Nathan Greene, ‘Zombie Hunter’ (Web-Series): A ZRC Review
We were linked to a new webseries at what has to be one of the worst possible times via the ZRC Twitter: during last weekend’s marathon computer meltdown.
Thanks again by the way to Microsoft for that one. I’m STILL reinstalling software.
At any rate, what to think of ‘Zombie Hunter’? Well, the way it was billed to us:
@Zombie_Rights An irreverent documentary on incompetent zombie hunters youtu.be/DLOK-4sGMEc Though you might like it.
After watching the six current episodes of ‘Zombie Hunter’, apparently based on a novel entitled ‘Fields of Rot’, I have to say it presents the ZRC with a dilemma. Overtly, it’s Anti-Zombie, but at the same time it’s also a satire of both your standard survivalist tv series programming (think Discovery Channel) and the explosion we’ve all seen in Youtube-based Zombie Apocalypse fare.
In the ‘Zombie Hunter’ series, the dreaded Zombie Apocalypse is finally upon mankind, and the result seems to be a bunch of yahoos wandering around hunting the Undead and seeking attention. Zombie ‘Hunter’ Nathan Greene thinks he knows it all, and isn’t afraid to tell you as much in profanity-laden rants. Only, as rapidly becomes clear, Greene’s ego is matched only by his incompetence and lack of actual knowledge about his chosen prey.
The question from a Zombie Rights perspective is, how do we assess the series’ attitudes about the Differently Animated and separate them from the unreliable narrator that is Nathan Greene? Clearly the series showcases a lot of hurtful stereotypes about the Undead, and some are apparently supposed to be objective reality, as seen by the camera, and not just Greene’s fantasizing.
I think we get at least a peek into a more tolerant worldview in Episode 4, ‘The Gore Suit’, where Nathan gets the opportunity to actually speak with a Zombie for a few minutes, and the results are surprising. I’ve embedded the video below.
A bit ambiguous, isn’t it? A tinge of ‘Marvel Zombies’ or ‘Return of the Living Dead’ here with the suffering and sentient Undead.
In the end, Zombies in the world of ‘Zombie Hunter’ may be ravenous, rapidly decaying monstrosities, or they may be misunderstood addicts suffering from terrible cravings, but one thing is clear: they’re not the self-important goofballs roaming the countryside with a camera. They’re not the butt of the joke… but they’re not exactly sympathetic either.
It’s a tough call, but for now, we’re rating the ‘Zombie Hunter’ series as Anti-Zombie. More material like Episode 4 and we might be able to bump it up to Zombie Tolerant.
As always, the ZRC lives in hope.
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Perhaps now is not the time to mention how easy it is to restore a Mac that has a proper Time Machine backup in the event of total hard drive loss?
;-)
Good luck, John!
Perhaps not. Plus the prices on Apple laptops border on obscenity. If I had the money lying around for that I’d buy a D-Robo and a few terabytes of storage, anyway, not a new machine.
Totally agree that they’re not cheap, I bought my MacBook Pro with the proceeds from selling my condo. They are more expensive, but they’re also a lot more reliable for both the OS and hardware: my 4 year old laptop has had an OS reinstall once, and the restore was “plug in backup drive, boot from OS DVD, tell installer to restore from backup, and walk away.” The only hardware failures that I’ve had is a hard drive replacement that failed, a bad video card chip, and a fan replacement: the first two were warranty, the third was about $150. A friend of mine lost three laptops to this NVidia chip failure, HP wouldn’t life a finger because they were out of warranty, Apple said it didn’t matter if mine was in or out of warranty.
I like ‘em. And I also just bought a 3 TB external drive. Like voting in Chicago, back up early and often.