I Love Sarah Jane

If you love zombie movies, I would definitely recommend this short directed by Spencer Susser, the man who directed Hesher, from 2010.

It's running on a lot of the same themes as 28 Days Later, and it's really fantastic. Enjoy!

We are all People, We are all Zombies

Zombies are pretty freaky. Physically, at first glance, they seem to be bloody corpses, but then they walk around like people. They are id-pleasing, brain-slurping monsters, but they look just like your parents (or your kid, depending on the flick). Beyond the realm of the bodily, zombies are also half-human in a much more intangible sense. They are scary because they are so incredibly cruel and destructive, with literally no thought about the significance of their actions. Simultaneously, they are enticing, because zombies do whatever they want to do (and they want to eat you), regardless of the boundaries set by society – and this is exactly what many of the viewers want, too. These creatures exist at the boarder between the human and the inhuman, which just so happens to be the street outside your humble home.

Considering this analysis, I think it’s clear that zombie movies like 28 Days Later (my personal favorite) have the potential to use this trope to highlight all the problems of human nature; to make people question what a zombie is, and am I one? Take the soldiers, for example, led by Major Henry West at an abandoned mansion in the British countryside. These guys are very real people: they’re physically fit, they don’t eat brains, and, above all, they are concerned about the future. As West explains to Jim, the group was lost in despair until he assured them that “women” would come, and they would be able to rebuild civilization. This value seems to create a meaningful distinction between themselves and the zombies, who couldn’t care less about what’s coming up next in humanity’s saga on earth. But ripped of a society to answer to, West and his men shed their human superego and express themselves, well, like zombies: through acts of violent rape and murder.

Even as the movie points out the negative qualities of the human condition, mainly by examining all the impulses that people and zombies share, it simultaneously demonstrates the distinction between these two types of beings. Jim’s character is absolutely critical to this concept. In the film’s incredible climax, with an unforgettably eerie soundtrack, Jim returns to the mansion after the soldiers’ failed attempt to execute him, in order to save Selena and Hannah from their grisly fate. To succeed, he nearly becomes a zombie himself: he moves as quickly and as silently as the monsters do, and in the end, he kills a man in perhaps the most violent and socially-unacceptable way possible – by pushing his eyes up into his brain.  It is difficult to justify Jim’s behavior. He kills so aggressively and so gruesomely, and with such zombie-like impulses, that it’s hard to imagine that a part of him didn’t want to commit the murder. Furthermore, by the end of his rampage, he is covered in blood, giving his body a peculiar half-human, half-corpse aura. In fact, when he is done, not even Selena is sure if he is a man or a monster. Through the blood and gore, however, Jim is driven by an incredibly human instinct: compassion. He has returned to save his friends because he loves them, and this separates him from the zombies that he otherwise resembles. Love makes him human, and he risks his life to rescue these women because without them, his affection-less existence would be as pointless as that of the monsters in the street.

Selena herself articulates this idea exactly, about half way through the film, when she explains, “All the death, all the shit…I was wrong when I said that staying alive is as good as it gets.” She finishes up her revelation (short-and-sweet) with a quick kiss on Jim’s cheek. Each of these characters, from Selena to Jim to Major West, are capable of extreme brutality. Simultaneously, however, they are defined by their efforts to protect the people whom they love, distinguishing them clearly from the packs of thoughtless zombies in the world outside.