I am perhaps the greatest fan of zombie apocalypse media you will ever come across, and the impending 28 Years Later theatrical release has me literally and figuratively quaking in my leather boots. From The Walking Dead (a bangin’ comic book series whose TV adaptation takes a hilarious nosedive around season five yet somehow continues for six more seasons and countless spin-offs), to White Zombie (released in 1932 and widely regarded as one of the first zombie films), from Zombieland (classic Hollywood dark comedy material featuring Bill Murray, need I say more), to One Cut of the Dead (a mind-bending Japanese zombie film within a zombie film within a zombie film) and Ravenous (an atmospheric Quebecois art film which was just unsettling enough to be memorable). As you may imagine, I have a few hundred more recommendations of the like. 

There’s something about an impending apocalypse that just gets filmmakers, and the audience, going. I’ve always thought that it was the representation of humanity at its lowest and the ensuing terrible acts spelling our collective descent to living hell, interspersed with just enough hope and morality to let us identify with the good guys. It’s the inevitable horde of infinite, true-neutral undead marching ever closer to our intrepid heroes. And don’t forget; there are always some bad guys to show us that the greatest evil all along was our fellow man—very Sartre-esque, if you ask me.

These staples of the genre come together to create captivating worlds in which violence is king and all must bow before it. Gore takes precedence in many flicks; in others, suspense. Our imaginations can run wild with whatever little world-building we’re given. Often, the only thing that matters about the world is that it has ended, and the only thing that matters about the people who used to live there is that they don’t anymore. 

Unfortunately for me, the very things that make the genre compelling are also the things that can make certain projects seem woefully low-budget, out of their depth, and formulaic. The attempted subversions of the genre fall flat when they treat themselves as unique—for example, the introduction of a big bad that’s bigger and badder than the impending zombie doom has been done only a million times, or the poignant tale of a good guy who is driven mad by his impossible circumstances and ends up becoming the very thing he swore to destroy, or the hero’s journey ending in self-sacrifice in the service of hope for the human race (yes I’m looking at you, theatrical release version of I Am Legend (and yes, I am aware they are technically vampires, I just don’t care)).

Moreover, zombie films tend to be victims of poor writing, acting and low budgets, like many other horror and slasher films, especially those depicting the end of days. None of these I particularly mind on their own, but it is the coalescence of all these factors that marks many of these films for disaster (don’t be like Undead, an Australian low-budget zombie flick that somehow introduces aliens into the mix). Indie films become claustrophobic, single-set pieces that fail both to encompass the extent of the worldwide tragedy and even to create a compelling narrative in such a small space (some do this well, for example, the zombie-adjacent infection film It Comes at Night which uses one set to its advantage). Those that are most successful, in my humble opinion, lean into their shortcomings rather than away from them, without attempting to do too much. But these are diamond needles in rough haystacks which number few and far between. 

So why do they keep making these films, and why do I keep watching them, even if I know most of them will be awful and I’ll spend the next several weeks of my life complaining to my friends about the death of the world’s best (my favourite) media genre? Because every so often a film is released which does one of two things: it brings something different to the table, or it does the classic thing very, very well. Rightly or wrongly, I am tremendously, frothing-at-the-mouth-zombie-style excited for 28 Years Later which is shaping up to be one such movie that will tide me over for a few years of awful pseudo-remakes until the next good one.