Editorials
Evolution of the Undead: A Brief History of Zombies in Horror
Of all the movie monsters, the zombie is the most deceivingly simple. Zombies are reanimated corpses, hollow, decayed husks of their former selves driven by primal instinct. Yet, zombies almost always tend to serve as reflections of current fears, making their evolution in film one of the most interesting. In other words, zombie movies are never even really about zombies. From voodoo to viral outbreaks, from rigor mortis crawls to rage-induced sprints, the zombie has grown from B-movie status to mainstream pop-culture phenomena over the decades.
Long before they made their debut on celluloid, the zombie terrorized through Haitian folklore and storytelling. The word “zombie” is said to have come from “nzambi,” which in West Africa translates to “spirit of a dead person,” or “zonbi,” a Haitian Creole word that refers to a dead person that’s been reanimated by magical means. Haitian folklore usually featured Bokors as the necromancers of the dead. These practitioners of the dark arts would resurrect the deceased, though they’d have no free will or speech. They were slaves to the master who raised them. So, it’s not surprising that the first zombies on film followed this tradition in 1932’s White Zombie.
Based on William Seabrook’s novel The Magic Island, White Zombie stars Bela Lugosi as Murder Legendre, an evil voodoo master with a horde of zombie slaves that operate his sugar cane mill. A wealthy plantation owner seeks Murder’s help in luring a woman away from her fiancé, but Murder instead turns the woman into another one of his zombie slaves. 1943’s I Walked with a Zombie follows a nurse hired to care for a Caribbean plantation owner’s ailing wife, and runs afoul of voodoo and zombies. 1941’s King of the Zombies saw a trio of wayward travelers wind up at an island mansion for refuge, and find their host is not only working with spies but a voodoo master of zombies. In Revenge of the Zombies, a Nazi inhabiting an old Louisiana swamp mansion raises zombies to amass an undead army for the Third Reich. The shared themes and similar plot setups among the zombie films of the ‘30s and ‘40s heavily revolve around race and fears of oppression.
By the ‘50s, horror had shifted into its atomic age, the threat of the atom bomb and nuclear war playing a significant role in the fears of the decade. Threats from beyond the boundaries of Earth also played a significant factor. This reflected in the zombie trope. Genre filmmakers retooled what a zombie could be, and moved away from voodoo. Teenage Zombies featured a mad scientist that turns teens into her slaves through nerve gas. A former Nazi controlled an atomic-powered zombie to help a gangster return to power in Creature with the Atom Brain. Aliens resurrected the dead to destroy the living in Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space. Aliens flat-out inhabited the bodies of the dead to attack the living in Invisible Invaders.
Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel I Am Legend centered around a sole survivor of a pandemic that wiped out most of the human population and turned everyone else into blood-sucking vampires. The book inspired multiple adaptations, but more importantly, it was one of the apocalyptic movies that inspired the filmmaker who would change how we viewed zombies forever; George A. Romero. His seminal Night of the Living Dead never even uttered the word “zombie,” but created a blueprint that would be copied for decades. His film established that the living dead would devour the flesh of the living, that they could only be destroyed by damage to their brains, and that they could spread their undead status with a bite. Despite the gory nature of these ghouls, they were a faceless foe that revealed that the living were their own worst enemy. The casting of Duane Jones as Ben, the hero that meets a tragic fate at the end of the film for being mistaken as a ghoul, takes on a more socially charged context given the political climate at the time of release.
The blank slate of the zombie outbreak continued in Romero inspired films like Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue), which aimed at counter-culture fears, and Deathdream (Dead of Night) explored Vietnam war anxieties through a fallen soldier’s return from the grave. Romero’s follow up, Dawn of the Dead, aimed its bite at consumerism with its central protagonists barricaded in a mall. Dawn was Romero’s first to actually use the word “zombie” in relation to its flesh-eating corpses.
