Speaker 1: Warning, Today's episode contains spoilers for the twenty eight Later franchise,
Speaker 1: both twenty eight days Later and it's sequel twenty eight
Speaker 1: weeks later.
Speaker 2: I just like twenty eight later, though, that's all I
Speaker 2: call it. Twenty eight guys, twenty eight Later, twenty eight
Speaker 2: l NFE.
Speaker 1: Hello, it is Jason Concepcion and I'm mersday Night and
Speaker 1: welcome back to x ray Vision of the podcast where
Speaker 1: we dive deep. It's your favorite shows, movies, comics and
Speaker 1: pop culture coming to you from ir Heart Podcast, where
Speaker 1: we'll bring you three episodes a week every Tuesday, Thursday
Speaker 1: or Friday.
Speaker 2: In today's episode, as we hinted in the spoiler zone,
Speaker 2: we're not going into the alock today.
Speaker 3: We're going into the quarantine zone.
Speaker 2: Recapping twenty days later, the honestly radical zombie hit that
Speaker 2: Dan fated the genre and it's rather successful sequel twenty
Speaker 2: eight weeks later, which Carmen will.
Speaker 3: Tell you is her favorite of the two.
Speaker 2: And then we are going to have the Zomnibus.
Speaker 3: Jason is digging deep into zombie law.
Speaker 2: What do zombies represent in our society and how have
Speaker 2: they changed over the years, and how does that tie
Speaker 2: into the twenty.
Speaker 3: Eight years weeks and soon to be a months. No,
Speaker 3: those three will work together the twenty eight L franchise.
Speaker 3: How do they tie in? You will find out, But
Speaker 3: first let's talk about twenty eight days later.
Speaker 1: Okay, Rosie, take us through to twenty eight L movies,
Speaker 1: okaying out as we prepare for twenty eight years later.
Speaker 1: And I think it's only right and proper that you
Speaker 1: do this as this is said in your home Yes,
Speaker 1: I land down your home country's going to.
Speaker 2: Be giving you some some British insights, some hints.
Speaker 3: At what what you may be seeing and how the
Speaker 3: movies were made.
Speaker 2: Also, Jason, first let me quickly ask you, do you
Speaker 2: remember the first time you watched this movie?
Speaker 1: For sure, I saw it. I saw it in the
Speaker 1: movie theater.
Speaker 3: M hmm.
Speaker 1: I think I was aware that it was dimly aware
Speaker 1: that it was a zombie film, but it just looked
Speaker 1: more like a dystopian, you know, Fall of Society kind
Speaker 1: of film, and I was like, I gotta go see it.
Speaker 1: I saw it, and I was blown away. It really
Speaker 1: stuck with me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's one of definitely one of those movies where
Speaker 2: I think at the time it felt essentially like revolutionary.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's.
Speaker 2: One of it feels so different because it was shot
Speaker 2: it's mostly on mini DV cameras. The new movie, as
Speaker 2: many people have talked about, is going to be shot
Speaker 2: predominantly on iPhones and that we've seen some crazy iPhone
Speaker 2: rigs that Danny has.
Speaker 1: Been creating, these sixty rigs that like shoot a character
Speaker 1: from almost a full semi circle in front of them.
Speaker 1: It's pretty insane. Yeah, And the mini DV tech is
Speaker 1: very interesting because that was basically consumer level technology, like
Speaker 1: not thought of as like a pro sin camera exactly,
Speaker 1: and it gives you this very grainy, very textured look
Speaker 1: that I think is it's weirdly divisive. Now. I've seen
Speaker 1: people talk about it when when watching the film on
Speaker 1: you know, twenty twenty five television say why does this
Speaker 1: movie look like shit? I have to say, like, at
Speaker 1: the time, on the big screen, it felt more real
Speaker 1: because of the mini DV. It felt authentic and almost
Speaker 1: more documentarian.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, I think it felt like that kind of
Speaker 2: shaky cam but pre Jason Bourne. And it was very
Speaker 2: horror and also obviously our biggest zombie movies up until
Speaker 2: this point, and zombie kind of of.
Speaker 3: Media in general.
Speaker 2: Are the Sam Rami movies and those were obviously made
Speaker 2: on especially Evil Dead.
Speaker 3: Oh no, yeah, sorry, we have the Georgi ra Merra.
Speaker 2: Movies obviously beautiful, Night of the Living Dead, everything else.
Speaker 3: Then we have Sam Raimi's Evil Dead and those both.
Speaker 2: Movies were made with a low budget, with you know,
Speaker 2: limited technology, limited money. So this continues that trend, honestly,
Speaker 2: and as we will get into the sequels, continue the
Speaker 2: trend of kind of then expanding out that world in
Speaker 2: that budget. But yes, twenty eight days later, let us begin,
Speaker 2: in classic British fashion, twenty eight days later begins thanks
Speaker 2: to the horrific reality of animal rights activists, something that
Speaker 2: for some reason British people just like really get pissed
Speaker 2: off about. There's a lot of them, there's a lot
Speaker 2: of bit's interesting. Yeah, there's a lot of animal testing
Speaker 2: in England, so definitely this is kind of a leftover
Speaker 2: of that kind of There was a lot of anti
Speaker 2: nuclear protests in England, learn a lot of direct action
Speaker 2: groups in the eighties and nineties who were breaking into
Speaker 2: animal testing facilities.
Speaker 3: So I thought that was.
Speaker 2: A really funny kind of time capsule moment. And when
Speaker 2: that very direct action group breaks into a testing facility.
Speaker 2: They accidentally unleash the rage virus on the world thanks
Speaker 2: to as far as I could tell, a chimpanzee who
Speaker 2: has been forced to watch videos of riots, violence and
Speaker 2: cars being set on fire.
Speaker 3: He's really going.
Speaker 2: Through it, yes, that poor chimpanzee. And they do try
Speaker 2: to warn him, they say, hey, come on, guys, this
Speaker 2: guy's got the rage virus, but she doesn't listen. She's
Speaker 2: got to let him free, and so the virus begins
Speaker 2: and it's.
Speaker 3: Not going well.
Speaker 2: But we don't learn very much about that until twenty
Speaker 2: eight days later. Wink Wink, Silly and Murphy's bike courier,
Speaker 2: Jim an that's a very London job as well to
Speaker 2: be a bike career.
Speaker 3: Jim wakes up in.
Speaker 2: A deserted hospital on the bank of the River Thames
Speaker 2: and takes a now iconic and still very impressive, impressive
Speaker 2: empty walk for like fifteen minutes runtime through a deserted
Speaker 2: London and the abandoned kind of landmarks like Big Ben
Speaker 2: and the Houses of Parliament.
Speaker 3: And Oxford Tree.
Speaker 2: It's unbelievable to kind of see what they were able
Speaker 2: to do.
Speaker 1: It's really really impressive. If you watch the director commentary
Speaker 1: or have written any interviews about this.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Boyle talks about how they did it. They had to
Speaker 1: collect these shots over the course of several weeks at
Speaker 1: very early in the morning, mostly weekends. We would be
Speaker 1: the least traffic, and they would just kind of hold
Speaker 1: up whatever traffic there was, so silly and Murphy could
Speaker 1: kind of walk across frame. They'd get the shot with
Speaker 1: nothing in the background. Crazy, then the world would start
Speaker 1: up again. Really really impressive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think about that a lot.
Speaker 2: And also like this was this was actually movie was
Speaker 2: made pre nine to eleven, so.
Speaker 1: They during the film. Yeah, so they were.
