Culture
Now Playing: 21st century zombies – three standout zombie films from the last 25 years
By: Gordon Briggs
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Now Playing is a column by film scholar Dr. Gordon Briggs. This installment in the series corresponds to the Now Playing column that ran on Tuesday, June 24 about 28 Years Later.
The new film 28 Years Later is a highly effective zombie film. It’s also one of a series of recent films that use the zombie as a means of exploring borders, race, and military power. Here are three others.
The first is 28 Days Later (2002). I haven’t seen this movie in over a decade. Thankfully, 28 Days Later still holds up as a fast-paced, post-apocalyptic monster movie. There’s plenty to praise here: Visually, in telling the story of a plague that overtakes the UK, the film employs a grainy, realistic aesthetic achieved through the use of digital video cameras, giving it a raw, almost documentary-like quality. (I love that scene where survivors must quickly change a flat tire in a zombie-infested tunnel). Acting-wise, the cast of survivors is strong. I particularly like Naomie Harris as a machete-wielding survivor who will hack you up in a heartbeat if you’re infected. However, I must complement the script written by Alex Garland, which effectively captures the growing sense of paranoia at the time. I like the second half of the movie, which is set in a mansion filled with a group of soldiers. I like how we sense something is wrong there even before the threat declares itself. It all culminates in a nightmarish finale set in that mansion, complete with zombies, drugs, a thunderstorm, and a pulsating soundtrack. Rating: ★★★★
The second is Blood Quantum (2019). A zombie plague is sweeping through the country. Fortunately, the only ones who are immune are Native Americans. Now, a once quiet First Nations reservation has become a fortress to hold off the undead. A different film would’ve played this material for laughs, but rather than leaning on irony, Blood Quantum plays this material straight and crafts a bleak but memorable horror flick. Sure, the zombie-killing stuff is familiar, but in between slaying the undead and sheltering white refuges, the film becomes a blood-soaked exploration of the tensions between white Canadians and their Indigenous neighbors. Rating: ★ ★ ★
Lastly, there’s The Girl With All the Gifts (2016). I’m not sure how many people have seen The Girl With All the Gifts, but it’s a bleak and bloody zombie flick that’s effective because of the innocent child at its center. Set in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse that has wiped out all of humanity, we find ourselves in a special school where the child ‘students’ are carriers that can become flesh-eating zombies at any moment. I enjoy the prisoner-guard vs. teacher-student dynamic of the story. Rather than just focusing on blood and gore, the tension in this movie comes from how some characters want to treat the young students as dangerous weapons, and others want to treat them as ordinary children. The cast is uniformly fine, but it’s young Sennia Nanua who must carry this movie as a zombie girl with gifts. Individual non-horror scenes work because Nanua can convey both grown-up wisdom and childlike wonder in the same scene. Rating:★ ★★ 1⁄2