Zombie, Slow Down!

Fast zombies are not scary. Strong zombies are not scary. Smart zombies are not scary.

Give me the classic zombie. Vacant stare. Groaning. Above all - slow. What is it that people think we're supposed to be scared of, within the zombie concept? It isn't the fearsome individual physical capabilities of the zombie horde! Otherwise, we'd have horror movies about people being overrun by Olympic athletes.

Jeez.

The horror of a zombie outbreak is what you could become. You could become one of them. The more deteriorated, the more unhuman, the further from you yourself that they are...the more alien they are. The more horrific the idea of joining them becomes. That horror consists in the thought of becoming something so completely, revoltingly other, something as far from the self you know - the reasoning, caring, thinking human being that you are - as far from that as it is possible to picture yourself becoming. To know that your own body would continue on, that your own eyes would continue staring out - but in the service of an inhuman, insatiable, mindless hunger for murder and flesh!

The gap is what's important.

As you close the gap between what a zombie is cabable of and what a human can do...the quicker, the more capable, the more comparable to a human level of function the zombie becomes, the less scary becoming one seems.

And the horror of the concept is what's eviscerated.

Because what you could potentially become...well, it doesn't seem all that bad now! Hell, there are even movies where the zombies are able to learn, coordinate, develop and cultivate intellect! What is there to be afraid of anymore? It's just another alternative lifestyle (apart from the "life-" part). Plenty of Goth kids might volunteer to get bitten, at that point. Witness what has become of vampires.

These modern horror directors, with their "super-zombies" - vaulting and racing after the humans with pro-athlete zeal - shit, what's wrong with becoming one of THOSE? That corpse goes faster than I do! That's a damn upgrade!

I mean, sure, the cannibalism part might seem a bit off-putting. But a little dietary peccadillo like that hardly rises to the level of real, soul-jarring horror. Nothing compared to the horror of being taken over, being made over into something totally alien, something totally inhuman, something utterly abhorrent. Something clumsy and slow. Something that doesn't even know how to use a doorknob, for sake's sake.

Now that's scary.