Speaker 2: Able They were basically able to shut down Whitehall to
Speaker 2: They bought a bus that they turned over in front
Speaker 2: of Downing Street, which is where the Prime Minister lives,
Speaker 2: and they were able to just quickly do it, get
Speaker 2: the shot in thirty minutes of him walking past, get
Speaker 2: it away. It's like really kind of crazy, almost like
Speaker 2: gorilla filmmaking, like Werner Herzog does, but in a kind
Speaker 2: of genre space. Interestingly, as well as we get more
Speaker 2: into like the infected and the notion of the monsters
Speaker 2: in this movie, they are also not your average zombies
Speaker 2: at this point, so as the viewer and Jim learn
Speaker 2: that there has been kind of a complete societal collapse
Speaker 2: thanks to a number of very fun world building techniques
Speaker 2: like these kind of missing flyers and torn newspapers, and
Speaker 2: Jim ends up being attacked by the first human rage
Speaker 2: virus victim that we meet, and he's terrifying and at
Speaker 2: the time completely original. Kind of monsters were not originally
Speaker 2: intended to be zombies. It was kind of this new
Speaker 2: idea of a rage infection. But Danny Boyle and Alex Garland,
Speaker 2: whatever they wished was kind of superseded by the fact
Speaker 2: that this would reinvigorate the entire zombie movie and also
Speaker 2: zombie media genre, because after this, you get the Walking
Speaker 2: Dead comic, you get the Walking Dead TV show. Zombies
Speaker 2: become the genre, you get the Dawn of the Dead remake.
Speaker 2: A great movie, and it's a really interesting thing because.
Speaker 3: This movie is, as you said, you know, it.
Speaker 2: Does not necessarily look like the most high definition kind
Speaker 2: of like restart of a full subgenre, but there was
Speaker 2: something raw and authentic and scary, and before we got
Speaker 2: on MIC, we were actually talking about, you know, movies
Speaker 2: that scared us and blow which project came up. And
Speaker 2: I think this is in that same space where if
Speaker 2: you were young enough, you could have watched this and
Speaker 2: been like, oh my god, like is this real?
Speaker 3: You know, is this real? Like that thing? Yeah.
Speaker 2: So Jim he is about to be killed by the infected.
Speaker 2: That would be the end of his story, but he
Speaker 2: is saved by two survivors, Nomi Harris, who, by the way,
Speaker 2: this movie has like an unbelievable cast list truly h
Speaker 2: Selena and Noah Huntley's Mark, who squirrel him away inside
Speaker 2: a shop on the now destroyed local high street. Soon,
Speaker 2: Jim convinces them to go on a mission to his parents'
Speaker 2: house in Deptford, which, by the way, is like really
Speaker 2: fast stupid mission.
Speaker 1: Wow, So how far? How far is that like walking?
Speaker 3: Okay, So if you're on like.
Speaker 2: Waterloo Bridge area and you're going to like South London,
Speaker 2: I mean walking, you're talking about like two or three
Speaker 2: hours like minimum, and I would think actually longer. He
Speaker 2: gets there quickly realizes that his parents killed themselves. Rather
Speaker 2: than kind of face down the rat the infected, we see.
Speaker 3: Him watch a home video of them. Again.
Speaker 2: I feel like this is a very bleak kind of
Speaker 2: depressing take on zombies that would go on to be
Speaker 2: very influential on like what we see in The Walking
Speaker 2: Dead and what we see about the way that humans
Speaker 2: react to these horrible crises, and the kind of fact
Speaker 2: that a lot of times humans are the more dangerous factor.
Speaker 2: During an attack on the house by the infected, Mark
Speaker 2: is killed rip Mark, and he's killed by Selena because
Speaker 2: he gets wounded, and she is just like fuck you,
Speaker 2: shoots him in the head and.
Speaker 1: She just goes crazy on him. Well I think she does.
Speaker 2: She not.
Speaker 1: I think she hacks him up with him hicks him up.
Speaker 3: With it incredible even better, That's that's I'm used to.
Speaker 3: I'm so used to American zombies now that she becomes
Speaker 3: the most.
Speaker 1: I mean, that is a heartbreaking moment where he says
Speaker 1: like he's like, hold on, just get wait a second,
Speaker 1: let me see if I turn because he's got the bite,
Speaker 1: it's bleeding on his arm.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he was protecting them too.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: She just like hacks him up ruthlessly and then turns
Speaker 2: to Gym and says you are next, like, I will
Speaker 2: do that shit if you are big, you no question.
Speaker 2: And now the roving survival party is down to two.
Speaker 2: Not for long though, as they are joined by two
Speaker 2: more survivors, Brendan Gleeson's Frank again unbelievable and young British
Speaker 2: actor and my former roommate Meghan Burns. Yes, this was Hannah.
Speaker 1: Hannah.
Speaker 3: Hannah was my roommate.
Speaker 1: She was also a very cool a musician.
Speaker 3: Now she she.
Speaker 2: Was a very cool musician called Betty Curse, and I
Speaker 2: met her through my lovely friend Charlotte. And now Meghan
Speaker 2: is actually a band manager in.
Speaker 3: Her own right. But yes, she's very young in this movie.
Speaker 2: He was handpicked by Danny Boyle and has like a
Speaker 2: really kind of scary and cool role as it rolls
Speaker 2: out for a young actor.
Speaker 3: Because things get really messed up from here.
Speaker 2: Frank has heard a broadcast from Manchester claiming that there's
Speaker 2: some military barracks and they're safe and there's potential cure,
Speaker 2: and so they decide that they're gonna head to Manchester
Speaker 2: again very far. I feel like this is one of
Speaker 2: the things that I would encourage in a zombie apocalypse
Speaker 2: and in a zombie in general. I was like, don't
Speaker 2: be trying to like go really far. It's gonna end up.
Speaker 2: You're gonna end up in trouble, but hilariously, their journey
Speaker 2: is actually not that bad. And again another really famous
Speaker 2: sequence there is where we get the drive through the
Speaker 2: moat that empty motorways England, which are just like essentially
Speaker 2: like our highways, but we don't have them in every city.
Speaker 2: They kind of join. They're like the veins of England
Speaker 2: that join all the cities together. And these were TV
Speaker 2: shots that were again those kind of like pause the traffic,
Speaker 2: get what we can move on, and that is some
Speaker 2: of the most impressive.
Speaker 1: London to Manchester, how long?
Speaker 3: Oh baby? On a train because I don't drive.
Speaker 2: Oh a drive is like a solid four hour drive okay, and.
Speaker 3: The train it's like I've done, like it's been like
Speaker 3: three hours.
Speaker 2: I would say, Holy, you could drive in in maybe
Speaker 2: like three hours if you were driving really fast and
Speaker 2: there was no traffic. And somehow they do manage to
Speaker 2: make it to Manchester in one piece in Frank's taxi.
Speaker 2: But once they arrive there, the barracks seem empty and
Speaker 2: we get this. Really I love this moment because it's
Speaker 2: so movie ish, but it's also like you can so
Speaker 2: imagine it happening.
Speaker 3: Frank right, Frank sees it at barrack's empty. He's pissed off.
Speaker 3: He starts kicking the wall and.
Speaker 2: Like a blood a drop of blood from an infected
Speaker 2: who's like on the wall, like falls.
Speaker 3: Into his eye.
Speaker 1: Oh that's so crazy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm like, it seems like it would never happen.
Speaker 2: But if you've ever got like a splinter under your
Speaker 2: nail or something that should never have been there, you're like, okay,
Speaker 2: I could, I could see it. And a last Frank,
Speaker 2: he's dead because you can't survive. You've gotta be killed.
Speaker 2: That's the only option. And now without Frank, who was
Speaker 2: you know, kind of in the know that something strange
Speaker 2: was going on, Jim, Selena and Hannah are left at
Speaker 2: the whims of Christopher Eggleston, another fantastic British actor, as
Speaker 2: Mayor Major Henry West, who has been broadcasting his claims
Speaker 2: of a cure in a safe place in order to
Speaker 2: lure women to the barracks so that in his greater
Speaker 2: plan he can basically be like, I need to repopulate
Speaker 2: the country. But really he means like you're going to
Speaker 2: be my sexual slaves.
Speaker 1: For mean some type exactly.
