Zombies are stupid
There, I said it.
Ernest Hemingway was once quoted as saying, “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” In keeping with that spirit, I offer the following:
Zombies are stupid.
There, I said it. I can tolerate the odd brush with vampire movies from time to time, maybe even vampire stories. No, strike that. I simply don’t have the patience for vampires, in books or movies. But Zombies are completely off the table in any way, shape, or form. I simply don’t get how they could even exist, or why any Zombie story/film could last longer than 15 minutes.
Perhaps some background is needed. A quick check on Wikipedia, the speed bump of all human knowldege, came up with the following:
“A zombie is a mythological undead corporeal revenant created through the reanimation of a corpse. Zombies are most commonly found in horror and fantasy genre works. The term comes from Haitian folklore, in which a zombie is a dead body reanimated through various methods, most commonly magic. Modern depictions…involve methods such as carriers, radiation, mental diseases, vectors, pathogens, parasites or scientific accidents.”
Two thoughts here: first, that zombies are the stuff of voodoo legend. Second, the so-called modern depictions are the urtext of every bad science fiction movie ever made. Having noted that I will still persist in my belief that zombies are completely lame. Think about it: we have reanimated corpses which, having previously been completely dead (not to be confused with mostly dead), are usually partially decomposed for effect. Gangrened out mangled faces and limbs seem to be favorites of movie makers. These reanimated corpses then stumble around in a stiff hammered-college-student-on-spring-break kind of a way. And one more important note: they do it in slow motion. For me, this is where the wagon of adult fantasy breaks down under the baggage of seriously, are you kidding me?
It’s the slo-mo part that I can’t tolerate. The reanimated decomposing trolls lollygagging about like snails on a hot sidewalk. Common sense dictates that any zombie problem should be resolved quickly with a careening garbage truck, a grand piano pitched out of a second-floor window, or an anvil falling from the sky (beep, beep!). Face it, there aren’t more zombies than people. And if for some reason there were, you could just get the military to bomb them into oblivion. Problem solved.
I know what you’re thinking. Tim, get with the undead picture. A rash of movies over the last 20 years have upped the Zombie game to new heights. There’s even a movie with Brad Pitt where he saves the world. Besides, nowadays, Zombies move much faster—as fast as real live people. And they have command of any number of weapons, and are highly organized in their efforts to take out the rest humanity. To which I say, “that’s nice.”
Perhaps I’m missing the zombie romance here. Or maybe I lack vital bits of DNA required to make zombies or other horror movies like Friday the 13th irresistible, as they are to so many others. I should also mention that there are 12 movies in the Friday the 13th series as of the present. What are they waiting for? We need one more! Otherwise, I must have been born with the wrong genome to crave getting skeered in front of the big screen, especially in super slo-mo. I’d rather watch bowling. Now that shit is terrifying.
I will close by saying you can keep the zombies. I will opt for something kinder and gentler. Something more along the lines of a unicorn sliding down a rainbow. Unless, of course, it’s a zombie unicorn. Then all bets are off.
Zombies be gone!
Thanks for reading. Enjoy more posts about wine and other musings on my blog at timgaiser.com.
Learn about my books:
Message in the Bottle: A Guide to Tasting Wine
Strong Water: Tales of a Master Sommelier’s Life in Food, Wine, and Restaurants.