look out for another beer, at the same time as being cynical about just about everything in an apocaylptic scenario that really doesn't require anymore negativity. He went to Eton (of course), is able to fence (as every English gentleman can) and is a dab hand at archery (like that Robin Hood fella). At one stage he takes a book from a shelf in a library, opens it and says "A Tale Of Two Cities! A first edition! 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times'." (probably the latter, given the cannibalistic zombies munching their way across the population, prof). The script is that corny - and our lecturer friend is not the least convincing character.

But it is not the corniness of the script that bothers me - shite lines and poorly drawn characters are par for the course in a zombie movie. It is rather the heavy handed moralising that does my head in. For example, the last scene of the movie sees two red neck twats tie a female zombie to the branch of a tree. By her pony tail. And then shoot in her in the face with a shotgun. So all that is left of her is a forehead. And two still twitching eyes. Which would be fine for a horror movie, if it wasn't for the terrible voice over, explaining exactly what is happening. And how awful if it is. Pointing out that the rednecks are being bastards. Except, of course, they are shooting a undead killer. The awful moral of the film - that people, are you know, bad when society collapses and no-one has to obey the movie - is forced down your throat like the letters of the day in an edition of Sesame Street. PEOPLE ARE BAD, shouts the film. PEOPLE CAN BE REALLY BAD, it goes on. HAVE YOU NOT NOTICED THAT PEOPLE CAN BE BAD? Then it bangs on and on, still shreiking PEOPLE ARE BAD! Until you wish you had gone to see Juno or something.

But Diary of the Dead is not alone in the new trend of zombie movies trying to flesh out their run time with needless complexity. The Zombie Diaries (yes, as similar to Diary of the Dead as it sounds, right down to the deeply unconvincing reasons for the characters filming absolutely everything at the bastard end of the bastard world) doesn't see the zombie apocalypse as a scary enough scenario. No, the idea of shambling monsters taking over the world and stalking you to rip out your intestines, is not enough. Oh no, we need to throw a couple of serial sex killers into the mix as well. Because then, and only then, will this zombie fuelled world become truly terrifying. Just zombies? *Meh*. Too cosy. Zombies plus serial killers? Now that's scary!

And The Stink of Flesh - a film so awful that I wanted to wash in bleach after watching it - doesn't just have zombies (one of whom looks oddly like Dennis Potter), but also co-joined twins, the rape of a zombie, paedophiles and lots of unconvincing sex amongst really, really ugly people. Again, the story about a world infested by dead cannibals is not scary enough. The film makers needs to throw in a whole bag of random shite to make their film more scary, and at the same time make it completely unwatchable.

The premise is simple - the world ends, owing to something horrific. The standard zombie movie is in fact no different from The Day of the Triffids. It can be scary - if you make it simple. However, if you throw in lots of crap, it becomes, well, crap.

So let's have another great zombie movie - something like 28 Days Later. Simple, terrifying. And let's try to avoid what would be the nadir of the zombie genre - a film that contains both an Amish zombie killer and a man-eating clown. Hang on, we've just had that film. Congratulations, George A. Romero. You've made the worst film in the fucking genre you fucking created.