Zombies in a Time of Terror: The Development of the Zombie Film Narrative

Zombies in a Time of Terror

The Development of the Zombie Film Narrative

Jasper Wezenberg

5947634

jasper.wezenberg@gmail.com

Ferdinand Bolstraat 27-3 1072LB Amsterdam

06-20924216

Thesis guide: dr. C.J. Forceville

Second reader: Amir Vudka

Acknowledgements

First of all I would like to thank dr. Charles Forceville for being an excellent thesis guide who always provide me with pragmatic tips, interesting insights and fast comments. Thanks to Amir Vudka for being my second reader. I would like to thank Absaline Hehakaya and Maarten Stolz for reading parts of my unfinished thesis and providing comments. Many thank to Saskia Mollen for designing the awesome front cover. Thank to my colleagues Joost Mellink and Renée Janssen for covering for me. Thanks to my friends Niels de Groot and Rufus Baas for encouraging me. Thanks to Marek

Stolarczyk, Roeland Hofman, and Marije Ligthart for being funny and supportive. Thanks to Nika Pantovic for making nice music and providing inspiration. And finally thanks to my parents and brother for being awesome people.

Contents

Acknowledgements

3

Introduction

5

1. Generic difficulties

6

2. On zombie studies

12

3. The Quantitative of the dead

16

3.1 Introduction

20

3.2 Corpus and zombie movie production numbers

21

3.3 Results

23

3.3.1 Zombie invasion narrative

23

3.3.2 Shots of deserted streets

24

3.3.3 Use of news- or found footage

25

3.3.4 Speed of zombie movement

25

3.3.5 Are they dead?

27

3.3.6 Extra: funny zombies

28

4. Zombies in a time of terror: invoking images

29

4.1 REC

29

4.2 Train to Busan

34

4.3 Land of the Dead

40

Conclusion

45

Bibliography

48

Filmography

50

Appendix A

51

Introduction

Of all the monstrous creatures that have populated the horror stories of Western culture, the zombie may well be the most characteristic for the late 20th and early 21th century. What is it with massive amounts of walking, flesh eating, rotting, and mindless corpses that fascinates millions of movie fans? While it once was a monster of b-movies, nowadays zombies seem to have taken over the world. It is as if a cinematic zombie apocalypse has been taking place the last two decades.

In film, the creation of the zombie can be traced back to the movie White Zombie (1932). It was inspired by Haitian folklore like voodoo, in which a witchdoctor takes control of another person’s body. The genre took a more postmodern turn when filmmaker George A. Romero released his low-budget movie Night of the Living Dead (1968), containing undertones of social critique. Today, Romero’s debut has become a prototype for the whole genre. In a typical zombie movie, a zombie apocalypse takes place, which causes the dead to rise again from the grave. These animate corpses are almost always murderous and out for human blood. After a person has been attacked by one or more zombies, he or she then also turns into a zombie. By this mechanism the zombies spread like a virus or a plague. Amidst this deadly chaos, the story’s protagonists are trying to stay alive and rescue their loved ones.

What kinds of zombie narratives are there? How is the zombie genre able to reflect social unrest? Has the genre changed much since Romero? How have zombies been studied by academics? In this MA Thesis I will investigate the development of the zombie film narrative, hoping to find answers to these questions.

In the first chapter I set out to create an overview of the studies that have been done on the subject of genre in film studies. As I am dealing with a very specific genre, I must investigate numerous theories on the existence and use of film genre. In the second chapter I will look into the academic studies that have been done to date on zombie films, to provide me with bearings for my own research: what has been discovered and what needs to be researched more? In the third chapter I will present the results of quantitative research I have done on the characteristics of zombie narratives, to show how narrative techniques in the zombie film have changed. In the fourth chapter I will do a close analysis of three selected zombie titles, to provide us with more details the element that are typical for the genre, and how zombie narratives function. At the end of this research I will hope to provide an answer to the question: how has the zombie narrative developed over the years?

1. Generic difficulties

If we want to be able to discuss and research the zombie movie as a category, we first have to delve deeper into the structures and processes that define the generic conventions of the zombie movie. What criteria define a specific genre and how do we use and need our knowledge of genres? In this chapter I set out to create a general outline of the field of (film) genre studies and some of its main scholars like Rick Altman, Barry Keith Grant and Stephen Neale. The problems and concepts introduced here will be used in our next chapter on the genre of horror and its subgenre: zombie movies.

The concept of genre has been important on many levels of spectating and studying film as the work of the following scholars will prove. While for the average moviegoer, the different generic categories may seem like a collection of clear-cut traits bundled to categorize different films, the concept of genre is of course not without its difficulties. The meaning and use of genre within the realms of film is the result of a complex interplay between scholars, spectators, critics and the movie industry.

I would first like to consider the work of Rick Altman and especially his book Film/Genre (1999), for it has been a seminal work in the study of genre within film studies. Altman starts out his book stating that one of the first ideas about genre goes back all the way to Aristotle and his famous work of Poetics. In his work Aristotle states that he will approaches the art of poetry based on its essential qualities. Determined by these “essential qualities”, Aristotle describes how different forms of poetry could be discerned from each other based on the medium, the object, and the manner of imitation. While literary genre theory has of course evolved over the years, Aristotle’s ideas have remained influential. The main problem with this, according to Altman (1999), is that Aristotle’s ideas are based on various presumptions. Aristotle namely assumes that his generic categories are

“objectively present, stable phenomena, while the decision whether a certain text belonged into a specific genre depended on the presence or absence of certain characteristic features embodied in that text” (Forceville 2001: 1787). Altman states that Aristotle’s ideas have persevered all these year in literary studies and thus literary genre theory has not been able to come to any definite conclusions about what constitutes a genre (Altman 1999: 12).

Although a theoretical framework on film genre has been established since the late sixties, this body of theories has not been without its shortcomings: the same dogmas of genre studies within the literary field, have crept into the academic work on film genre. Altman point out multiple problematic tendencies that have persisted within film genre studies. One of the most important things he points out is that the focus of genre critics and scholars has been on a reduced corpus that consists of canonical titles, to keep things neat and manageable (Altman 1999: 16). This means is that the critics and scholars tend to pay more attention to a small number of movies and as a result reduce a genre to a

very select group of ‘pure’ genre titles. From this strategy follows that only the titles that tick all the boxes of a generic prototype are included. Cross-genre and titles from outside of the canon tend to get overlooked. “[Genre critics] have systematically disregarded films that fail to exhibit clear generic qualifications. [Also], each major genre has been defined in terms of a nucleus of films obviously satisfying the theory’s […] assumptions” (Altman 1999: 16). He adds to that genres are treated as if they are trans-historical, as if they are fixed in history and never change of evolve over time. For Altman, this is clearly not the case.

