Comments on: An Essay On Zombies, and Then at the End There’s Some Rude Jokes About World War Z

By: Great zombie essay — Phil Tucker

Great zombie essay — Phil Tucker — Mon, 26 Aug 2013 18:21:39 +0000

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By: Tom Thornburg

Tom Thornburg — Tue, 16 Jul 2013 15:13:55 +0000

Love this piece. Agree completely about 28 Days Later. This film disintegrated when the zombies took Jerusalem. Everything afterwards just seemed like a race to end the film. When the plane crashed within walking distance of the WHO site in Cardiff my movie-going companion and I turned and laughed out loud to each other. Sigh.

By: B C

B C — Thu, 27 Jun 2013 22:47:25 +0000

There were some comedic elements that I don’t think were meant to be comedic, which was unfortunate: eg, the aggressive chomping + sound effects, and then the supposedly sinister chattering during the vault stand-off. Did you notice the hilariously abrupt editing job where they go from the crazed zombie chase to that women in the monitor room mundanely saying, “Ok, Gerry, let’s see where you’re at…” Only improved if there had been a literal screen wipe! It’s nice to know at the end of all things we’ll look like we’re in a cool Land’s End catalog shot.

By: Yours Truly

Yours Truly — Wed, 26 Jun 2013 23:21:02 +0000

Haven’t even heard of it! Thanks for the tip!

By: Jerem

Jerem — Wed, 26 Jun 2013 19:26:49 +0000

Have you seen In the Flesh on BBC America yet? It has a whole new perspective on how to treat the Zombie genre. I’m enjoying it thoroughly.

By: Yours Truly

Yours Truly — Tue, 25 Jun 2013 16:47:05 +0000

YES

I agree about The Road

By: Alex

Alex — Tue, 25 Jun 2013 06:02:44 +0000

My favorite zombie movie/book is The Road because there are no zombies, just TOTALLY FUCKED humans.

I’ve yet to see 28 Days Later, though I should, right?

By: ericka

ericka — Sat, 22 Jun 2013 08:39:43 +0000

Oh goodness, you really really need to read WWZ. I mean, like, stop whatever you are doing and sit down and read it. I barely recognize it as the source of this mostrosity (ha!) you here describe.

1. The very specific thing about Israel and the walls and the checkpoints, YES, that’s in the book. It’s as if you described some other undead-apocalypse movie and I would say, “Oh, they stole that thing about Israel from WWZ.”

2. I actually sat down here and typed out a long list of ways in which the book improves on your very specific criticisms, and then I reminded myself that I just told you to drop what you are doing and read it, and I don’t want to take away your enjoyment. I will just tell you instead that

3. I have a friend who works for the Foreign Service and she read WWZ when she first was going through Being A Diplomat 101 or whatever they call that, and because of the particularly awesome way that the book is written (AND because of its global focus), she said that she kept being tempted to say in seminars things like, “Welllllllllll, if fighting the global zombie epidemic has taught us anything, it’s that……” (Her telling me this was what made me want to read this book in the first place.)

4. Hey, remember how good it was reading The Passage for the first time?

By: Eileen

Eileen — Sat, 22 Jun 2013 04:06:16 +0000

That was fucking awesome. You need a book deal.

Also, I heard that the WWZ movie was v different from the novel because the novel is done from the POV of A Journalist (Journalist Brad Pitt? That seems off w ref to this synopsis) writing first-hand accounts etc. Obvs this doesn’t combat the things you find problematic, but it might be interesting to read the book & compare.