They keep coming back! Wave after wave, just when you got one down, there is another. Why won’t they die?! I am of course talking about zombies, vampires, and remakes… … … Oh My!
Let’s start with our shambling friends, zombies, it is time we let them rest for a while. I was not a big zombie fan in my youth, they are slow (at the time anyway), and a good shot could take down several without changing the clip in their gun. But, as the zombie trend started picking up several years ago, I started enjoying the thought of how I would out smart a world filled with them, and many of the modern films help me figure that out. I jumped on board, hell, I am a card-carrying member of the Zombie Squad (No, really, you should be too, they do a lot for people, like boy scouts that kill the undead… … and drink… … Ok, they are very little like the boy scouts.). Zombies became a fun way to learn new ways to survive, and picking apart the choices the survivors made in the movies was great… Then like the survivors, I started to feel overwhelmed, one after another, these films would come out, low production, high production, good story, and bad story shambling, and moaning to my local place to rent, and there was no way to tell which was good. Zombie stories tend to be very basic, because the name of the game is normally survival, this makes it harder to make an interesting story line, because the fluff that is used to fill out the story becomes more non-nonsensical. So, anyway, after everyone with a home camera started making zombie flicks, and clogging up the works with acting that made the zombies the high point of the performance, I say enough. Let the dead rest… for a while, please.
Vampires, this is another group that I never got much into, but has always been popular. Now, unlike their less intelligent brethren, vampires are much more versatile, some are demonic, angelic, cursed, or gifted. Depending on the media they can be just about anything, I am exercising a bit of poetic license and saying that in this post, they must have need for blood. If you ain’t a blood sucker, you ain’t a vampire! Anyway, like horror itself, vampires rise in waves, one hit movie spawns an abundance of others. I get it, zombies and vampires are easy to make, a little make-up some fangs, bam insta-vamp! I guess my real complaint with vampire movies is that so many follow the same template, someone turns and they need to fight to find their new place in the world… … Actually, now that I think about it, really it seems that most vampire movies are puberty stories, that does explain a lot. Anyway, it is not that there are not any good vampire films, it is just that there are enough good and bad that the sub-genre feels watered down. A friend had mentioned to me that werewolves had peaked already, and that is why vampires were still going strong… While, I agree with some of his points, I in the end disagree over all. I think that werewolves still have much to be explored, movies like Ginger Snap show that they can still be relevant (another puberty movie). I also think that vampires have hit a plateau, if not a peak, I mean come on, the hottest vampire on the scene right now glitters, and chases jail bait… Just saying.
Remakes… … Sigh, I am not going into all the reasons why these films need to take a break. Many people have argued against them, and many have made good points. I actually like a good remake from time to time, it spices up a good story, but it is all about abundance, too much of a good thing is bad… … too much of good and bad things can be worse…
So, in closing, I don’t think that any of these groups suck as a whole, but I would ask you up and coming film makers to let them rest, leave them for the next generation of new blood. Be the one to make golems popular again, or one of the many other supernatural creatures, or create a new breed. The creature feature needs some new life!
-Reverend Krueger
P.S.: The same friend made a good point, if it sound like it belongs on Syfy, move on… Dear god, move on and never look back… … Think of the children
