Matt, we were just talking about that, in regard to the game Doom 3. The only monster that gets to me as much or more than zombies are ghosts, and it's a different reaction.

No idea why, but the reaction is there.

Greece apparently just released its first-ever zombie movie. I'm interested to see it. This doesn't seem like a culture where the zombie thing would get much traction.

I love zombies, because they creep me out (also for unknown reasons). Zombie movies are some of my favorites, and I love love LOVE the Rsident Evil series of video games, partially because I like primarily puzzle games, but also because the zombie factor CREEPS ME RIGHT OUT. Those video games are fun, but they also scare the bejeezus out of me.

I do wonder why it is that zombies hit at the very bottom of the Uncanny Valley for so many people. It's not as if there were packs of them chasing after our neanderthal ancestors and we evolved a fear response through natural selection. Before the advent of movie makeup, what would have triggered that emotional reaction—lepers and plague victims?

Before the advent of movie makeup, what would have triggered that emotional reaction—lepers and plague victims?

Probably. And there's certainly a heavy element of "Yep, you too are going to DIE someday," with zombies. With lepers and plague victims as well. And none of this cool action hero death stuff, it's all about the "no, you're going to be a rotting and bloated corpse."

I think that's a large reason the ending to Carpenter's Thing hit me so hard. I did watch it at a fairly young age, but the ending was all about "Sure, you can beat the monster. Maybe even kill it. You're still going to die, though. Have fun!"

I think it's like motion sickness in that your brain is putting up with two contradictory signals-- some human, some not.

I'm looking forward to the movie version of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince for their version of zombies (crossed with the Dead Marshes bodies from LotR).

C for Cookie

Okay, that was awesome.

And none of this cool action hero death stuff, it's all about the "no, you're going to be a rotting and bloated corpse."

Yeah, unlike the modern vampire myth, which makes un-death look pretty damn appealing, the modern zombie myth isn't really good advertising for undeath.

The original zombies, voodoo slave guys, don't scare me (although voodoo really used to). I think part of it is the implacable, alligator-brain-ness of the modern zombie. They are less defeatable than animals, because even a hungry animal is always weighing its own long-term survival against the short-term gain of food. (Well, except for the feral cat colony in my back yard, but they are cat zombies, all lurching towards any sign of life, massing at the door, paws reaching through to grab something, anything, no impulse but food).

Yeah, Haitian-style voodoo zombies don't bother me either. I've been around enough stoners in my life, no worries about something that mellowed-out. Nor do the Return of the Living Dead zombies, which I think moved in too obviously human a fashion—they clearly read as people in makeup. The Romero zombies, the ones from the Romero remake, and the 28 Days Later hyperactive pseudo-zombies all raised the hairs on my neck, though.

There's a funny (not intentionally) Icelandic saga that explains zombiedom among our frozen cousins, with an anecdote about how Skalla-grim (name translates to Skull-grim) died, and his son planned carefully so that the body could nto come back to haunt him.

Skalla-grim died at home, so they busted a hole in the wall of his house, and carried the corpse out that way, and then after the funeral immediately fixed the hole. Since zombies follow their own trails back to the place where they died, the plan was that zombie!Skalla-grim would crash into the exterior wall of the house, possibly repeatedly, instead of inviting himself in the front door.

(Norse zombies, unlike Haitian ones, are just really mean corpses, not shambling idiots. I mean, they sometimes talk, they wield weapons, and people re-slay them -- by cutting their heads off and placing the heads far away from the bodies --, but they are still dumb enough to bash themselves into a wall because it wasn't a wall last time they passed it.)