Preponderance of Zombies

Zombies do not interest me so much. I mean, the modern depiction of zombies. It's not to say stories with zombies do not interest me, as there are some movies that I have seen that are fairly good; but on a creature-creation aspect, they are not as interesting as vampires and witches.

Besides, there's just too many of them on TV right now. There are very few people who has never watched The Walking Dead. That's us.

from top clockwise: The Walking Dead,  Resident Evil, 28 Days Later, iZombie, Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland

Although I've enjoyed Resident Evil, 28 Days Later and World War Z, the interest lied mostly on the psychology and effects on the human condition, and of course, the fight scenes that ensued later.

Unlike romantic vampires and majestic witches, modern zombies lacked individuality which earns them no empathy. Most often, zombies are represented as mindless human shells with nothing in their heads but the instinct to eat.

One of the more surprising zombie movies I liked was Warm Bodies, another post-apocalyptic movie, that had sentient zombies. If it was marketed better, I would have seen it earlier. The posters and trailers felt Twilight-y.

In two weeks, iZombie will premiere in the Philippines. It's about a gorgeous but intelligent zombie that works in forensics, who helps solve crime by eating human innards (or was it brains) to see visions from the dead. It borrowed some elements of so many stories that it's ridiculous and brilliant.

Would I watch that? Probably not, even if it's based on an Eisner-nominated graphic novel. The title alone ruined it almost immediately. As much as I hate zombies, we like ours to be traditional.