Speaker 2: Very like he must spread his seed and obviously that's terrifying.
Speaker 2: I remember this reveal feeling so like shocking, yes when
Speaker 2: I first watched it, and I think something that's really
Speaker 2: interesting about it is that it leans very heavily into
Speaker 2: something that, as I kind of mentioned earlier, the Walking
Speaker 2: Dead and these zombie projects that World War was he
Speaker 2: would kind of lean into, which is, yeah, the zombies
Speaker 2: are bad, but the humans are oftentimes worse because they
Speaker 2: can control their behavior, but they.
Speaker 3: Choose not to.
Speaker 2: So Jim is obviously less than happy about that, and
Speaker 2: along with another soldier who agrees that who disagrees and
Speaker 2: won't go along with the plan, is sentenced to death.
Speaker 2: But thanks to an argument between some of the kind
Speaker 2: of ever fracturing group of soldiers who are like incredibly hungry,
Speaker 2: who are under the watchful eye of this insane man,
Speaker 2: Jim is able to escape and we get this moment again,
Speaker 2: another moment that I think about a lot, which is
Speaker 2: he sees like the trail of a plane in the
Speaker 2: sky and it kind of reinvigorates him to remember that, like,
Speaker 2: if there's a plane in the sky, the world must
Speaker 2: be going on somewhere, and he is able to essentially
Speaker 2: lure away West Freeze an infected soldier that they'd been
Speaker 2: keeping prisoner, which I always think, like, okay, so they
Speaker 2: were experimenting on the prisoner, so maybe at some point
Speaker 2: there was some truth to the idea of the trying
Speaker 2: to find the cure. But then they realize, like, we
Speaker 2: don't know what we're doing, so let's just like assault
Speaker 2: some women because that's fun and there's no laws, and
Speaker 2: they get into the car make at their escape, and
Speaker 2: I really this moment is such a classic horror moment,
Speaker 2: which I think is really funny because the rest of
Speaker 2: the movie is very unconventional. But essentially we end up
Speaker 2: in a situation where West is actually hiding in the
Speaker 2: backseat of the car, so you think that they're safely away,
Speaker 2: and then he pops up shoots Jim. But then Nomi
Speaker 2: Harris's Selena makes a great move where she kind of
Speaker 2: throws the car back by breaking it and flings him
Speaker 2: through the back window, and he's he's killed. Allah, you
Speaker 2: know the t Rex and Jurassic Park. Now the infected
Speaker 2: is helping and he's going.
Speaker 3: To become the next meal.
Speaker 2: And hilariously, watching this movie, I was surprised by how
Speaker 2: much of it I kind of did remember or what
Speaker 2: really stuck with me. But the final sequence I think
Speaker 2: is the thing that to me really defines this movie,
Speaker 2: which is another twenty eight days later, we joined Jim's
Speaker 2: He's recovering Selena and Hannah and they are in a
Speaker 2: small cottage. Yeah, and it's kind of this very cozy
Speaker 2: English like off tract.
Speaker 3: You I would say, like the Cotswolds or something. But
Speaker 3: I also, like, I am from London, so I have.
Speaker 2: No idea, like I am not good at geography, even
Speaker 2: British geography. But you know, somewhere I would say, like
Speaker 2: somewhere that a rich person would probably have like a
Speaker 2: weekend home, and every time Nabors visit there, the locals
Speaker 2: would be like Callipiste off because the locals are probably
Speaker 2: like miners and shit. And they kind of see a
Speaker 2: plane fly over and we see them unfurl this huge
Speaker 2: banner that says hello, and the pilot seems to spot them,
Speaker 2: offering up like hopeful ending for what would become, you know,
Speaker 2: one of the bleakest kind of big budget smash.
Speaker 3: It's the movie was made for you know, very.
Speaker 2: Very very very minimal amount of money and ended up
Speaker 2: going on to make in England. It made you know,
Speaker 2: it was relatively successful. The movie was cost eight million dollars.
Speaker 2: In England it made six million, which is pretty good.
Speaker 2: But in America it made forty five million, and soon
Speaker 2: you know it would go on to make over eighty
Speaker 2: million dollars. So yeah, that's twenty eight days later. It's
Speaker 2: a very good movie. And it hasn't been streaming for
Speaker 2: a very long time, but very long series of rights issues.
Speaker 2: But it is currently streaming for free with ads on
Speaker 2: Pluto TV, and you can buy it or download it
Speaker 2: on demand wherever if you are in it's so inclined.
Speaker 2: Twenty eight weeks later though, it's streaming on.
Speaker 1: Hulu and Cormond's favorite.
Speaker 2: It's her favorite. She thinks it's really good, okay, so
Speaker 2: twenty eight weeks late. This is very interesting because they
Speaker 2: choose to begin during the original outbreak in a small
Speaker 2: English town this time, I would say more like, I
Speaker 2: don't know, like Burnley or somewhere.
Speaker 3: I think my family's from up north, so I'm guessing.
Speaker 2: But where Robert Carlile's Don and his wife Alice are
Speaker 2: surviving alongside some neighbors. It's kind of a fractured survival.
Speaker 2: But interestingly, something that they continue. Here is kind of
Speaker 2: this establishment of like an old school technology, the way
Speaker 2: that you know, videotapes, stuff like that. We see that
Speaker 2: in twenty eight days later as Jim watches the video
Speaker 2: of his family. We've seen it in the trailers for
Speaker 2: twenty eight years later where the kids are watching videos
Speaker 2: of the Teletubbies.
Speaker 3: So I think that kind of low.
Speaker 2: Technology is being brought back in the new one, which
Speaker 2: I really love.
Speaker 3: But their kind.
Speaker 2: Of very shaky safety is put at risk when a
Speaker 2: young born he starts knocking at the door. His wife
Speaker 2: cannot ignore the young boy because they have children and
Speaker 2: they don't know where they are.
Speaker 3: And Don is like, please.
Speaker 2: Don't let in this kid, like we know how this
Speaker 2: is gonna go down. The kid gets let in, the
Speaker 2: infected take over the house, and soon I have to
Speaker 2: say Don not a good husband, because he leaves his
Speaker 2: wife like he just wither quickness without the quickness, like
Speaker 2: she's eaten in the house.
Speaker 1: There is at least some true anguish that crosses his face,
Speaker 1: but he hesitates for like half a second and then
Speaker 1: he is like sorry, babe, yeah out yeah.
Speaker 2: He's like he's like I can't do it, My love,
Speaker 2: like it's not happening for me.
Speaker 1: I'm gone for the boat.
Speaker 3: I gotta go for the boat.
Speaker 2: And then I think that we get something here that
Speaker 2: is a really interesting Again, these are movies that I
Speaker 2: think are very shaped by the technology of the time
Speaker 2: and also the way that you could utilize technology that
Speaker 2: was just becoming accessible to kind of lower budget filmmakers,
Speaker 2: because we get that instantly recognizable drone shot where even
Speaker 2: if you haven't seen this movie, you probably have seen
Speaker 2: Robert kyle Le running across the grass the kind of
Speaker 2: British countryside to.
Speaker 3: Get to the boat.
Speaker 2: He's got a drone shot following him. It's super surreal
Speaker 2: and shaky, and yes, he gets to the boat and
Speaker 2: he embarks on a new journey and we'll join him
Speaker 2: there twenty eight weeks later, Bae.
Speaker 3: Imagine that. I love the way that they use.
Speaker 2: The actual timing in the movies is never endingly hilarious
Speaker 2: to me. So in a classic Hollywood sequel move I
Speaker 2: feel Here. The film introduces us to an England that
Speaker 2: has essentially been taken over by NATO after the seeming
Speaker 2: starvation death of the effect infected where they couldn't eat enough,
Speaker 2: they've started to die out, and the US government is
Speaker 2: now essentially trying to rebuild Britain along with its NATO partners,
Speaker 2: and keep the rest of the world safe, keep the
Speaker 2: infected inside Britain if there are any left, and work
Speaker 2: out stuff like.