The golden age of practical effects in the ‘80s meant that zombies as metaphor took a backseat, letting the gore and creature effects take center stage. Lucio Fulci upped the ante on zombie gore with his zombie-centric films. The basic rules of Romero’s Living Dead were mostly adhered to but tinkered with enough to offer up exciting takes on the subgenre. The Return of the Living Dead showed off the dead’s playful side with punk rock attitude. Re-Animator gave H.P. Lovecraft’s work a gory sense of humor with teeth. Dead & Buried reintroduced voodoo to the subgenre. Wes Craven’s The Serpent and the Rainbow eschewed the ‘80s practical effects-driven aesthetic to take the zombie film back to its Haitian roots. Mostly, though, the decade was defined by intricate and unique designs for its brain-hungry undead, with buckets of blood and guts spilled. Peter Jackson’s early ’90s Dead Alive (Braindead) set the gold standard in zom-com gore, though the decade was zombie-lite for the most part.
It was in the 21st century, though, that the subgenre splintered into various branches of exploration of what a zombie could be. Viral outbreak films like 28 Days Later, I Am Legend, and the Dawn of the Dead remake exploited fears of contagion while making the infected zombies faster and stronger than ever before. Zombie comedies like Shaun of the Dead and Fido used zombies as a mere backdrop and catalyst for the personal growth of its human characters. More recently, Train to Busan and One Cut of the Dead used the zombie formula as a foundation to craft heartwarming (and tear-jerking) tales of family bonds tested.
Every time the zombie subgenre falls into an overly repetitive pattern and looks to wane in popularity, a new take brings about a resurgence. Look at The Walking Dead series, for example. Its extreme success didn’t just make zombies trendy again but gave the zombie story mainstream appeal. Even in its latter seasons with viewership at an all-time low, it still pulls in 4.5 million viewers. It also helped pave the way for gore on TV, at least in terms of making it more acceptable.
More than any other movie monster, the zombie has proven adept at evolving; the mindless nature of the living dead makes for a perfect blank canvas. Even without the potential applications of socially-driven horror, we humans tend to fear death and what could be waiting for us beyond. There’s something inherently terrifying about a flesh-eating, rotting corpse, and the apocalyptic nature surrounding it; the not-so underlying message that you can’t escape death is crystal clear.
No matter the ebbs and flows of horror trends, zombies never stay dead for long.
With there being an overlap between wrestling fans and horror fans, it only made sense for WWE Studios to produce See No Evil. And much like The Rock’s Walking Tall and John Cena’s The Marine, this 2006 slasher was designed to jumpstart a popular wrestler’s crossover career; superstar Glenn “Kane” Jacobs stepped out of the ring and into a run-down hotel packed with easy prey. Director Gregory Dark and writer Dan Madigan delivered what the WWE had hoped to be the beginning of “a villain franchise in the vein of Jason, Freddy and Pinhead.” In hindsight, See No Evil and its unpunctual sequel failed to live up to expectations. Regardless of Jacob Goodnight’s inability to reach the heights of horror’s greatest icons, his films are not without their simple slasher pleasures.
See No Evil (previously titled Goodnight and Eye Scream Man) was a last gasp for a dying trend. After all, the Hollywood resurgence of big-screen slashers was on the decline by the mid-2000s. Even so, that first Jacob Goodnight offering is well aware of its genre surroundings: the squalid setting channels the many torturous playgrounds found in the Saw series and other adjacent splatter pics. Also, Gregory Dark’s first major feature — after mainly delivering erotic thrillers and music videos — borrows the mustardy, filthy and sweaty appearance of Platinum Dunes’ then-current horror output. So, visually speaking, See No Evil fits in quite well with its contemporaries.
Despite its mere setup — young offenders are picked off one by one as they clean up an old hotel — See No Evil is more ambitious than anticipated. Jacob Goodnight is, more or less, another unstoppable killing machine whose traumatic childhood drives him to torment and murder, but there is a process to his mayhem. In a sense, a purpose. Every new number in Goodnight’s body count is part of a survival ritual with no end in sight. A prior and poorly mended cranial injury, courtesy of Steven Vidler’s character, also influences the antagonist’s brutal streak. As with a lot of other films where a killer’s crimes are religious in nature, Goodnight is viscerally concerned with the act of sin and its meaning. And that signature of plucking out victims’ eyes is his way of protecting his soul.
Image: The cast of See No Evil enters the Blackwell Hotel.
