ZOMBIE

Zombies, ghouls, the living dead – the creatures of reanimated horror are the bloodied hook that drew me into the dread world of evil in the very beginning. I absolutely love Zombies – why, you ask. Well, it’s simple; Zombies are the underdogs of horror. Take any classic monster Frankenstein, Vampires, Werewolves, Demons – they all have special powers; incredible strength, super-speed, near immortality and so on. Zombies have none of these… they literally are just reanimated corpses of human beings, with no more “power” than they had before they died in fact, they even have less as nearly all intelligence is gone and dexterity has well and truly left the building. The also, in nearly all cases, look revolting; when you see one of these beasts lurching towards you, you immediately know it’s not meant to be part of this world and that it wants (if ‘want’ is the right word) to kill you – there is no of this disguising itself as a human trickery. But that is also another reason I love the dead; they’re falling apart, they’re slow, they’re dumb – one or two, that’s a joke, you can evade them without difficulty, you stand a chance, there is hope. It’s not until you encounter a horde – fifty, a hundred, a thousand, all moving together, all with the same goal (even if they aren’t aware of that shared goal) – do things get deadly. I adore that idea, that concept of you can make it out unless you do something really stupid unlike with over monster movies where humanity is already on the back foot and survival is more a matter of luck than clever decisions.

Below is my cosplay of a Zombie; not one from a movie or video game, just a generic reanimated human corpse driven only by the need to feed. He moves slow, shambling after prey, lacking any form of agility other than being able to move with unsteady balance. He knows nothing about his current location and is easily distracted when sensing warm meat nearby, relentlessly searching for his next meal without emotion, remorse or even any notion of why he yearns for the kill… the taste of human flesh.