Borak Borak: The Walking Dead

The movie was over, the lights came up, and the expression of the person beside me said it all. His eyes dormant, his slack mouth displaying a shock of the “the-what-the-hell-did-we-just-see” variety. The post-movie discussion, often buzzing around the mamak tables, was unusually silent as we both seethed over two wasted hours. We had just seen 30 Days Of Night.

For a movie that had topped the US box office for weeks, 30 Days Of Night was for many, the last straw in regarding box office figures as some barometer for taste. This gripe is nothing new—ever since learning that Godzilla was the number three grossing film of 1998, I'd learn enough to stay away from a film’s “chart position” (and any other Matthew Broderick movie post-Election). Vox populi, it seemed to me, has the same sense for good movies as Eddie Murphy does for comedy.

I had, however, been waiting for a movie like 30 Days of Night to come out—it was the kind of movie that sparked in me the passionate love-hate relationship we all have with movies. It reminded me how post-movie discussions can sometimes sound like old-time lovers who still discover something new, good or bad, about their partners. After years of watching movies, you'd think you know better than to watch something like this. But no, no one can resist a good zombie/vampire flick. “I slept through it,” my colleague said the day after, “I had to walk out of there or I felt I would've gotten dumber.”

Here's the point: most of those I knew 30 Days of Night talk as if they were conned, but I doubt there were many amongst thousands who didn't know what they were getting into. The zombie movie genre is a such a well-worn brand that there's no excuse to think that 30 Days would be any different, incorporating such cliches as: 

1. The working-class Joe in sleepy suburbia thrown deep into extraodinary circumstances. Anyone who proclaims to be upper-middle class (e.g. “Screw Manuel, he's just the servant!”) is slain in the first hour.

2. At least one member (usually one-half of a couple in love) of the surviving group is bitten and then “turned”.

3. A zombie baby. To proclaim that the director is an extreme bad-ass who holds nothing sacred.

4. A sweeping aerial shot of the massive carnage and screaming as massacre takes over “the world” (i.e. The United States of America).

5. A school bus/tractor/utilitarian vehicle converted into a zombie-decapitating machine. Eventually destroyed by kamikaze driver who crashes/explodes into a zombie horde to save others.

Now, I don't proclaim to be an expert in zombie movies. My reference list is woefully short—I hadn't seen Re-Animator, as one friend suggested as the best zombie movie ever—but I have seen enough to suggest that zombie/vampire plots are recycled beyond spoof. Though the script has been tweaked, rehashed, and transferred to post-apocalyptic times, you still have to chop the damn head off to kill it. (Don’t zombies evolve?) It has been through its satirical phase (thanks, Shawn of The Dead), which is often a signifier that the genre has degenerated into a mass in-joke.

Occasionally, however, you do find something different, like Resident Evil: Extinction, which brought the best zombie twist of the 21st century: Milla Jovovich, the hottest thing to hold two parangs, playing a zombie slayer with psychic powers.  Not that RE: Extinction was anywhere near being a great zombie movie—in fact, stripped of Milla, the movie is appaling. So, with all these things going against the genre, the big question is: why do  we keep going back to see them?

If it's one thing pop-movie fans (me including) want, it's unoriginality. Like it or not, we are creatures of habit—from the buzz of lining up in a blockbuster queue, to the traditional popcorn 'n' Coke combos, to the  expectations of a having a build-up, climax, and resolution—most of us if not all want our movie experiences homogenised. The alternative, of course, is the “art-house” movie, otherwise known as the less-famous, twice-removed, unwanted relative of the box-office hit. I know it as the date-killer.

But all this talk about expectations eventually leads to one question: on what exactly do we base our expectations? After asking around, I realised that those expectations inevitably lead back to the first zombie film we ever watched. For me, that would be Zack Snyder's Dawn Of The Dead—there's nothing like the first sight of brain-splatter to shock the mind into believing that this is the best thing to happen to the cinemas. (Apart from the first bra-less boob jiggle shot.) And as with most early traumatic experiences, it's a high bar to set, which is why every subsequent zombie flick, despite all our expectations that it will be better than the first, can only disappoint. It's a downward spiral from there, son. 

Not that this any of this rant will stop me from watching I Am Legend. I just won't piss and moan about how I was cheated and wasted my time, and neither should you. It's a zombie flick, after all.
 

John Lim plans to write on the perfect date movie next month. Send him your suggestions of the best and worst romcoms to his Facebook account, and he'll watch every one of them.