Speaker 3: What happens to their dead bodies and.
Speaker 2: How you know, basically classic science stuff, and something I
Speaker 2: didn't get to mention in my recap of the first
Speaker 2: movie that I forgot twenty eight days later does fit
Speaker 2: in to something that we have been calling the Jurassic
Speaker 2: Park Coralie, which is like, look, man, if you think
Speaker 2: they say that the first one is a science fiction movie,
Speaker 2: but in the first five minutes they basically explained the science,
Speaker 2: so maybe it is. This one is definitely more interested
Speaker 2: in that wider post apocalyptic science fiction horror kind of
Speaker 2: mash up. The tone is very different, and in the
Speaker 2: NATO safe zone we meet Don's kids, Tammy and Andy,
Speaker 2: who have somehow survived. Good for them, young Imagen Poots
Speaker 2: here she is in many movies that you will see
Speaker 2: and only seems to be getting into more now, another
Speaker 2: great British actress, and they end up Tammy and Andy
Speaker 2: somehow being the first children let into this zone that
Speaker 2: they call District one.
Speaker 3: Rose Byrne doing a very funny American accent here like
Speaker 3: she's she's too.
Speaker 2: It's just there's something about it that sounds like very
Speaker 2: like I'm an American doing a military like serious voice.
Speaker 2: And she's very angry because she's like, wait a minute,
Speaker 2: why are their kids here?
Speaker 3: We don't know what to do with kids.
Speaker 2: We don't know how kids are going to respond to
Speaker 2: what we're doing here.
Speaker 3: And this time I can tell you where they are
Speaker 3: because they're in the Isle of Dogs, and.
Speaker 2: They've essentially militarized that the Isle of Dogs to turn
Speaker 2: it into a little kind of safe zone slash. Honestly, yeah,
Speaker 2: in prison, because that is.
Speaker 1: This is the answer to iraq anxieties. And oh the
Speaker 1: movie that's that's explicitly about how bad America and its
Speaker 1: Western allies are at occupy places.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and how dangerous those occupations are. And soon, in
Speaker 2: an incredible twist, they are reunited with their dad.
Speaker 3: Love that that's a that's a.
Speaker 2: Dons Mac and I don't know how Don ended up there,
Speaker 2: but good for him. And he immediately lies about how
Speaker 2: the mom died, which I think was like painfully real
Speaker 2: for anyone who maybe has a dad who's not the
Speaker 2: most truthful person. And we then kind of start to
Speaker 2: meet the different characters here we have uh the incredible Again,
Speaker 2: this is another movie with just an unbelievable cast. Like
Speaker 2: you have Harold Pernu as a sniper, you have obviously
Speaker 2: Rose Burnt, we have Jeremy I know who we meet here,
Speaker 2: Rener Hives stand up, They're they're here, They're I'm sure
Speaker 2: he would have loved to be in the sequel, but
Speaker 2: I will be intro I don't think that's happening for him.
Speaker 3: Tammy and Andy as they.
Speaker 2: Are children and they were out of the country during
Speaker 2: the original outbreak, which makes me think they don't really
Speaker 2: understand how serious this is. They decide that they are
Speaker 2: just gonna sneak out. They'll fun adventure, have some good
Speaker 2: always a good. I feel like again, if children can
Speaker 2: sneak out of your like DMZ kind of like protection Zone,
Speaker 2: probably not doing very well.
Speaker 1: No, No, I don't think you're a very high security
Speaker 1: of the area.
Speaker 2: I think this again speaks to me about like kind
Speaker 2: of the the trappings of this do feel like a
Speaker 2: bigger Hollywood sequel. You add the kids, just like you
Speaker 2: add kids you can make it a PG thirteen, you know,
Speaker 2: or make it if it's in America, it can still
Speaker 2: be r rated. But now there are kids that people
Speaker 2: can relate to. It's very terminated to in that way,
Speaker 2: and they have a very child life like.
Speaker 3: Reason for leaving.
Speaker 2: They want to find a picture of their mom and
Speaker 2: they want to get family pictures from their home. So
Speaker 2: they head home. But bad news because their mom, Alice,
Speaker 2: she's not dead. Whoops, whoops, Sorry, dad.
Speaker 1: You you got some explaining to do.
Speaker 3: Inside their house they.
Speaker 2: Saw saw die. She's delirious and just like completely out
Speaker 2: of it. And just then sadly the Jeremy Renner has
Speaker 2: snitched on them. They bring them all back to District
Speaker 2: one and their mom is quarantined and tested, and we
Speaker 2: find out, in a you know, hopeful for the society,
Speaker 2: not maybe so great for Alice, that she seems to
Speaker 2: be an asymptomatic carrier of the rage virus. Now, I
Speaker 2: think it's very interesting because I don't think in most
Speaker 2: zombie movies that when they just don't tend to use
Speaker 2: that kind of language that we can understand, you know
Speaker 2: what being an asymptomatic carrier of like a cold is
Speaker 2: it's not this kind of.
Speaker 3: Ellie all in all out immunity.
Speaker 2: There is a kind of granular nature to how they
Speaker 2: represent the zombie apocalypse here that does feel real, that
Speaker 2: does feel more like something that could happen. And obviously
Speaker 2: that comes from the way that Doyle and I mean
Speaker 2: Boil and Garland approached it in the first movie and
Speaker 2: introduced us to this notion that to them wasn't even
Speaker 2: a zombie movie, you know, it was this race virus.
Speaker 2: But of course this kind of running zombies, these violent zombies,
Speaker 2: would take over pop culture for the next like fifteen years. Incredibly,
Speaker 2: I now understand why Tammy and Andy are not making
Speaker 2: good decisions because Don decides that he is is gonna
Speaker 2: go on an unauthorized visit to Alice bad idea, begging
Speaker 2: her to forgive him.
Speaker 3: Then he kisses her.
Speaker 2: Come on, come on, guy, like, look around you crazy?
Speaker 2: How do you think that this infection is spread by
Speaker 2: bodily fluids?
Speaker 3: My friend, that's why they bite people.
Speaker 2: He immediately gets infected then brutally kills her, which like,
Speaker 2: what the fuck, bro, this is I didn't realize, I think,
Speaker 2: and you know, Calm and actually touched on this before
Speaker 2: we came on, but I didn't realize actually that under
Speaker 2: until I rewatched this for this recap under the trappings
Speaker 2: of kind of the bigger budget, bigger scope horror movie,
Speaker 2: it's still very much has this kind of thread of
Speaker 2: like male violence, just like the first.
Speaker 1: Movie for sure, and even the way they shoot, even
Speaker 1: the way they shoot Carlisle during the attack when he
Speaker 1: kills her, they show is they close up in on
Speaker 1: his face. It's very quick and they do it several times,
Speaker 1: and he's got like this most like demonic, you know,
Speaker 1: infected kind of rage grin like on his face. But
Speaker 1: they really don't do that. It's not previous movie at
Speaker 1: all or with any of the other zombies that much
Speaker 1: like during an attack like person make it intimate and
Speaker 1: personal like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and even and also it makes you feel like, well,
Speaker 2: he could have just done it, because we get that
Speaker 2: moment at the end of twenty eight days later when
Speaker 2: Jim comes and saves Selena and Hannah. He kills the
Speaker 2: soldiers so violently that at first Selena they don't know, yeah,
Speaker 2: he is infected, And we get that moment here where
Speaker 2: even though we knowed On is infected because he kissed
Speaker 2: Alice you see a violence in him, and a recognizable
Speaker 2: kind of male violence that feels very real. And just
Speaker 2: like every fucking zombie man who gets bitten and doesn't
Speaker 2: tell people and goes crazy, he creates like essentially massive outbreak.