Altman uses the example of the musical genre to demonstrate that genres undergo historical development and are constantly susceptible to changes. He explains that in the earlier years, the term ‘musical’ was never applied as genre, but always used as an adjective to other genres such as

melodrama or comedy (Altman 1999: 32). It was only after films with singing and dancing became less popular, that the term ‘musical’ started being used solely to describe a feature film. Many examples of movie reviews from the time period are given by Altman to underline the change in public perception of what a ‘musical’ is.

It is also an important nuance that not all films are deliberately designed to fall into pre-existing categories. This is where Rick Altman makes the distinction between a ‘film genre’ and a ‘genre film’ (Altman 1996: 277). ‘Film genre’ refers to broader categories that can encompass a wide scope of films, regardless of the intent with which they were made. ‘Genre films’ refers to a type of film that self-consciously makes use of existing categories, models and expectations.

When trying to explain the functioning of genre, Altman introduces the idea of creating a communication model for film genre. He explains that genres are communicative processes: films belonging to a certain genre change the viewer’s perception from seeing an autonomous title into seeing a film as belonging to a generic group. And in turn this creates a bond between multiple groups of “part-real, part-imagined genre viewers” (Altman 1999: 169). In constructing a model for this process, Altman draws inspiration from the classic encoding/decoding model created by Stuart Hall. The premise of this model is that a sender communicates with multiple receivers through a medium. And these receivers also communicate with each other. Adding to the model, Altman points out that the receivers also interact with the medium, thereby repurposing and redefining the genre (Altman 1999: 172) communicating through the medium as can be seen in figure 1. This process is especially evident in a cult genre like zombie movies, where the fans constantly discuss, repurpose, and redefine the genre and its corpus. I will discuss this more in depth.

In the eighties Altman wrote an article named A Semantic/syntactic Approach to Film Genre (1984). In this text Altman introduces a dual approach, both focused on semantics as well as syntax, that can be used to identify individual movies as belonging to a certain genre based on textual characteristics. The semantic approach utilizes identification based on the generic “building blocks” (Altman 1984: 10). For example: a Western movie contains elements like prairies, cowboys and saloons and a narrative taking place somewhere during the mid-ninetiethand early twentieth century.

With the syntactic approach a movie is categorized based on the returning narrative structures. With the example of the Western, we could describe its structural elements as residing “on the border between two lands, between two eras, and with a hero who remains divided between two value systems” (11).

Figure 1: This figure made by Altman (1999: 172) shows how not only the receiver communicates with the text (or in this case the genre) but also with other receivers.

Concluding Film/Genre, Altman admits that he has made the same mistake as other genre scholars before him. While a useful method for researching the relation between genre and text, it completely overlooks how genre operates outside of the text. His earlier model namely misses the complex relation between reader and text as described earlier, and does not account for the different interpretations readers can give of a text or genre. Neither does it account for the role of cinematic institutions like producer or distributors. The importance of how a genre is used by the spectator is not to be underestimated. Altman admits to have overlooked this important aspect of genre so he proposes an updated semantic/syntactic/pragmatic approach to address this complex relation, thud adding a third dimension to his older model. “It is precisely this ‘use factor’ that pragmatic addresses. Whether we are discussing literature or cinema (or any other meaning-making system), the base language(s) surpass their own structures and meaning as they are integrated into textual uses” (Altman 1999: 210).

The work Barry Keith Grant also goes to show that a complex concept like genre cannot be explained through a single method. Grant investigated the different means of determining the

boundaries of a genre. He distinguishes four way of defining genre based on the work of Janet Staiger while also acknowledging and highlighting their shortcomings. The first method is called the ‘idealist method’. It uses a standard model that privileges pure genre films over films that are more diluted in their generic characteristics. The second method, the ‘empiricist method’, defines generic categories based on characteristics from the existing corpus of a specific genre. The downfall of this method is its circular nature: categories that are created are based on characteristics from existing categories which are in turn against based on grouping certain characteristics. The third method is called the ‘a priori method’. With this method films are selected based on predetermined characteristics they have in

common. The problem with this method is that it can lead to purely theoretical categories. Lastly there is the ‘social convention method’ which selects films as belonging to a genre based on public

consensus, something that probably can never be fully determined (Staiger qtd. in Grant 2007: 22). A lot of the problems when trying to find a fixed model arise from the fact that “different genres are designated according to different criteria. Such genres as the crime film, science fiction and the western are defined by setting and narrative content. However, horror pornography and comedy are defined or conceived around the intended emotional effect of the film upon the viewer” (Grant 2007: 23).

Another important genre scholar I would like to consider is Stephen Neale and his book Genre

and Hollywood(2000). In this book he describes of genre research within film studies. The first

distinction made in classical literary theory is between literature and popular writing. This is a distinction that has persevered throughout the twentieth century in film studies as well. During the 1930s and 1940s scholars from the Frankfurt School like Adorno and Horkheimer, argued that popular culture was aimed at turning high culture into homogeneous and mass-produced commodities. Neale states we can see the same attitude in early film studies. He pinpoints the sixties and seventies as a turning point for film criticism and theory. It was around this time that the famous French film journal

Cahiers du cinéma began focusing on ‘auteurism’ (Neale 2000: 10). As other critics adopted this

concept, it created the premise of the director being the creative force behind a film. Before the sixties, comparable with the Frankfurt School, critics saw Hollywood film production as being superficial, conservative and produced for the mass market. Auteurism provided scholars and critics with the means to engage with commercial Hollywood cinema in a serious and productive way. Although it led a big change, most of the attention was thus limited to directors and “individualized corpuses of film” (Neale 2000: 11). When trying to approach the institutional aspects of Hollywood and its audience, auteurism was not that useful. It was the American art critic Lawrence Alloway who turned the attention to genres and categorical film cycles. Tom Ryall also explains in the following quote how auteurism does not account for the specific characteristics of popular culture: “The auteur theory, though important and valuable during the 1950s and 1960s for drawing attention to the importance of the American cinema, nevertheless tended to treat popular art as if it were ‘high art’” (Tom Ryall qtd. in Neale 2000: 12).

Neale acknowledges that a lot of research has been done on the topic of genre from the sixties of to the nineties, but he finds, like Altman, many of the theoretical definitions on genre are restrictive and often one-sided. “Canons of critical preference, rather than those of empirical or historical

enquiry, have often resulted in uneven degrees of attention, discussion and research” (Neale 2000: 3). Genres are thus treated as fixed and trans-historical. Inspired by for example structural anthropology, genres are stripped of their historical differences with critics treating genres as beyond history. Instead of seeing genres as the outcome of a certain historical process, genres are treated as “a representational form derived directly from a basic human capacity” (Altman 1999: 20).