Survival is on the mind of just about every character in See No Evil, even before they are thrown into a life-or-death situation. Goodnight is processing his inhumane upbringing in the only way he can, whereas many of his latest victims have committed various crimes in order to get by in life. The details of these offenses, ranging from petty to severe, can be found in the film’s novelization. This more thorough media tie-in, also penned by Madigan, clarified the rap sheets of Christine (Christina Vidal), Kira (Samantha Noble), Michael (Luke Pegler) and their fellow delinquents. Readers are presented a grim history for most everyone, including Vidler’s character, Officer Frank Williams, who lost both an arm and a partner during his first encounter with the God’s Hand Killer all those years ago. The younger cast is most concerned with their immediate wellbeing, but Williams struggles to make peace with past regrets and mistakes.
While the first See No Evil film makes a beeline for its ending, the literary counterpart takes time to flesh out the main characters and expound on scenes (crucial or otherwise). The task requires nearly a third of the book before the inmates and their supervisors even reach the Blackwell Hotel. Yet once they are inside the death trap, the author continues to profile the fodder. Foremost is Christine and Kira’s lock-up romance born out of loyalty and a mutual desire for security against their enemies behind bars. And unlike in the film, their sapphic relationship is confirmed. Meanwhile, Michael’s misogyny and bigotry are unmistakable in the novelization; his racial tension with the story’s one Black character, Tye (Michael J. Pagan), was omitted from the film along with the repeated sexual exploitation of Kira. These written depictions make their on-screen parallels appear relatively upright. That being said, by making certain characters so prickly and repulsive in the novelization, their rare heroic moments have more of an impact.
Madigan’s book offers greater insight into Goodnight’s disturbed mind and harrowing early years. As a boy, his mother regularly doled out barbaric punishments, including pouring boiling water onto his “dangling bits” if he ever “sinned.” The routine maltreatment in which Goodnight endured makes him somewhat sympathetic in the novelization. Also missing from the film is an entire character: a back-alley doctor named Miles Bennell. It was he who patched up Goodnight after Williams’ desperate but well-aimed bullet made contact in the story’s introduction. Over time, this drunkard’s sloppy surgery led to the purulent, maggot-infested head wound that, undoubtedly, impaired the hulking villain’s cognitive functions and fueled his violent delusions.
Image: Dan Madigan’s novelization for See No Evil.
An additional and underlying evil in the novelization, the Blackwell’s original owner, is revealed through random flashbacks. The author described the hotel’s namesake, Langley Blackwell, as a deviant who took sick pleasure in defiling others (personally or vicariously). His vile deeds left a dark stain on the Blackwell, which makes it a perfect home for someone like Jacob Goodnight. This notion is not so apparent in the film, and the tie-in adaptation says it in a roundabout way, but the building is haunted by its past. While literal ghosts do not roam these corridors, Blackwell’s lingering depravity courses through every square inch of this ill-reputed establishment and influences those who stay too long.
The selling point of See No Evil back then was undeniably Kane. However, fans might have been disappointed to see the wrestler in a lurking and taciturn role. The focus on unpleasant, paper-thin “teenagers” probably did not help opinions, either. Nevertheless, the first film is a watchable and, at times, well-made straggler found in the first slasher revival’s death throes. A modest budget made the decent production values possible, and the director’s history with music videos allowed the film a shred of style. For meatier characterization and a harder demonstration of the story’s dog-eat-dog theme, though, the novelization is worth seeking out.
Jen and Sylvia Soska, collectively The Soska Sisters, were put in charge of 2014’s See No Evil 2. This direct continuation arrived just in time for Halloween, which is fitting considering its obvious inspiration. In place of the nearly deserted hospital in Halloween II is an unlucky morgue receiving all the bodies from the Blackwell massacre. Familiar face Danielle Harris played the ostensible final girl, a coroner whose surprise birthday party is crashed by the resurrected God’s Hand Killer. In an effort to deliver uncomplicated thrills, the Soskas toned down the previous film’s heavy mythos and religious trauma, as well as threw in characters worth rooting for. This sequel, while more straightforward than innovative, pulls no punches and even goes out on a dark note.
The chances of seeing another See No Evil with Kane attached are low, especially now with Glenn Jacobs focusing on a political career. Yet there is no telling if Jacob Goodnight is actually gone, or if he is just playing dead.
Image: Katharine Isabelle and Lee Majdouba’s characters don’t notice Kane’s Jacob Goodnight character is behind them in See No Evil 2.
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