Speaker 2: He's killing refugees, he's killing military people. Then there every
Speaker 2: single person he bites, you know. I think the general
Speaker 2: understanding in fandom is like, if somebody was a zombie
Speaker 2: and everybody bit too people, it would only take like
Speaker 2: seven days for the world to be overtaken. And we
Speaker 2: see this happen in a microcosm here in District one.
Speaker 3: And while Doyle refuses, good job Jeremy Renner.
Speaker 2: To kill all the refugees and people who are still
Speaker 2: trying to survive, which is what the government and his
Speaker 2: bosses want, that does start to happen.
Speaker 3: Chaos ensues.
Speaker 2: I think you made a brilliant point, actually, Jason, that
Speaker 2: I hadn't even really kind of thought of.
Speaker 3: This is definitely.
Speaker 2: A statement on kind of the idea of over militarized occupations.
Speaker 2: And it's very interesting with that read because we start
Speaker 2: to see as Doyle is trying to help people escape, innocent,
Speaker 2: uninfected people other for snipers, are just shooting at them,
Speaker 2: and they end up killing these family members, and Doyle
Speaker 2: ends up deciding he's going to shoot his own men
Speaker 2: in order to try and save them, and it ends
Speaker 2: up being Scarlet who saved Tammy and Andy because she
Speaker 2: considered that perhaps there is a world where they continue
Speaker 2: the genetic possibilities of finding a cure and another survivor, Sam,
Speaker 2: and then we get this horrifying moment, which again I think,
Speaker 2: to me, I.
Speaker 3: Just think is like.
Speaker 2: A very ahead of its time moment, and honestly, I
Speaker 2: feel like, now if somebody did this in a movie,
Speaker 2: they'd be like just just true political. But they essentially
Speaker 2: have the air force firebomb the entire sub district one,
Speaker 2: which was where there were survivors, where there was research,
Speaker 2: where there were animals, there was a potential of a
Speaker 2: new society there. But it doesn't work, and we end
Speaker 2: up with Flynn Harl Perrino flies as helicopter to Regent's Park,
Speaker 2: very famous, kind of near to one of the sixth forms.
Speaker 2: I tried to go to. Beautiful park, gorgeous, beautiful, lovely
Speaker 2: flowers and arrangements, and it's just one of those brilliant
Speaker 2: green spaces that we get in London. I spend a
Speaker 2: lot of time hanging out there as a teenager, and
Speaker 2: he's like, broa, you gotta infect the others. Bro, Like
Speaker 2: you gotta leave them, don't worry about it, Like it's
Speaker 2: just me and you. Bro's to the end, and unfortunately
Speaker 2: the infected people are on their tail. Sam tries to
Speaker 2: get onto the flying helicopter and this is the stuff
Speaker 2: I really remember from this movie.
Speaker 3: I think maybe I was kind of too young when
Speaker 3: it came out.
Speaker 2: I was so into the first twenty eight Days Later movie,
Speaker 2: and I think my young mat was kind of like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's so Hollywood, it's so big budget, like it doesn't
Speaker 2: really understand the origins of the movie. But I'm realizing
Speaker 2: now it's not from rewatching, is not really the case.
Speaker 2: And also it's just that some of the set pieces
Speaker 2: are so crazy, like this one where you have Flynn
Speaker 2: like using his fucking helicopter rotor blades, yeah, to try
Speaker 2: and like thin out the zombie crowd, which is so crazy.
Speaker 2: And then another iconic English place here if you watch
Speaker 2: any kind of sports, even NFL has had matches here.
Speaker 2: But obviously if you are a fan of European soccer,
Speaker 2: British soccer football as we call it, Wembley Stadium. That's
Speaker 2: where he's like, come here, and Doyle's like, I've got
Speaker 2: to save these guys.
Speaker 3: I've got to do it. I can't do it.
Speaker 2: They then break into I love like the specificity of
Speaker 2: this and for some reason, this is like a very
Speaker 2: popular classic British car, but it's like a Volvo V seventy,
Speaker 2: which is like a really funny, like basically a hatchback
Speaker 2: that like an executive would drive. I don't know why,
Speaker 2: but English people they love Volvos. They hide in the
Speaker 2: car because there has been like a terrifying gas that
Speaker 2: has been released to kill the infected. Again, great commentary
Speaker 2: here on how population doesn't matter and it's all about
Speaker 2: control of the virus and the danger, which honestly, as
Speaker 2: the movie ends, we realize is probably what they should
Speaker 2: have been focusing on. So I'm not gonna like complain
Speaker 2: too much about the government, because the zombie apocalypse does
Speaker 2: end up spreading in this movie RP to Europe. But yeah,
Speaker 2: then we get really fun sequence where they go into
Speaker 2: the tube, the very famous London underground been there for
Speaker 2: like one hundred and fifty years, incredible public transport system.
Speaker 2: I love it can get you across London in like
Speaker 2: twenty five to fifty minutes, depending on where you're going.
Speaker 2: But what's really cool is we do have a few
Speaker 2: different movies in London set in the underground. There's a
Speaker 2: great movie Creeps Out Under that but in this sequence
Speaker 2: they use night vision to go through the tunnels and.
Speaker 3: It's really creepy. It's really unique.
Speaker 2: And then well I hate it and kind of forgot
Speaker 2: is that Donn is still on their tail.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's still going after this.
Speaker 2: There's something something maybe pheromones or DNA.
Speaker 1: It like in the scene where he murders his wife,
Speaker 1: even though he is infected at that moment, there's always
Speaker 1: this implication again with the way they shoot him, with
Speaker 1: the way they shoot him when he's running through the crowd,
Speaker 1: that there's something of his previous consciousness, his emotions that remains,
Speaker 1: and that is animating him, and that is keeping him
Speaker 1: following them.
Speaker 2: And I think like, something that's really interesting about that
Speaker 2: is the notion of kind of like.
Speaker 3: Muscle memory, body memory, like who this guy was.
Speaker 2: Because also when I got to the end of the
Speaker 2: movie and I saw that don was still chasing them
Speaker 2: was still public. I recalled the beginning, I went back
Speaker 2: and rewatched it, and when Alice is really worried about
Speaker 2: the kids and kind of like doesn't know where they
Speaker 2: are and everything, he really shrugs it off in a
Speaker 2: way that I thought was him trying to reassure her,
Speaker 2: but actually I realized now is he probably.
Speaker 3: Doesn't care in the same way that she does.
Speaker 2: So they end up going to They go through the tunnels,
Speaker 2: Don is chasing them, and luckily Tammy Don and Alice's
Speaker 2: daughter ends up killing her dad, which feels very pointed
Speaker 2: in the read the Toxic Masculinity read, and she ends up.
Speaker 3: Being the hero.
Speaker 2: They get to Wembley Stadium, they meet Flynn, who flies
Speaker 2: them to France. Seems like maybe there's something good that
Speaker 2: could happen it. I feel like they shouldn't have immediately
Speaker 2: gone to another country.
Speaker 3: Probably should have.
Speaker 2: Just like gone to many of the rural places in
Speaker 2: England that they could have, you know.
Speaker 1: Bene small islands like yeah, also not.
Speaker 3: Even just that, but like England is like America.
Speaker 2: There's loads of it that's inhabited, but also there's like
Speaker 2: tons of it that isn't.
Speaker 3: So I just feel like you could have gone to.
Speaker 2: Like the moors or somewhere, you know, gone to like
Speaker 2: a beach and tried to hide out there.
Speaker 3: Something.
Speaker 2: I feel like going to France was irresponsible, as we
Speaker 2: will learn it was because twenty eight days later, a
Speaker 2: French boye whui whui. That's why it's are the French?
Speaker 2: I know guys me uh, yes, that's it. I was
Speaker 2: gonna say, may I am i rosie, but that's not
Speaker 2: that's not French. But yes, they are asking to help.