Neale tries to avoid creating taxonomic models for genre. Comparable to Altman’s

‘pragmatic’ approach, Neale explains that genre is more than a corpus of films grouped together based on their similarities. A genre is also a system of expectations, conventions and viewing modes that the audience bring with them to the film. To clarify this, he explains Tzvetan Todorov’s concept of ‘verisimilitude’ (2000: 32). It refers to the probability or plausibility of a genre for its audience. Each genre has its own regime of motives that are probable and sometimes obligatory. According to Todorov there are two basic forms of verisimilitude:

“The first is what we call rules of the genre: for a work to be said to have

verisimilitude, it must conform to these rules. [...] [The second is the relation] between discourse and what readers believe to be true. The relation is here established between the work and a scattered discourse that in part belongs to each of the individuals of a society but of which none may claim ownership; in other words to public opinion. The latter is of course not ‘reality’ but merely a further discourse, independent of the work” (Tzvetan Todorov qtd. in Neale 2000: 32).

This may sound quite complex, but what it means is that a generic text is subjected not only to an internal regime of rules of verisimilitude, but also to an external regime of public discourse and socio-cultural verisimilitude. This may be called ‘realism’, though we are not literally talking about a relation between discourse and reality. The balance between these two forms of verisimilitude differs per genre. “Negotiating the balance between different regimes of verisimilitude plays a key role in the relations established between spectator, genres and individual films” (Neale 2000: 35). An example of this would be the musical genre: the defining aspect of a musical is that its characters burst out in singing to non-diegetic music. This is something that, while not probable within public discourse, is essential within the internal generic verisimilitude of the musical film. Because the audience knows they are going to watch a musical, they are guided towards expecting random outbursts of singing in the film.

Altman states that the audience, and the way they make use of genres, is determining how genres function (Altman 1999: 173). Neale on the other hand places more emphasis on the role of institutions like Hollywood. He describes the cinematic institutions as defining in the creation and shaping of genres. Hollywood is his main film industry of focus, but of course we can substitute Hollywood for any large industry of film production, or cultural production for that matter, as genre is “common to all instances of discourse (2000: 31). Hollywood must be seen as just one specific instance of many cultural forms.

When producing and promoting a film, a ‘narrative image’ (Neale 2000: 39) is created. This is a promotional image of the film containing information about the actors, narrative and overall

as well as the audience. And essential part of this ‘narrative image’ is of course genre. “The indication and circulation of what the industry considers to be the generic framework – or frameworks – most appropriate to the viewing of a film is therefore one of the most important functions performed by advertising copy, and by posters, stills and trailers” (Neale 2000:39). All these images that are being brought into circulation contribute to the ‘narrative image’ and are part of the ‘inter-textual relay’ (Neale 2000: 39). These posters, advertisements, and also film credits, are not part of the films narrative but do shape spectator expectations about a film’s narrative. A relay can also include the screening venue, a video store and even genre studies itself (Langford 2006: 6). The ‘inter-textual relay’ of a film contributes to, and interacts with the generic status of a film. A lot of genres are not cinema exclusive, and the generic images created are thus part of a bigger generic movement across media like theatre or television. The sum of these images contributes to the cultural embedding of a genre. We must note though, that genre is only a part of the ‘narrative image’ and ‘inter-textual relay’, as other elements like production companies, directors and stars also make up an integral part of this.

Coming back to Neale’s earlier assessment that a lot of genre definitions are too restrictive, he goes on to counter the theories of Thomas Schatz on the confining nature of genres. According to Schatz, genre films encompass a story and setting that are always familiar and predetermined, resulting in one-dimensional characters. Neale explains that he agrees that genres bring a certain degree of familiarity, but adds that Schatz’s definitions are also too narrow. While a lot of generic protagonists exhibit typical traits conform to the genre, it does not exclude the addition of more complex characteristics that can even be contradictory. The same goes for narrative structure: While for example a war films always have a violent conclusion, “the path to these climaxes and resolution vary considerably” (Neale 2000: 209). I might add that these deviations are what lead to progression, as genres are not static but subjected to change over time. For example, the effectiveness of Night of

the Living Dead (1968 dir: George A. Romero) lay in the fact that it kept breaking with generic

conventions of the horror genre (Grant 2007: 53).

The works of the authors discussed in this chapter provides important cues on how to research genre, as well as which pitfalls to avoid. I am therefore going to research the zombie genre in the upcoming with multiple methods. When studying genre, it is key to not only look at the textual

elements but also be aware of the historical development of a genre, as well as the important roles both the cinematic institutions and the audience are playing.

2. On zombie studies

“The zombie remains, for the most part, underappreciated. Zombie films are relegated to the last page of every horror movie guide, saved from utter obscurity only by the dubious Zontar, the Thing from Venus. There are almost no serious studies of TV and movie zombies, as there are for vampires in abundance. Nevertheless, the sheer volume of zombie movies attests to their enduring cult popularity and contemporary relevance” (Dendle 2001: 1).

While Peter Dendle wrote this in 2001, and things have changes for the better, the zombie movie still remains a relatively understudied film genre. In this chapter I will create a compact overview of the zombie as a cultural icon and as an object of academic research. The last few years, after Dendle, scholar Kyle William Bishop has done a lot of the research on the genre. He has published multiple books and articles on the phenomenon of zombies in popular culture and introduced some new ideas on recent developments.

Bishop started his work on zombies with an article he wrote trying to find an explanation for explosion of zombie movie production occurring around the beginning of the new millennium. The article “Dead Man Still Walking: Explaining the Zombie Renaissance” (Bishop 2009) begins with a short introduction of the genre, describing its (re)rise to fame in the late sixties with the movie The

Night of the Living Dead (1968). After a decline in popularity, zombies where declared as good as

dead in the nineties. Bishop now tries to prove to us that the popularity of movies like 28 Days Later (2002) and Dawn of the Dead (2004) is not coincidental, but part of a much bigger cross-media zombie renaissance taking place in the twenty-first century. To understand why the zombies are back, we have to understand how the structural narrative features of the genre resonate with a modern, mostly western, audience. Since the 9/11 attacks, Bishop supposes the American people have become more acquainted with images of death and urban destruction. He describes the eerie similarity between the newsreel footage of the 9/11 attacks and hurricane Katrina on the one hand and scenes from the aforementioned movies on the other.

Bishop’s article provides a nice clear example of the relevance of zombie media and the importance of researching it. “Although the conventions of the zombie genre remain largely

unchanged, the movies’ relevance has become all the more clear – a post-9/11 audience cannot help but perceive the characteristics of zombie cinema through the filter of terrorist threats and apocalyptic reality” (Bishop 2009: 24). Being a literature scholar as well, Bishop states that zombie movies can be placed within the gothic tradition. Not only do zombie stories blend the romantic with the realistic, they also have shown the ability to “adapt to changes in cultural anxiety over time” (Bishop 2010: 25).

Like gothic literature, they are “a barometer of the anxieties plaguing a certain culture at a particular moment in history” (Steven Bruhm qtd. by Bishop 2010: 24).

Before we continue to look at the relevance of zombie studies and how this thesis will fit in with the existing research, I will investigate the origins of the zombie. Unlike other iconic horror antagonists like vampires and werewolves which stem from European culture, zombies are the product of fusion between old African and New World culture. This ties the zombie to colonialism, slavery and ancient mysticism. “Zombies, in fact, made the leap from mythology to cinema with almost no previous literary tradition. Rather than being based on creatures appearing in novels or short stories, zombie narratives have developed instead directly from their folkloristic, ethnographic, and

anthropological origins” (Bishop 2010: 38). Before the zombie made its first leap to the big screen, it was a product of colonial history and religious society of Haiti.

