Posted By John Sears on December 9, 2010

I really don’t know what to say about this one, at all:

Now you can practice your zombie killing and get rewarded at the same time with this zombie pinata. Available on Etsy from Tom Dead Stuff the pinata’s are paper mache and sell for $40 plus shipping/handling.

Yes, you can indeed do that – if you’re a despicable monster without a conscience or semblance of human decency.

The noose really takes it an extra step, doesn’t it, though? Not only does it glorify killing Zombies, it strongly implies that you should lynch them first (ala the Savini remake of Night of the Living Dead, perhaps). Lynching: Now it’s ok, if you do it to a Zombie.

I feel slightly ill. Might have to call it an early night after this.

Category: Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
Tags: Social Justice

Posted By John Sears on December 9, 2010

I know this is starting to resemble beating a dead horse (which would be cruel, and if the horse was Zombified, actively against our mandate) but could we please, PLEASE stop using the word ‘Zombie’ to signify anything with which a writer actively disagrees and wishes would disappear?

Examples abound:

Academics have also begun to feast on this latest popular culture craze: Princeton University Press has published “Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us,” which lists privatized Social Security, efficient financial markets and trickle-down economics as examples. In February the press is scheduled to release “Theories of International Politics and Zombies.”

Now three Australian professors have sent out a request on the scholarly listserv H-Ideas for contributions to a book on how zombie culture resembles the culture of higher education itself.

“We propose to canvas a range of critical accounts of the contemporary university as an atavistic culture of the undead,” said the professors, Andrew Whelan, Chris Moore and Ruth Walker. By their measure the undead include “a listless population of academics, managers, administrators and students, all shuffling to the beat of the corporatist drum.”

Once again, ‘Zombie’ is not a synonym for your personal pet peeve, writers and academics. Zombies are people too, not some monolithic, imaginary block of phantom enemies you can dismiss or utilize as strawmen.

So here we have a book on ‘Zombie’ ideas in economics, a book on Zombies and international relations (which may, to be fair, talk about literal Zombies, albeit probably in terms of how to exterminate them, see this previous post on a Foreign Policy article along those lines), and a proposal for a book on outmoded ideas in Academia, framed as being ‘Zombie’-like in some fashion.

Groan. Mindless repetition of trite, uninformative and useless ideas? Adopting or adhering to trends regardless of their timeliness or merit? Stubbornly clinging to false, baseless, or misleading concepts in the face of opposition and differing perspectives?

That isn’t being a ‘Zombie’ at all, but it does sound a lot like Professors Whelan, Moore and Walker, doesn’t it?

Quite to the contrary of these misuses of the term, to be a Zombie typically is to demonstrate fierce individual achievement while oriented properly within a collective sharing similar goals and full trust and cooperation. (Though of course there are always exceptions in any large group of individuals).

Zombies have these behaviors not just because of who they are, but because of what they are: a repressed minority who need, desperately, to work together in order to survive enormous injustice and persecution. If Zombies weren’t able to function in such a fashion, ask yourself, how precisely could they pose an even remotely plausible threat to the mass of Living Humanity? Romero-esque self-loathing aside, how many people truly believe that a disorganized, directionless, mildly hostile threat could undo all of civilization?

This brings us back to the central paradox of Anti-Zombie hate: if everything Zombie Haters say about the Undead was true (it’s not), then what do they have to worry about? Why, precisely, with all their learning and tool using ability, do they fear the Hollywood Zombie? If they buy into the brainless, shambling stereotype of the Differently Animated, then why are they so terrified?

The short answer is, barring previously mentioned self-hatred, they really shouldn’t be.

Which brings us back to using ‘Zombie’ as a slander. When it serves the needs of alleged scholars or commentators like the three Professors above, the word means one thing; when someone needs to sell books or movies, it means something drastically different, or else dissolves into incoherence.

I for one am sick of explaining this dichotomy to supposed intellectuals. For shame, Professors. For shame.

(a tip of my hat to Media Bistro for bringing this to our attention originally)

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Tags: Academia, Don't Use the Zed Word, Journamalism, Social Justice

Posted By John Sears on December 9, 2010

This relatively recent piece in Foreign Policy serves as a fascinating and outrageous reminder of the ways in which the academic and policy advocacy world at large continues to mistreat the Differently Animated, and also how world goverments, acting upon such misinformation, might unleash large-scale tragedy upon the Undead community.