Speaker 2: They are asking for the rape. You can hear them
Speaker 2: in the radio from Flint's abandoned helicopter and ut ooh,
Speaker 2: a group of infected people busts from a Paris metro
Speaker 2: station and in one of the most hilarious in my opinion,
Speaker 2: like feels like maybe a kind of like maybe an
Speaker 2: exec cast for this or maybe they were like, oh,
Speaker 2: let's see if we can make it happen the same
Speaker 2: where we did in England. We see the effected in
Speaker 2: front of the Eiffel Tower. They were like, what's French?
Speaker 2: They were like see that, yeah, And that is interestingly,
Speaker 2: where we leave the franchise for you know, many many years,
Speaker 2: almost twenty years, twenty eight weeks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, twelmost year later.
Speaker 3: It was two thousand and seven, and that movie was.
Speaker 2: Actually while we had Boyle and Garland on as producers.
Speaker 2: It was directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, and it was
Speaker 2: like there was a screenplay with multiple writers on it,
Speaker 2: including Rowan, Joffy, Hemry Kue Lopez Levine, and Jesus Olomo.
Speaker 2: And it's interesting because I do think that it feels
Speaker 2: very different and I feel like at the time it
Speaker 2: did make a lot of money, but I don't know
Speaker 2: if it necessarily people received it in the right way.
Speaker 2: But I think rewatching it, it's really interesting and I'm
Speaker 2: not surprised at all that ended up being Carmen's favorite.
Speaker 2: She's got lots of great some great tastes.
Speaker 1: It is a good one. It's underrated, and I think
Speaker 1: for me, I think that the escape from the house
Speaker 1: in the opening m hm, Don's like as he runs
Speaker 1: out of the house and he's looking back over his
Speaker 1: shoulder and he's kind of like running in this small
Speaker 1: valley like between like at the bottom of like a hill,
Speaker 1: and you see he looks to his left and on
Speaker 1: the hill above him, you see infected start coming over
Speaker 1: the hill down towards him. I think that's, for me,
Speaker 1: the scariest moment in the series, when you're just like it,
Speaker 1: because you really it's hard for me to fully blame
Speaker 1: him for you know, he's mindlessly scared, like yeah.
Speaker 2: The opening, you're meant to think like, Okay, I could
Speaker 2: see how I could do that too.
Speaker 1: I couldn't see how I could do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But I also think something that I love is
Speaker 2: when he's first running away.
Speaker 3: Something else this movie does.
Speaker 2: Well is like go because when he first runs away,
Speaker 2: he's looking behind him and there's only like seven zombies
Speaker 2: and it doesn't look that scary, but you still got
Speaker 2: to run away from those seven zombies like you only
Speaker 2: need one to bite you. You know. Yeah, I think
Speaker 2: it's such an interesting movie, and I'm very I'm intrigued
Speaker 2: to see if on revisiting and if they can deliver
Speaker 2: with twenty eight years later, this could go down as
Speaker 2: like a very legendary horror franchise, horror trilogy.
Speaker 3: I think, Yeah, it's.
Speaker 1: One of my favorites, and it's like everyone else, it
Speaker 1: reinviuriated my love of zombies. That was always a big
Speaker 1: zombie guy. I saw Romero's Dawn of the Dead when
Speaker 1: I was too young to see it on VHS. Of course,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, the helicopter blade scene from twenty
Speaker 1: eight weeks is I think a clear homage to the
Speaker 1: helicopter partial decapitation from Dawn of the Dead. Slow motions obviously,
Speaker 1: and just a great movie. Great movie, fast zombies. It
Speaker 1: really ups the for me, It up the fear. Fat Well,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break and we be right back
Speaker 1: with our zombie omnimous x omnibous omnibus. And we're back
Speaker 1: with the Zomnibus. Welcome to today's edition of the Zomnibus,
Speaker 1: where Loura, analysis and understanding come together. Today we're talking
Speaker 1: about zombies.
Speaker 3: Zombies.
Speaker 1: Zombies arose from tragedy. The concept initially emerged in Haiti
Speaker 1: under the slave regime of French colonial rule. As Mike
Speaker 1: Mariano writes in a excellent zombie historiography in The Atlantic Quote,
Speaker 1: the zombie archetype, as it appeared in Haiti and mirrored
Speaker 1: the inhumanity that existed there from sixteen twenty five to
Speaker 1: eighteen hundred, was a projection of the African slaves relentless
Speaker 1: misery in subjugation and slave people in Haiti believed that
Speaker 1: dying might free their souls to go back to their homeland,
Speaker 1: but those who took their own lives were doomed instead
Speaker 1: to wander the plantations eternally trapped in their bodies soulless
Speaker 1: zombies no e z MBIs condemned to a nightmare existence
Speaker 1: of perpetual servitude. After Haiti's revolution in eighteen oh four,
Speaker 1: the zombie myth entered general local lore, where it evolved.
Speaker 1: There was the addition of bokhors, who were these kind
Speaker 1: of sorcerers who could reanimate people to do their bidding again.
Speaker 1: The slave metaphor is central to this idea, and there
Speaker 1: were several points over the course of the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: where Haiti, though free, it seemed like it might have
Speaker 1: slavery reimposed upon it, and the folkloreic zombies of this
Speaker 1: period were, as Marianna writes, quote, a more fractured representation
Speaker 1: of the anxieties of slavery, mixed as they were with
Speaker 1: the cult trappings of sorcerers and necromancy. Even then, the
Speaker 1: zombies roots in the horrors of slavery were already facing dilution.
Speaker 1: Fast forward to the twentieth century. The Zombie then enters
Speaker 1: Western popular culture with American writer William B. Seabrooks and
Speaker 1: sensationalistic nineteen twenty nine non fiction book of The Magic Island.
Speaker 1: This story introduced readers to Haiti's voodoo zombie, which Seabrook
Speaker 1: described as a corpse revived by witchcraft, shuffling along obediently
Speaker 1: with quote eyes staring, unfocused and unseeing, as if truly undead.
Speaker 1: The book described seabrooks travels to Haiti during the US
Speaker 1: occupation of the island and his encounters with various elements
Speaker 1: of Haitian culture and voodoo practice, all of which is
Speaker 1: presented within a pretty racist context, and casting the Haitian
Speaker 1: people as this kind of other world, otherworldly, primitive, exotic
Speaker 1: culture and society. In the chapter dead Men Working in
Speaker 1: the Kingfield, Seabrook describes for the first time in literature,
Speaker 1: the zombie these undead laborers animated by strange magic. The
Speaker 1: book was a sensation. A review in the January ninth,
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty nine edition of The Brooklyn Eagle reads, and
Speaker 1: I think it's at least for the reviews I've read
Speaker 1: that we're contemporary. Is this is pretty pretty much part
Speaker 1: of the course. The Magic Island reeks with sacrificial blood,
Speaker 1: the odor of cadavers, the sinister breath of witchcraft, the
Speaker 1: horrendous exaltation of unholy terrors slaked in the steaming passions
Speaker 1: of human animals. It is a grim story of voodooism.
Speaker 1: This The Magic Island, filled with sickening mummeries, repulsive rituals,
Speaker 1: orgiastic expiations and propitations, and armed with an uncanny ability
Speaker 1: to woo the reader into his own experiences. Seabrook has
Speaker 1: again created a book that commands attention, although it has
Speaker 1: no other literary distinction than to be extraordinarily interesting. The
Speaker 1: first zombie film appeared shortly thereafter. It was White Zombie
Speaker 1: from nineteen thirty two, starring the legend Bella Lagosi as
Speaker 1: a voodoo master in Haiti turning people into zombie slaves.
Speaker 1: It leaned heavily on seabrooks account and played on White
Speaker 1: America's racist fears of black people and their general antipathy
Speaker 1: towards Africans in general. In these early depictions, you know,
Speaker 1: zombies weren't out to eat you. They were still this
Speaker 1: kind of broad based metaphor for enslavement. During World War
Speaker 1: Two and into the Cold War, the zombies cross pollinated
Speaker 1: with that era's anxieties about war, about authoritarianism, and about
Speaker 1: nuclear destruction. In King of the Zombies nineteen forty one,
Speaker 1: a foreign spy uses voodoo zombies to extract military secrets.