If we want to understand the cultural impact and the significance of the zombie, we must first try and understand the culture that created it. Bishop names ethnographers Hans W. Ackermann and Jeanine Gauthier, whom have stated that the roots and the folkloric origin of the Haitian zombie go even further back to Benin, Zambia, Tanzania, and Ghana. Legends of witches who reanimated corpses were imported to many islands in the West Indies when slaves were brought over. So while the general American perception is that the zombie was created in Haiti, this research proves that the zombie has a diverse background coming from many places of the African continent (Bishop 2010: 42).

The French government acquired Haiti, a country that was located on the western half of the island of Hispaniola, after the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697 (Sidney W. Mintz qtd. by Bishop 2010: 43). The French called their part of the island Saint Domingue and started a brutal regime, bringing in slaves from the West-African coast to work on the plantations. Because of the high mortality rate, and the fact that new slaves were brought in at a higher pace, there was a less creolized slave population. This in turn resulted in more preserved African traditions and resistance against the French oppressor. At the end of the 18th century, the slaves revolted against the French, which resulted in a long

revolutionary war that lead to the creation of the independent country of Haiti. After becoming

independent, the voodoo practices taken from Africa had the freedom to grow and develop without the interfering of imperial forces. This evolved eventually into ‘Haitian Vodou’, a religion that combined elements from African voodoo with elements from Roman Catholicism. It was in this fusion that the first incarnation of the zombie was created. Bishop explains, “[ancient believes were] likely

transformed when abducted slaves were exposed to the Christian concept of resurrecting a body– returned from the grave–and the ideologies of colonial enslavement–bodies lacking freedom and autonomy. As a result of this cross-cultural fusion, Haitian zombies were born: victims of nefarious chemical assault, lacking conscious minds and, implicitly, their souls as well” (Bishop 2015: 7). People were transformed into mindless zombies by witchdoctors, and then sold to plantation owners to work the fields. Zombies instilled fear because the people of Haiti were afraid of being turned into a

zombie. The ideology of the zombie in Haitian culture is thus related to power struggles and oppression. Bishop uses the theories of Louis Althusser to explain that the ideological institution of the voodoo religion, in the form of the zombie threat, “can be seen working on political, social, and economic levels” (Bishop 2010: 54).

Haiti remained politically instable throughout the nineteenth century and in 1915 the United States occupied Haiti to restore order and install a pro-American president. The occupation lasted for nearly twenty years, and this was the first time that the American people learned about the dark and mysterious voodoo practices of Haiti. It was the travel author William Seabrook who brought tales of seemingly dead people working in cane fields to the American audience, when he released his book

The Magic Island (1929).

“It seemed ... that while the zombie came from the grave, it was neither a ghost, nor yet a person who had been raised like Lazarus from the dead. The zombie, they say, is a soulless human corpse, still dead, but taken from the grave and endowed by sorcery with a mechanical semblance of life—it is a dead body which is made to walk and act and move as if it were alive. People who have the power to do this go to a fresh grave, dig up the body before it has had time to rot, galvanize it into movement, and then make of it a servant or slave, occasionally for the commission of some crime, more often simply as a drudge around the habitation or the farm, setting it dull heavy tasks, and beating it like a dumb beast if it slackens” (William Seabrook qtd. in Bishop 2010: 48).

The fascination of the American public in twenties and thirties with the Haitian Zombie can be explained by a combination of factors. In some ways the United States resembled Haiti, as it is a former colony, and had been relying on slavery for many years. This new post-colonial order that existed at the turn of the century also lead to a combination of collective social guild and fear for the post-colonial other (Bishop 2010: 60). These were the social conditions under which racist narratives of voodoo priests taking possession of white, often female, victims became of interest to the American mainstream public.

The first Hollywood movie featuring these Caribbean zombies was White Zombie (Victor Halperin 1932), which was partly based on William Seabrook’s novel. The movie introduced a novel horror plot to the audience and it was an unanticipated success. In White Zombie a wealthy plantation owner enlists an evil voodoo master to force a woman to marry him by turning her into a zombie. In the same vein of White Zombie, more horror films were released exploiting “racial and cultural difference to instill its audience with the terrors of a misunderstood and menacing (post)colonial Other” (Bishop 2010: 66): Ouanga, Revolt of the Zombies (1936), King of the Zombies (1941), I

All these movies used fear of the Other to create horror. Also, these movies confronted audiences with the fear of losing autonomy; being dominated, which could also be linked to the realities of the Great Depression. It was a time were the American working class felt enslaved by “a tedious job, a bleak economy, or a helpless government” (Bishop 2015: 8).

The idea of losing your autonomy carried over to the science-fiction movies that were made after the Second World War with titles such as Invisible Invaders (1959), The Earth Dies Screaming (1964) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). Furthermore, these movies used the context of the Cold War and fear of communism to frighten their audience. Of course these movies did not feature any zombies but they did carry some of these themes, syntactic characteristics, as Altman would call them, over to the sixties. Peter Dendle names The Earth Dies Screaming as an obvious inspiration to the zombie genre of the sixties (Dendle 2001: 64). Both Bishop and Dendle hail George A. Romero as the director who (re)invented the modern zombie genre by bringing the zombies back from the dead in his low-budget feature film Night of the Living Dead (1968).

Romero took the Caribbean zombies and combined them with other iconic horror monsters like the Gothic bloodthirsty vampire and the hordes of invading aliens from the fifties, to create a type of subgenre that was completely original. These new zombies Romero created did not have any relation to voodoo or a zombie master that controlled them. It is also typical that they come in huge groups that outnumber the human protagonists; are hungry for human meat and move slowly. Also, if a zombie bites a human, he or she turns into a zombie itself after some time, showing the zombie-condition to be contagious.

Romero was influenced by the existing horror tradition, as he employed the use of fear for an unfamiliar monstrous Other, in this case the zombie. The fear of being turned into the Other something that vampire narratives have in common with Romero’s zombie story. The novel I Am Legend (1954) by Richard Matheson was a mayor influence on the script of Night of the Living Dead. In this novel its protagonist Neville becomes the last man on earth, while the rest of the world population has turned into bloodthirsty vampires. Neville tries to survive in this post-apocalyptic world where he is

extremely outnumbered. The concept of a large group of invading monsters is also inherited from the alien invasion movies from the fifties I discussed earlier. Romero’s zombies were in short a “synthesis of the voodoo zombie, the alien invader, and the vampire” (Bishop 2010:112-13). Night of the Living

Dead became a horror classic and a prototype for the whole zombie film genre.

