Zombie Movie Based on ‘Followed’ Now Shooting
Google has alerted me to the filming of a new and supposedly more socially-conscious Zombie movie being shot now in Georgia:
MACON, Ga. — First “The Walking Dead” swarmed Atlanta. Now the zombie apocalypse is infecting Macon.
Shooting is underway in Macon for the film “Followed,” a socially concious monster movie in which zombies symbolize society’s disadvantaged and oppressed.
…
The film is based on a short story by Hugo Award-winning science fiction author Will McIntosh.
Another local news story gives some additional background including brief talks with some of the actors:
Ivey is best known for her role in the 2008 hit, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and says shes thrilled to take on this new role.
She plays a mature but opinionated professor.
Ivey says this film’s fast-paced action keeps her on her toes.
…
Producers say the zombies aren’t spilling blood, gore, or guts.
Instead, they say the movie focuses on zombies following wasteful consumers, pushing them to better treat the environment including recycling.
You ever get that sinking feeling in your gut when you read about an adaptation, where it feels like the people making the movie are just using the source material to apply a thin gloss of novelty to their standard tropes? I’m getting that feeling now.
When I told the Art Director about the ‘Followed’ movie and the synopses offered up by these sites, she was puzzled, and pointed me to some of the Zombie fiction anthologies I’ve yet to review for the site. As it turns out, she’d read ‘Followed’ in one of them, and so I sat down and read it, and started up the larger anthology to review for the ZRC. A couple of thoughts:
1) ‘Followed’ isn’t really about being an environmentalist, or even being socially conscious per se. In fact, the story in ‘Followed’ is more or less about the inevitability of harming others despite our best efforts to avoid it, and about the way that people reward themselves mentally for the steps they take to minimize harm to others, and the self-worth that a person can feel they’ve earned for being fortunate enough, and wealthy enough, to live a green lifestyle.
In other words, at no point do Zombies urge people to recycle.
2) There’s no ‘action’ in Followed: the Short Story. There’s a brief scuffle in an office. That’s it. I really hope this isn’t going to end up as an action flick, where the main character, a young hipsterish professor in the original story, flips out and guns down the Differently Animated John Woo style.
3) ‘Mature but opinionated’? Yeah. That feels like code words to me. There’s a line in the Funimation dub of Shin-Chan that features Hiro trying to compliment his wife to get out of some trouble or other, and he says she’s (paraphrasing here): ‘A strong, mature, independent woman and other words that don’t mean “bitch”.’
From a ZRC perspective, ‘Followed’ is a problematic story, even more-so because it’s being presented as socially conscious fare. In the ‘Followed’ world, essentially, if you cause the death of another human being, even partially, even indirectly, even with no knowledge of doing so, they rise as a Zombie, track you down, and…. stare at you. Apparently, forever. Society has adapted to this by… doing nothing, really. People ignore the Zombies, avoid looking at them, gently move them out of the way. Apparently Amnesty International cares about them, but that seems to be about it.
Somehow I don’t think a society as hopped up on Anti-Zombiism as ours would react so peacefully and accomodatingly to Zombie Stalkers. If there are two things I’ve learned many people don’t take well in my days working for the ZRC, it’s criticism and Zombies. Combine the two and, tragically, I forsee violence, not acceptance.
Then again, perhaps Mr. McIntosh is supposing the widescale success of the Zombie Rights movement? ‘Followed’ does take place in the relatively near future. Hmm.
Bottom line though, the story is all about the Living People. Zombies, though not treated to violence, but aren’t treated as individuals either. They are apparently forced into involuntary Undead servitude by some cosmic force to act as Unliving testimonials to the accidental or deliberate cruelties of the human race. They’re not people; they’re shambling scarlet letters, here to reveal your secret misdeeds. Only, as one might predict, this is somewhat less than effective, given that larger society doesn’t care about the same misdeeds as the Zombie animating force seems to. (Think PETA protestors without pulses or paint buckets and you’re getting the drift.)
Given that, the ZRC would have to rate the original story as Zombie Neutral. Living humans clearly regard the Zombies in ‘Followed’ with revulsion, and they’re not treated as people. On the other hand, the Differently Animated are serving a role on behalf of something akin to divine justice, acting like Furies or angels, a task classically ascribed to the forces of Good or Justice. So it’s a wash really.
If you’d like to read ‘Followed’ for yourself, you can read it in the same anthology I’m working through now, ‘The Living Dead’, available on Amazon.
Starts on page 405, I believe.
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