My favorite zombie entertainment choices are still the George Romero classics, 28 Days Later more recently, and The Walking Dead for the small screen. But recently, I’ve come across additional fun entries in the zombie genre:
book by Kevin Wayne Williams
Kevin Wayne Williams is an engineer and author of Everything I Know About Zombies I Learned In Kindergarten. The book is set in NYC and features a 7-year old protagonist shepherding a dozen kindergarten kids to safety after a zombie outbreak hits the Eastern seaboard. I loved reading about the survivor outposts in Riker’s, Randalls Island, and Governor’s Island, and the raids on stores in upper Manhattan and the south Bronx. This is a fun book for New Yorkers. It also is much more diverse than your typical action fare – younger heroes (elementary school kids!), black and Hispanic central characters, and strong female roles.
Train to Busan is a Korean film, and Netflix bills it as the first zombie hit out of Korea. Apparently it was the biggest film of 2016 in Korea, and I can see why. I LOVED it. I don’t usually cry at zombie movies, but this one plays out the estranged father/ daughter really well. It has all the fast-paced action you expect in a zombie outbreak movie but with characters you care about.
I haven’t seen the TV show, The Returned, but I did see the 2013 movie on Netflix, and it’s a good example of the zombie in everyday culture, as the premise has a cure for zombies, such that the dead are returned to a pre-zombie state. At least, they are “Returned” as long as they can get their hands on a fast-dwindling medicine. Clever premise, good acting. If you’re a zombie fan, I definitely recommend it.
I enjoyed The Returned more than The Rezort, though The Rezort has more of the fun elements of the zombie genre if you’re looking for a popcorn movie. There’s a very thinly veiled subtext tying zombies to our treatment of immigrants (in the film, zombies are rounded-up and shot for sport), but the movie doesn’t try so hard as to ruin the fun. It’s my least favorite of the above, but still fun. I guess I just love all things zombie.