So what makes zombies so frightening and zombie narratives so effective? In answering this question we provide ourselves with the means for further in-depth analysis of our corpus in the fourth chapter of this thesis. What made Night of the Living Dead such an effective horror movie was the allegoric power of its narrative. It had a direct link to American social issues of the late sixties, and zombies formed a vessel to address “violence, death, mortality, cannibalism, invasion and infection, not to mention sexism, racism, the collapse of the nuclear family, and even incest” (Bishop 2015: 10). It took almost a decade for Romero to produce a follow-up, but since its release, Dawn of the Dead

(1978) is considered as one of the most influential films on the zombie genre. In Dawn of the Dead a group of zombie apocalypse survivors become trapped in a shopping mall. The movie draws parallels between the mindless, hungry zombies and us humans: creatures of habit and consumerism. Even after the humans have died, their zombie counterparts are still drawn to the shopping mall. Romero is effectively suggesting here that maybe humans are already part zombie, driven by modern consumerism.

Since zombies are former living humans, being confronted with animated corpses that were formerly people known to the protagonists creates the effect of the uncanny; the Unheimlich as Freud called it (Bishop 2010: 95). Like vampires and ghosts, zombies are the returned dead that remind us of our own mortality. What makes Romero’s zombies all the more frightening is the fact that while zombies are animated corpses looking like humans, they are empty characters that cannot speak and do not seem to possess any form of ratio. It is the constant tension between the Heimlich and the

Unheimlich that makes zombies such effective scaring machines. While they definitely look like

humans, they are in fact rotting but moving corpses, which makes them very unfamiliar and thus uncanny, as can be seen in figure 2.

Figure 2: Graph made by Masahiro Mori (qtd. In Bishop 2010:120). A zombie does resemble a human but since it is in essence a dead animated body, its level of familiarity is very low. It is therefore Unheimlich.

Zombies continued to be popular throughout the seventies and early eighties, but Bishop mentions Michael Jackson’s music video of Thriller as the point where zombies first turned from effective allegorical creatures into pastiche and comedy. By the time Romero released his third zombie movie Day of the Dead (1985), zombie comedy movies (better known as “zomedies”) like The Return

of the Living Dead (1985) and I Was a Teenage Zombie (1987) proved more lucrative. In the nineties

hardly any zombie films were made. It was not until 28 Days Later (2002) that the zombie returned to popularity. According to Bishop it were the events of the 9/11 attacks and the social unrest that

followed it that called for the return of an allegorical creature capable of addressing these issues. This of course meant the return of the zombie to the big screen. Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later showed Cillian Murphy wandering through the empty streets of London and thereby invoking the newsreel images of the 9/11 attacks. It was also a strong critique on the “excessive empowered military” (Bishop 2015: 12). At the time of writing this thesis, the zombie renaissance may have slowed down a little, but big budget zombie films are still being made. David Fincher is working on a follow up to

World War Z (2013) and last year the South Korean made Train to Busan (2016 dir: Yeon Sang-ho)

was a box office hit.

Bishop and Dendle have made a valuable point about the zombie being of scholarly interest because of its capacity to reflect the fears of society. Bishop has done extensive research into the cultural context in which the zombie was created, using his extensive knowledge of literary studies to analyze a multitude of texts. What it lacks though is hard data. Bishop’s research consists of historical research combined with a close analysis of three of Romero’s first zombie films. To seek further proof for the zombie as society’s barometer, as well as investigate the development of the genre, we need to have a good look at the, albeit scarce, quantitative data that has been collected.

One of the few quantitative researches on zombie films was performed by Annalee Newitz and published in the online magazine io9. The research features a graphic (figure 3) showing on the y-axis how many zombie movies are produced, and on the x-axis the corresponding years. Newitz has used data from The Internet Movie Database to create the graph. The spikes in zombie movie production, she argues, are linked to moments of social unrest in western society (Newitz 2008). This research is a great inspiration and an interesting starting point. It shows in an effective way how Bishop’s claim that zombie films are a reflection of social unrest, can be substantiated by doing quantitative research. It also proves how accessible abstract data can become when it is used to create a clear graph. It does have its shortcomings which are for the most part pointed out by the author: “Mostly we've focused on movies from the U.S. and Europe, and we've included the living dead among zombies — so mummies are included, but vampires and ghosts aren't” (Newitz 2008). She is somewhat vague about the origin of the movies, not excluding non-Western movies but also not including all. Newitz also points out that the data has to be corrected for the increase in total movie production from 1910 to 2008.

Bishop has combined multiple sources, including not only Newitz’s research, but also data from The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia (Peter Dendle 2001) and Book of the Dead (Jamie Russel 2005) to create a comparable graph. He does not explain the process of collection the data, but I am guessing that he just used the filmography of both books to create the graph (figure 4). Where Newitz relates the spikes in production to “social upheaval”, Bishop uses the peaks in his graphic to show the

developmental cycles of the genre using four phases: the “developmental peak”, the “classical peak”, the “parodic peak” and lastly the “renaissance peak” (Bishop 2010: 14). The peaks correspond nicely to his genealogy of the zombie movie, a genealogy I used a lot in this chapter. However, he is not

consistent in choosing the peaks, switching between datasets to choose a peak that fits his story. Still, it provided a nice example on how to use quantitative data to create meaning.

Figure 3: The graph made by Annalee Newitz (2008) for her quantitative research on zombie movie production. She links spikes in the production to global social unrest.

Figure 4: The graph made by Bishop (2010: 14) where he combined data of three researches, including that of Newitz. He uses it to point out the developmental peaks of the zombie genre.

In the next chapter the goal is to create my own data for research. To do this I shall use Altman’s theory of syntactic and semantic genre elements to look for similarities and differences between zombie movies. When looking for inspiration for which semantic features I will be scoring in my quantitative research, I can consult Bishop’s “the Taxonomy of the Dead” (Bishop 2010: 20). In this taxonomy (figure 5) he shows us all the options for the type of zombies we have encountered over the years in movies. In my own quantitative research I want to investigate the development of the zombie genre, from before, and after the zombie renaissance. Since the reinvention of the genre by Romero, zombie movies have been mostly featuring infected zombies. That is why I can use the categories of the ‘infected’ part of the taxonomy to create a set of traits to look for in zombie films. The categories ‘slow’, ‘fast’, ‘dead’, and ‘alive’, are the ones I will be using in my next chapter. I will add to them more categories that address Altman’s syntactic approach. These will be categories that focus more on the structural elements of zombie narratives.

We can conclude now, that in this chapter I have done three things. First I tried to retrace the history of the genre, arguing that the zombie movie is indeed an acknowledged film genre or sub genre with a diverse cultural embedding. Secondly, I have shown, using the theories of Bishop, that zombie movies can be used as a barometer for societal upheaval of a certain historic period. This is possible because of the allegorical possibilities of the figure of the zombie and the narrative structures used in zombie films. Lastly I have examined the data research that has already been done on zombie movies, so as to provide me with bearings for my own data research in the next chapter.