FP starts out with a simple proposition: the current cultural obsession with Anti-Zombie media works may reflect an attempt to simulate, and therefore grapple with, intractable and unknown problems whose existence we could postulate but whose precise form is, by definition of being unknown, impossible to anticipate. Zombies are thus a proxy for future calamities whose nature we don’t know, but which will surely occur, human existence being a tenuous and frequently hazardous thing.

Thus they apply the standard Romero-Russo ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ scenario to three primary schools of international relations theory and try to predict how adherents to each one would respond.

Realists, who believe that the balance of power between states that can never trust one another is the status quo of human existence, are said to be particularly suited to a Romero-verse:

As this summary might suggest, realism has a rather dystopian and jaundiced view of the world. In other words, it is perfectly comfortable in the zombie universe — particularly the world of George Romero’s films.

How would the introduction of flesh-eating ghouls affect world politics? The realist answer is simple if surprising: International relations would be largely unaffected.

Liberals, being believers in the overwhelming benefits of mutual cooperation, are seen as likely to push for an international Zombie containment policy:

And what would liberals do after a ghoul invasion? Provided that the initial spread of zombies did not completely wipe out governments, the liberal expectation would be that an international counterzombie regime could make significant inroads into the problem.

And don’t even get me started on how they think neo-conservatives will react:

The neoconservative policy response to an undead uprising would be simple and direct. To paraphrase Robert Kagan, humans are from Earth, and zombies are from hell. Neither accommodation nor recognition would be sustainable options in the face of the zombie threat.

Have you noticed what’s missing from this discussion entirely? No, not morality, for to be fair, we’re discussing international relations, and realists in particular have already made the inherent amorality of their theoretical structure explicit. What’s missing here is any consideration that the Undead might have an agenda and ideology of their own, and constitute more than an uninformed, violent mass of flesh-devouring ghouls!

A singular lack of empathy and research into the actual practices of the Differently Animated pervades the work. Popular Anti-Zombie film constitutes almost the entirety of their conceptual understanding of Zombies, and thus, even though such works are hardly consistent in and of themselves (even when confined to the Romero-Russo paradigm), FP uses them to construct a simplistic and hyperviolent picture of the Undead community. Given this simplistic and wholly imagined ‘threat’, simplistic and uncaring responses seem to follow not just logically but necessarily.

For shame, Foreign Policy, for absolute shame. The Differently Animated Unlive and walk amongst you even now, and you haven’t deigned to notice them, yet, on the basis of the lowest common denominator’s thirst for Anti-Zombie media, you conclude that the most pressing international relations problems in a world with a significant Zombie minority is containment or destruction? How jaded, cynical, and yes, uninformed about the wants, needs and thought processes of the Differently Animated.

Unfortunately this sort of myopia is more than prevalent in academia, it seems to be nearly universal. The Zombie Rights Campaign’s only response is to roll up our sleeves and attempt to take the good word about our Cause to more institutions of learning and advocacy in the hopes of correcting these notions so that when the Undead make their wishes known, said wishes aren’t intentionally misconstrued as ‘Braaaaaaains’ and responded to with massive force. It is our challenge but also our calling to correct this awful state of affairs.

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Tags: Journamalism, Romero, Social Justice

Posted By John Sears on December 8, 2010

The Littlest Zombie (last reviewed here by the ZRC) has at long last gotten a second full issue of his, err, misadventures.

By misadventures, I mean a bizarre mixture of savage Romero-Russo stereotyped violence and adorable antics, but if you’ve been following these reviews to date, you probably already got that.

Issue 2 of The Littlest Zombie is a strange one; despite being only the second full length installment of a semi-ongoing series, it barely features the main character, instead focusing on one of the weirdest people I’ve seen in fiction in a long time: a little girl mad scientist named Professor Elmyria Fuhd.

Seriously. This is some messed up stuff. Prof. Fuhd is a cross between Shirley Temple and Mengele; utterly brilliant in a Reed Richards sort of way, she has a long list of achievements including completing a thesis at 14 months and performing her first successful open heart surgery at the age of six. She is, however, an utter sociopath, driven only by scientific zeal and occasional, seemingly uncontrollable bouts of little girl fixations on things she finds cute (Zombies, who she usually refers to as ‘cutie-wooties’, but also the usual puppies and ponies and such).

The burning question for me is whether Fuhd’s insanity is a separate condition or merely an artifact of obtainining this sort of intellect so prematurely. I mean, basically, until intellectual development reaches a certain level, ALL children are sociopathic monsters to some degree, as they can’t understand the consequences of their behaviors. Fuhd’s smart enough to do so, seemingly, but is she constitutionally capable?

Prof. