The Dead (Howard J Ford and Jonathon Ford, 2010)

“…the dead are everywhere“

Zombies are great baddies because they are inevitable.  Whether they walk or run (these ones walk) they just keep coming.  You can stop one by shooting it in the head but the gunshot will just attract others.  You can put distance between yourself and them but they will catch up.  They are always there, shuffling into focus.  They are also every ‘ism’ and ‘ist’ going; they are both the red menace and capitalism run amok as well as a walking reflection of all our xenophobia and misogyny. 

The Dead is a great zombie movie because it knows this and the walking dead exert pressure over every scene.  They are always there.  Shuffling into focus.  As is the African location and the naivety of the protagonist’s (Rob Freeman) presence therein.  These things are explicitly (thankfully fleetingly) spoken of, but are mainly left to linger like the appeal adverts that punctuate the messages from the good people at Coca-Cola and Tesco.  This is the zombie plague as envisaged by Romero and tainted by Conrad and a couple of hundred years of imperialist guilt and confusion.

The Dead is available on DVD.

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