3. The quantitative of the dead

In chapter 2, I have delved deeper into the history of the zombie as a cultural symbol and the

development of zombie cinema. At the end of that chapter I outlined the few quantitative studies that have been done on zombie movies by Newitz and Bishop. In this chapter I want to build upon their studies, investigating the development of the zombie narrative. I will focus mostly on my own quantitative research on zombie movies, hoping to find patterns and trends that support my claims on the development of zombie film narrative and the way it reflects social unrest.

Bishop has stated that since the 9/11 attacks a zombie renaissance has taken place, using the work of Dendle en Newitz to prove that the production of zombie movies has indeed increased since 2001. He has also claimed that the renewed popularity of the genre can be explained because the images of a zombie apocalypse can be linked closely to changed social conditions after the 9/11 attacks. The modern audience is accustomed to newsreel footage showing panicked crowds, deserted streets, extreme violence and environmental disasters. It is these images of a threatened Western society that contemporary zombie movies closely mimic. Bishop also stated that these new zombie films, starting with Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (2002), closely follow the narrative structure of original movies made by zombie godfather George A. Romero, but that they have taken on new meaning for a modern audience. Is Bishop right in in calling this new popularity a zombie

renaissance? Can modern zombie movies indeed be said to address these modern anxieties? Has the zombie narrative changed over the years? If I want to find out if there is indeed a correlation between contemporary social unrest and zombie movies, I need to answer these questions with my own quantitative research.

You may ask yourself; why focus on numbers and graphics instead of analyzing the films in question using methods like close reading? In choosing this method of research I draw inspiration from cognitivist film studies. I am of the opinion that if I want to make any valid claims on the development of genre and zombie films, I need to combine interpretative research with hard data. Genre is a complex language made up films, cinematic institutions and the people that interpret and use genre to understand and enjoy texts. Because of the multifaceted nature of genre, it is useful to approach it from a cognitivist angle using scientific methods. In contrast to what other film scholars like Warren Buckland have argued (Buckland 1989), I think interpretative analysis and cognitivist film studies are not there to compete with each other. I propose to use both methods to enrich and enhance each other.

Because there is always a limit to what one can research, I assume the position of a fallibilist, hoping that my data will be of use for future research. A fallibilist, as cognitivist Noël Carroll

theoretical implications of later developments because she realizes that at best her theories are well-warranted, and that a well-warranted theory can be false. There is no claim to a purchase on absolute truth here” (Carroll 1992: 202). With this research I also hope to provide any leads for future research. The interpretation of what this data may say about the development of the zombie narrative will be discussed at further length in the conclusive chapter.

3.2 Corpus and zombie movie production numbers

To start out my research, I first had to define what encompassed the total corpus of zombie film. This is immediately problematic since a multitude of studies on genre are about defining generic corpuses, but have come to no definite conclusions. I had to make a pragmatic decision when choosing which list is representative for the genre of zombie films. Peter Dendle’s The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia (2001) would have been the obvious choice, since it is the most extensive list of zombie movies made by an academic. The problem is that it is still one person’s opinion of what the zombie canon

encompasses. Both Neale and Altman have argued convincingly that if we want to research genre, we have to look beyond the textual elements as well. I want to use a list that addresses what Altman has called the pragmatic (Altman 1999): the complex relation between genres and the way the audience uses them to create meaning. Since the zombie genre is very much a cult genre, the audience is a defining factor in what constitutes its corpus. Many zombie films were low budget made box-office flops that were later hailed by genre fanatics as cult classics. Because of the democratic nature of its creation I have chosen to use the zombie film list from Wikipedia. This is a list that is made and updated by people who enthusiastic about the subject: the fans. As is the case with every article on Wikipedia, this is a list that is co-created and co-edited by anyone who wishes to contribute. But they can only contribute on the condition that all entries are “reliably sourced” (Wikipedia: Identifying reliable sources 30-6-2017). This leads me to conclude that, because of its democratic nature, this list consists of titles that are labeled as zombie films by the fan and connoisseur community. The

International Movie Database, while used by a lot of film scholars for primary reference, is not as

democratically established or as transparent in its sources. But because IMDB does contain advanced searching functions I still needed it for my research to sort my selected zombie titles. I therefore merged the Wikipedia list with the IMDB title information. I will explain this merging process in this chapter.

The first thing I set out to do was to create an updated chart based on the zombie film list I retrieved from Wikipedia (see appendix B for the full list of titles that I used). Graph 1 shows on the y-axis the amount of films produced annually and on x-y-axis which year. As you can see in the chart, there is no arguing with Bishop that a zombie film explosion has occurred since the 00s with zombie film production peaking in 2008 with thirty-two zombie films produced that year alone. There are a lot of similarities between my graph and the graphs made by Newitz and Bishop. That does not mean that

it is exactly the same down to the numbers, as each researcher made his or her own choices regarding the corpus. But it does correspond roughly with the trends and peaks of the other charts. Bishop recognized four different peaks in the development of the genre. First there is the developmental peak set around 1973. Second there is the classical peak set around 1980. At the end of the eighties we have the parodic peak; the moment where the genre turned into pastiche. In the nineties the popularity of the genre dwindled to revive again at the beginning of the new millennium. For my quantitative research I chose to compare two decades; the eighties and the 00s. I chose these two decades because, as can been seen in the graph, they contain most of the zombie movie production peaks that Bishop talks about.

Graph 1: This graph show the annual film production based on the list of zombie films from Wikipedia. Although not exactly the same, it follows most trends of the graphs by Newitz and Bishop. (c) Jasper Wezenberg.

Since it would be impossible for me to analyze all the movies produced during both decades, I had to take a sample with a limited set of titles. I chose to analyze twenty-five titles of each decade to keep things neat and manageable but not too limited in scope. I could not go out and just pick my favorite titles, as this would make the research appear biased and unscientific, so I had to find an effective way of selecting these titles. This is where The International Movie Database comes in, as it contains a way more advanced searching engine than Wikipedia. I initially had the idea of selecting titles based on their revenue since this would show how popular a title would have been at the time of its

cinematic release. But as I stated earlier, the zombie genre is a cult genre that encompasses titles that sometimes did poorly at the box-office, but in retrospect got appreciated by the fans as classics of the genre. I therefore chose to sort zombie titles based on their IMDB popularity. On IMDB, popularity is calculated based on a title’s rating, the number of votes, and the number of page visits. Using IMDB’s search engine I searched for horror titles using the keyword ‘zombie’ and setting the release date

ranging from 1980 till 1989 and from 2000 till 2009. After this I took the titles from IMDB and checked if they were also on the zombie list retrieved from Wikipedia. Only if a title is present in both the Wikipedia list, as well as the IMDB list, I would use them for my research. In doing this I created a list containing twenty-five zombie movies for each decade based on the Wikipedia list but ranked according to their popularity on IMDB. The two lists, in essence, contain the top twenty-five most popular zombie movies from the eighties, as well as the 00s. The appendices also contain all the titles I used in this part of the research.