Speaker 1: And in the horror comedy Revenge of the Zombies, which
Speaker 1: is the first horror film that actually presumed that audiences
Speaker 1: understood what a zombie was like. There was no non
Speaker 1: a zombie origins story, no exposition dump. This features an
Speaker 1: evil doctor raising an army of Nazi undead, and in
Speaker 1: the b picture Creature with the Adam Brain nineteen fifty five,
Speaker 1: a rogue scientist reanimates corpses with nuclear energy to his bidding.
Speaker 1: As Zachary Krokett and Javier Zarachina write in the Vox
Speaker 1: article how the zombie represents America's deepest fears. After Hiroshima
Speaker 1: and the start of the Soviet nuclear test quote, American
Speaker 1: fears of nuclear radiation and communism began to manifest in zombies.
Speaker 1: These were America's fears made real about the dead and
Speaker 1: the incarnet, about armies of soulist killing machines, about atomic
Speaker 1: fallout about being enslaved by communism and Red Scare, brainwashing, etc.
Speaker 1: But through this entire period, zombies basically remained very niche
Speaker 1: until a Pittsburgh area independent filmmaker burst upon the scene.
Speaker 1: This is Georgia Merrow with his nineteen sixty eight cinema
Speaker 1: classic Night of the Living Dead. Interestingly, Romero originally didn't
Speaker 1: call his creature zombies on set. He called them ghoules
Speaker 1: because of his aversion to the original linkage of the
Speaker 1: term back to French slavery in Haiti. But his film's
Speaker 1: impact essentially reinvented horror and created the modern zombie template
Speaker 1: as we know it. His innovation, Romero's innovation was to
Speaker 1: kind of strip away all the supernatural voodoo and the
Speaker 1: sorcerers and all that stuff. Is very little in the
Speaker 1: way of actual explanation, kind of a vague there's like
Speaker 1: a vague hypothesis that it might be like space radiation
Speaker 1: or something. But the crucial innovation, and something Rosen and
Speaker 1: I talk about all the time, is that the enemy
Speaker 1: in Night of the Living Dead is not the zombies.
Speaker 1: It is us. It is people. The film's shockingly bleak
Speaker 1: ending shows Dwayne Jones the hero of the story, black protagonist,
Speaker 1: surviving the zombie apocalypse of that night, only to be
Speaker 1: mistaken for a ghoul and shot dead by a white posse,
Speaker 1: which I can only imagine resonated like a gut punch
Speaker 1: in the climate of nineteen sixty eight. As many have noted,
Speaker 1: Night premiered the same year that Martin Luther King Junior
Speaker 1: was assassinated and its finale black hero killed by trigger
Speaker 1: happy white militia felt ripped from the headlines. Night of
Speaker 1: the Living Dead pulsed with the anxieties of its era,
Speaker 1: civil unrest, violence, fragility of the social order, and perhaps
Speaker 1: most centrally, America's fascination with guns and with militia violence
Speaker 1: with extra legal violence. Dawn of the Dead from nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy eight, my personal favorite, traded the rural farmhouse for
Speaker 1: a shopping mall and a cutting critique of aria of
Speaker 1: American materialism and capitalism. Romero later explained that after Night
Speaker 1: became a surprise hit, he felt pressure to make the
Speaker 1: sequel that mattered, which is why it took a little while.
Speaker 1: Quote everybody was after me to make another one. I said,
Speaker 1: I don't want to just make it on the one.
Speaker 1: I have to have an idea, I have to have
Speaker 1: something to say, And it took ten years before inspiration
Speaker 1: finally struck. Ramiro visited one of Pennsylvania's first indoor malls
Speaker 1: and was struck by this spectacle of a consumer paradise. Quote.
Speaker 1: I saw the trucks coming in, bringing in everything you
Speaker 1: could ever possibly want. It just seemed like this temple
Speaker 1: to consumerism. The light went off and I thought, maybe
Speaker 1: I could do something with this, And man, does he
Speaker 1: ever do something with this. The movie opens with what
Speaker 1: I think is like the best twenty minutes maybe in
Speaker 1: a horror movie ever. It feels so real, you really
Speaker 1: feel society coming apart. It takes place in this local
Speaker 1: news studio where this news program is both covering the
Speaker 1: dissolution of the world under the weight of this zombie infection,
Speaker 1: but also is giving you this fantastically charming like exposition
Speaker 1: dump as this expert is like, the dead will rise,
Speaker 1: they will kill more, and those will rise and they
Speaker 1: will never stop coming. It's like you're just like, whoa,
Speaker 1: it gave you away. Yeah. And then, of course, much
Speaker 1: of the movie takes place as characters escape from the
Speaker 1: kind of small safe havens that they had put together
Speaker 1: as the as the weight of the zombie hordes kind
Speaker 1: of like break down these small havens. A small cast
Speaker 1: of characters flees to this shopping mall where they create
Speaker 1: a fortress and for a time, a utopia. There's the
Speaker 1: scene that stuck with me and that I think probably
Speaker 1: sticks with a lot of people because I saw this one.
Speaker 1: I was maybe ten or eleven was they first break
Speaker 1: into the mall and then they spend there's this montage
Speaker 1: of our heroes going having a grand ole time, going
Speaker 1: from store to store, taking clothes, taking different consumer electronics,
Speaker 1: filling up shopping carts with stuff over this kind of
Speaker 1: jaunty soundtrack music, and that really stuck with me. And
Speaker 1: of course it can't last. The utopia cannot last forever.
Speaker 1: The zombies get in. They start eating people, including a
Speaker 1: truly horrendous like intestine eating scene. But you know, by
Speaker 1: this point the genre and its template had been set.
Speaker 1: Through the eighties and nineties, zombies kind of shuffled along
Speaker 1: in pop culture with a varying degree of vitality. There
Speaker 1: were sequels Day of the Dead Return of the Living Dead,
Speaker 1: which by this point are starting to kind of revert
Speaker 1: to the more b movie origins.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, also there was a weird situation which allowed zombie
Speaker 2: movies to thrive, which was the proper trademarking of Night
Speaker 2: of the Living Dead was never done, which is why
Speaker 2: it's on every free streaming. It's why any studio, i mean,
Speaker 2: any distributor can put it out on DVD. It's why
Speaker 2: you can watch it on YouTube. It was never properly copyrighted,
Speaker 2: which means a lot of movies were able to come
Speaker 2: out and sound like they were connected Tonight of the
Speaker 2: Living Dead, but they were not necessarily officially connected, which
Speaker 2: I think is still one of the weirdest Hollywood kind
Speaker 2: of confusions that's ever happened.
Speaker 3: But yeah, and so it allowed that to be this
Speaker 3: kind of wave of rip offs.
Speaker 2: You know, fa sounds like they're connected, but they're not connected.
Speaker 2: And yeah, and there's still going on. I mean, there
Speaker 2: are still you can still find movies that seem like
Speaker 2: they are amer connected when they're not.
Speaker 1: Perhaps because of this inundation of the marketplace with zombie content,
Speaker 1: the eighties and nineties was kind of a sorry for
Speaker 1: this turn of phrase, was kind of a dead period
Speaker 1: for the zombie It was mostly kept alive through video games,
Speaker 1: most notably Capcom's nineteen ninety six Resident Evil, and that
Speaker 1: many many sequels, but it's a turnover the new millennium,
Speaker 1: the Zombie returned to bite us yet again. A trio
Speaker 1: of Landmark works ignite I did the revival, with Rosie's
Speaker 1: Homeland central to this. It first came a twenty eight
Speaker 1: Days Later from two thousand and two, Sean of the
Speaker 1: Dead from two thousand and four, and then Americans Can't
Speaker 1: let the English have all the fun the Walk and
Speaker 1: Dead comic, which debuted in two thousand and three twos
Speaker 1: and two to two thousand and four. Pretty crazy period
Speaker 1: crazy for the Zombie.
Speaker 2: Also really interesting because twenty eight Days Later is a
Speaker 2: complete reimagination to the point where Danny Boyle at first
Speaker 2: does kind of like Romero, doesn't think it's a zombie film,
Speaker 2: then Shan of the Dead, which instead goes back and
Speaker 2: introduces kind of like a mega social commentary comedy version
Speaker 2: that's very much in the screen mold of something that
Speaker 2: feels familiar and has loads of references, and you kind
Speaker 2: of have to be inundated in zombie law as we
Speaker 2: all are to understand it. But then you have The
Speaker 2: Walking Dead, which is so out of the range of
Speaker 2: what we understand by being a comic book and was
Speaker 2: at the time, and I'm sorry if I've told the
Speaker 2: story before, but I love it was so expected to
Speaker 2: be a flop. It was so underprinted. Image Comics that
Speaker 2: actually turned down Robert Kirkman's idea for The Walking Dead
Speaker 2: multiple times because they said, nobody cares about zombies, nobody
Speaker 2: wants to read a zombie comic. So he lied to
Speaker 2: them and he said, well, at certain point in the story,
Speaker 2: you're going to find out that really the zombies were
Speaker 2: sent by aliens and it's part of this kind of
Speaker 2: alien you know, invasion story.
Speaker 3: And Eric Stimson said.
Speaker 2: Okay, great, like you can make the Walking Dead, And
Speaker 2: so the first issue comes out and the second issue,
Speaker 2: and slowly they say to him, hey, when are the
Speaker 2: aliens coming? And then the book becomes such a big
Speaker 2: hit that he doesn't ever have to do it, so
Speaker 2: like he had to lie to get the comic made.
Speaker 2: But then that comic ended up completely changing the landscape
Speaker 2: and changing the way that we would see zombies. Bringing
Speaker 2: us back to that twenty eight days later, a style
Speaker 2: of kind of like a new way of telling the
Speaker 2: story and like, who are the real Walking Dead us
Speaker 2: or the zombies?
Speaker 4: Like that's a crazy three year hit though, and of course,
Speaker 4: as zombie stories had done previously, twenty eight days later,
Speaker 4: even Sean of the Dead and certainly The Walking Dead
Speaker 4: tapped into the anxieties of the era biocontagion, terrorism, protest,
Speaker 4: and social unrest, you know, stars had was emerging at
Speaker 4: the time the anthrax attacks had happened, and of course
Speaker 4: twenty eight days later it feels as if it predicts
Speaker 4: a lot of the kind of post nine to eleven
Speaker 4: cultural iconography. The wall with the pick of a missing.
Speaker 3: Which ironically was a coincidence.
Speaker 1: Coincidence completely before filmed before nine to eleven and all
Speaker 1: of that emerged.
Speaker 2: You talk about something here that I think is kind
Speaker 2: of interesting, and this is not you know, I'm sure
Speaker 2: somebody has written a great article about this, and I'll
Speaker 2: go find it afterwards. But also there is a level
Speaker 2: of just like the early zombies, Abell Legosti zombies, which
Speaker 2: were incredibly you know, very racist, the white zombie version
Speaker 2: of a zombie that if you actually think about it,
Speaker 2: the representation of this idea of like a community who's
Speaker 2: so filled with rage, and you'll never understand them, and
Speaker 2: they'll just destroy your country's kind of.
Speaker 3: There's a racist reading of it, Sure you could.
Speaker 2: There's definitely some interesting stuff to be tapped into there
Speaker 2: as well. Yeah, I mean it's so interesting just how
Speaker 2: much it is a time capsule of exactly what was
Speaker 2: going on right then.
Speaker 1: I think the most successful and long running, certainly a
Speaker 1: zombie property of this or any era, has to be
Speaker 1: the adaptation of Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead, which began
Speaker 1: as an anti comic in two thousand and three, as
Speaker 1: Rosie said, and then debuted on AMC in twenty ten,
Speaker 1: quickly became a blockbuster and at least for me, became
Speaker 1: a you know, it added the element of I think
Speaker 1: it put the American soul front and center. This is
Speaker 1: a story in which, like a law enforcement officer is
Speaker 1: the main guy, you're dealing with regular people, school teachers
Speaker 1: who become these like local warlords. And it's a lot
Speaker 1: about the kind of core American love of guns and
Speaker 1: the thought, you know, experiment that I think many Americans
Speaker 1: play all the time, which is, okay, what happens when
Speaker 1: the shit pops off and I have to start shooting
Speaker 1: people and man the Walking Dead. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of it's long running, it it's endurance in the popular
Speaker 1: cultural imagination is because of this particular way. It has
Speaker 1: put its finger on something about the American psyche. But
Speaker 1: the rest of the world was also getting involved. Most
Speaker 1: only Asia there was Trained to Busan from twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: a Sang Ho's iconic, heartfelt, heart breaking zombie film that harnesses,
Speaker 1: you know, Korea's particular lens about class and capitalism. And
Speaker 1: it is a story about a workaholic businessman and his
Speaker 1: young daughter who end up on a train filled with
Speaker 1: zombies and have to deal with the zombies but also
Speaker 1: the kind of like craven ambitions of like regular humans.
Speaker 1: The director reflected in an interview quote, if in Trained
Speaker 1: to Busan, we say that selfishness spread like a virus.
Speaker 1: His zombies may be fast and ferocia, but the true
Speaker 1: villains of Training Bussan are human greed and cowardice. So
Speaker 1: what is it about the zombies that keeps us coming back?
Speaker 1: They're blank slate, They're versatile, they are the perfect every enemy,
Speaker 1: you know, like Nazis, which I think for certain nondiances
Speaker 1: are complex now because like people are are not sure
Speaker 1: if they're the bad guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, apparently so, And I will say reflectively, we see
Speaker 2: less stories right now about how Nazis are that evil
Speaker 2: catual villain and zombies this kind of more flexible. You
Speaker 2: can put whatever you want onto them, become that clean slate.
Speaker 2: Anyone can kill them without feeling guilty.
Speaker 1: Yes, they Aileen. They've been metaphors for everything from looters, rioters,
Speaker 1: rampant materialism in the way that they only consume and
Speaker 1: mindlessly consume this. Cultural critic James Parker observed, the zombie
Speaker 1: is quote old, reliable, outlasting even its sexier monster cousins,
Speaker 1: the humble ghoul. That quote rides the bestseller list and
Speaker 1: consumes the pop unconscious like no other. From Haitian sugar
Speaker 1: plantations to shopping malls the nineteen thirties B movies to
Speaker 1: presstch TV, the zombie has shambled and then run and
Speaker 1: then sprinked it all the way. Its evolution is the
Speaker 1: story of pop culture itself, always mutating cross pollen, I
Speaker 1: responding to our collective hopes and fears with a disgusting,
Speaker 1: rotten grin. Well, that's it for this episode. Next time
Speaker 1: on X ray Vision. We're getting you ready for Marvel's Ironheart.
Speaker 1: No Mit Education acquired few. That's it for this episode.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3: Bye x.
Speaker 1: Ray Vision is hosted by Jason Concepcion, I'm Rosy night
Speaker 1: and is a production of iHeart Podcast.
Speaker 2: Our executive producers a Joe Alminique and Aaron Kleman.
Speaker 1: Our supervising producer is Abu safar Ah.
Speaker 2: Produces a common Laurent Dean Jonathan and Bay Wack.
Speaker 1: A theme song is by Brian Vasquez with alternate theme
Speaker 1: songs by Aaron Kaufman.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to Soul Rubin, Chris Lord, Kenny Goodman and
Speaker 2: Heidi are Discord moderator