Now that I had my two lists, I had to decide which zombie film characteristics I was going to investigate. Bishop has stated that the classic zombie narrative of Romero has not changed much since it was introduced again during the zombie renaissance. So I chose categories based on the

characteristics of typical zombie apocalypse films. The categories are binary which means their presence in the selected movies is either positive or negative (0 or 1, as can be seen in the appendix). The categories are for the most part based on characteristics of the classic zombie movies made by Romero like Dawn of the Dead(1979) which we also see returning in popular modern zombie films like 28 Days Later (2002). In the following paragraph I will explain each category individually and then show the results of my research on that category.

3.3 Results

3.3.1 Zombie invasion narrative

The first and most important category I created was ‘the zombie invasion narrative’. This style of zombie narrative was introduced in Night of the Living Dead (1968). What it means is that the narrative of the film is built around an expanding group of zombies that attack the protagonists. This does not mean that the film’s narrative has to feature a zombie apocalypse were whole of society gets overrun by zombies. It can also mean an zombie invasion on a mansion like for example in Burial

Ground: The Nights of Terror(1981). Graph 2 shows the percentage of films containing such a

narrative, compared in both decades. These results are immediately interesting and possibly even contesting Bishops theories. What is claimed to be the archetypical zombie narrative structure only appears to make up thirty-two percent of the most popular zombies movies from the eighties. So while the movies made by Romero, featuring hordes of contagious bloodthirsty zombies, are now identified as the prototype of the genre, this probably was not the case in de eighties. For example a classic film like Re-animator(1985) does feature aggressive undead corpses but it does not follow a narrative structure where a big group of zombies try to invade the house or the city of the protagonists.

Graph 2: This graph shows a significant increase in the films containing a zombie apocalypse narrative from the eighties to the 00s. (c) Jasper Wezenberg.

3.3.2 Shots of deserted streets

The category ‘zombie invasion narrative’ does not per se mean an apocalypse narrative. That is why I created more categories made up of characteristics that are signs of an apocalypse. As Bishop claimed images of deserted streets resonate strongly with a modern audience, I also looked for this

characteristic in my selection of zombie movies. Shots of deserted streets are a typical characteristic of a zombie apocalypse. As most people are dying and survivors have to hide in sanctuaries. The

authorities fail to contain the zombie epidemic and the cities become empty. Graph 2 shows how there has been an increase in the use of shots of deserted streets. Where only 16% of the zombie movies in the eighties contained these shots, almost half of the films featured them by the 00s. This could indicate an increase in apocalypse narratives.

Graph 3: Shots of deserted streets in zombie movies during the eighties were rare. In the 00s almost half of the zombie films contain them. (c) Jasper Wezenberg.

3.3.3 Use of news- or found footage

Another technique that is used a lot in the zombie apocalypse context is the use of news- or found footage. As the protagonists turn on their television or radio they can hear or see on the news how the zombie disaster is unfolding. It also adds to a strong sense of realism. The modern western audience is used to seeing newsreel footage of environmental disasters and terrorist attacks. Showing news images of a zombie attack strongly invokes the real news footage. I have also included films that feature diegetic found footage like we see in the movie REC (2007); a film shot in camcorder style, creating the appearance of a documentary. I will analyze the use of news- or found footage more extensively in Chapter 4. The use of news- or found footage has increased significantly from 12% to 56% (graph 4). This could indicate that modern zombie films are more likely to invoke real news footage that is recognizable for the modern audience. It could also indicate an increase in zombie films with a more ‘realist’ style.

Graph 4: Comparable to shots of deserted streets, we see a marked increase in the use of news- or found footage. (c) Jasper Wezenberg.

3.3.4 Speed of zombie movement

Speed of zombie movement is a topic of some debate amongst the fans. Purists claim that running zombies are not real zombies because that is not how Romero envisioned them. We see an increase from 20% to 60% (graph 5), so it is hard to argue that they are not an increasingly important factor. While Bishop claimed that the running zombies were introduced in 28 Days Later (2002), my research shows that they were present in zombie movies before that. Still, they formed only a small part of the zombies in the eighties, where in 00s they became the majority. Because the running, or even

sprinting, zombies pose more of a threat to humans, their increase could indicate an increase in suspense in the modern zombie films.

Graph 5: While not much of a presence in films of the eighties, running zombies now seem to dominate the genre. (c) Jasper Wezenberg.

3.3.5 Are they dead?

It seems like a stupid question to ask if ‘the undead’ are dead. But as graph 6 shows, zombie films containing zombies that are still alive increased from almost zero to nearly 50%. Zombies used to be supernatural corpses that became animate without any clear explanation. Modern zombie films feature zombies that are actually alive humans contaminated with a virus that makes them rabid and hungry for flesh. “This kind of zombie is more frightening than the traditional fantasy monster, and instead of just being a horror movie, 28 Days Later crosses into science fiction: it could happen” (Bishop 2009: 23). This is why I chose ‘alive zombies’ as a category. I only marked this category as positive on the condition of a clear explanation in the narrative that the zombies are still alive. For example the narrator of Zombieland (2009) at one point explains to the spectator that the whole zombie apocalypse started with someone eating a hamburger containing mad cow’s disease, causing him to slip in to a rabid state but still being alive. The increase of the ‘alive zombie’ could be linked to the increased fear for epidemics, a topic I will come back to in Chapter 4.

Graph 6: The increase of ‘alive zombies’ could indicate an increased public fear for disease outbreaks. (c) Jasper Wezenberg.

3.3.6 Extra: funny zombies

This is a category that did not prove to be of any use to the questions I am trying to research in this thesis. Still, I am presenting the results here. They may be of use for future research. Graph 7 shows the percentage of zombie comedies that have been made in the eighties and 00s. What is does prove is that Bishop’s ‘parodic peak’ really is not that much of a peak. Only a quarter of the zombie films made in the eighties are zombie comedies. And while zombie comedies are still very popular, there has not been a significant increase.

4. Zombies in a time of terror: invoking images

“Unlike many other tales of terror and the supernatural, the classical zombie story has very specific criteria that govern its plot and development. These genre protocols include not only the zombies and the imminent threat of violent deaths, but also a postapocalyptic backdrop, the collapse of societal infrastructures, the indulgence of survivalist fantasies, and the fear of other surviving humans. All of these plot elements and motifs are present in pre-9/11 zombie films, but they have become more relevant to a modern, contemporary audience” (Bishop 2009: 20).

Bishop states in this quote that, while the narrative structure of zombie movies has stayed the same, zombie movies have found a new audience in a changed post-9/11 world. I mostly agree but would like to nuance his argument. My quantitative data from Chapter 3 namely shows that while in the eighties there was a multitude of zombie narratives, since the zombie renaissance, most zombie stories are based on the zombie invasion narrative. This type of narrative is what probably proved most resonant with a post-9/11 audience as Bishop argues. How has this premise shaped modern zombie narratives? And has the genre evolved further beyond Romero’s prototypes?

In this chapter I am going to do a close analysis of a few selected zombie titles to further investigate and expand on the findings of the previous chapter. On the one hand I hope to show how modern zombie films utilize its audience’s post-9/11 awareness and, in the tradition of the Gothic, form an allegory for social and geo-political unrest of the last two decades. On the other hand I will argue that the genre is constantly reinventing itself and employing new cinematographic techniques and narrative structures. The titles I have selected are examples of modern zombie film that utilize this post-9/11 awareness while at the same time introducing new elements to the genre.

4.1 REC, dir: Jaume Balagueró, Paco Plaza, 2007

In this close analysis of REC, I want to show that REC employs imagery reminiscent of the famous television documentary 9/11 (2002 dir: Gédéon,Jules Naudet & James Hanlon) to engage a post-9/11 audience. Secondly I want to investigate how directors Balagueró and Plaza combined the traditional zombie invasion narrative of Romero with new narrative and visual techniques to create a film that stands firmly in the existing zombie movie tradition while at the same time providing a fresh new way to approach the genre.

The story of REC is set around a television crew consisting of cameraman Pablo and presenter Ángela. They are shooting an item on a Barcelona fire station for the fictive television show While

You're Sleeping. While the night starts out quietly, things turn disastrous quickly when the firemen get

called away based on report of a screaming old lady. The lady, as it turns out, has been bitten by a dog and subsequently turned into a raging rabid zombie that is hungry for human flesh. After the women

bites a police officer, the infection starts to spread. Local authorities respond quickly and ruthlessly by sealing of the entire building, shutting in Pablo, Ángela, the firemen, two police officers and the tenants together with a growing group of zombies.

Before they made 9/11, the French-American Naudet brothers, together with firefighter and filmmaker James Hanlon, were originally shooting a documentary on a New York firefighter trainee. Things took a turn for the worse on September 11, 2001, when Jules Naudet and Battalion Chief Joseph Pfeifer were out on patrol investigating a report of a gas leak. Jules only accompanied Chief Pfeifer because he needed some time to practice his camerawork; something that is proved by the jittery camera footage we see around 00:24:23. Just when Jules and the firefighters had arrived at the scene, a plane flew right over their heads to crash into the north tower of the World Trade Center. From then on Jules followed the firefighter throughout the rest of the disastrous day, as they went into the World Trade Center to try to save lives.

REC bears a striking resemblance to 9/11 by showing us handheld camera footage made by a

television crew that is following a group of firefighters at just another day at the office. By using a handheld camera that is operated by cameraman Pabo, REC creates a very realistic faux-documentary reminiscent of the found footage documentary of the Naudet brothers. REC also clearly draws inspiration from the horror movie classic The Blair Witch Project (Eduardo Sánchez, Daniel Myrick that made the found footage style popular. It should also be noted that REC is the first zombie movie to employ this cinematographic style beating Romero to it by a year, as the latter did release his own found footage zombie film Diary of the Dead until 2008.

One important difference between REC and The Blair Witch Project is the way in which the camera is operated. In the latter movie the protagonists are amateur student filmmakers using small camcorders. This results in lots of shots of the ground and a very unstable and shaky handling of the camera. While this adds to the authenticity of the film, as it connects the camera and footage to the diegesis, it also makes for a somewhat tiresome viewing experience. This problem is largely avoided in REC by the fact that the narrative revolves around a professional television crew with Pablo as the cameraman. Because they are journalists their job is to show their audience as much as they can. This also explains why they keep the camera running constantly, even when the situation worsens. To keep things realistic everything is shot using natural lighting. Because some parts of the building are very dark, and sometimes the light gets switched off, this adds to the suspense of the scenes: the spectator is sometimes literally in the dark.

The footage used in 9/11 was originally supposed to be used in a documentary about the everyday life of firemen but it turned out that the Naudet brothers and the firemen became part of an extremely dramatic and traumatic event. The beginning of the documentary gives us a glimpse of the film that the Naudet brothers indented to make. A montage with a lighthearted tone shows the daily life of the firemen. We see shots of the firemen doing drills, cooking, eating and laughing together. We also see rookie fireman Tony Benetatos anxiously waiting for his first fire to get his hands dirty.

REC starts out in the same way with the showing of footage of everyday life at the fire station. Ángela

interviews multiple firemen about their work and takes a tour of the station, even walking in on their supper as they are cheeringly greeted by the laughing and socializing firemen. As the night falls Ángela, much in the same way as Tony Benetatos, starts to wish for something to happen so she can get into action.

Although in many ways similar the mode of narration is something that differs between both films. 9/11 uses a voice-over and talking heads to fill in a lot of the gaps left by the footage. Since the events unfolded totally different from what they could ever have expected, a lot of explanation is needed, hence the talking heads. Off course when making a suspenseful horror movie, even if it is a fake documentary, it is hard to use any talking heads as this would stand in the way of creating any suspense. In REC Ángela fulfills the role of the narrator on a diegetic level, while at the same time being the protagonist to the film’s story.

When the call arrives of a screaming lady in a multistory apartment building Àngela and Pablo accompany two firemen to inspect the scene. When they get to the building, two police officers have also arrived and they al gather in the lobby of the building to talk with the upset tenants. Things start to go really wrong when the firemen and the police officers go up in the building to find the screaming lady. As I already metioned, the police officer gets bitten by the zombie lady, fatally wounding him. As the group tries to save the police officer, they carry him down the stairs in hope of evacuating him. As they arrive at the bottom of the stairs, police sirens can be heard everywhere. It turns out that the local authorities have sealed off the building to put everyone inside in quarantine. This scene strongly invokes the part of 9/11 where the south tower of the World Trade Center has just collapsed at

00:50:58. Jules Naudet and the firemen were at that time in the lobby of the north tower that was filled with debris and smoke. They use Jules’s camera light to reorient themselves and discover that chaplain Mychal Judge has been mortally wounded by the debris. As the normal exits are now blocked because of the collapse, they are trying to find a way out with the chaplain’s body. In the background sirens and sound of shouting and screaming people can be heard. Photographer Shannon Stapleton later photographed the men carrying the chaplain, a photograph that went all over the world. Judge was later designated as the first official victim of 9/11 with the status ‘Victim 0001’ (New York Post 4-9-2011) (see image 1).

Image 1: The iconic photograph of Mychal Judge who gets carried out of the WTC. Photo by Shannon Stapleton.

Image 2: A handheld shot of the police officer that gets carried down the staircase. This image is in way reminiscent of photograph made of Mychal Judge. REC: 00:14:57.

One of the most traumatizing aspects of the attacks on the World Trade Center attacks for the firemen as well as other bystanders were the ‘jumpers’. Above the location of impact of the planes in both towers, thousands of people were stuck facing smoke and extreme heat. Because of these conditions some people jumped out of the tower, fatally landing on the pavements and adjacent buildings. Before the collapse of the south tower, loud bangs can be heard every minute. The voiceover of Jules explains those are the sounds of the ‘jumpers’ landing next to the lobby. Jules did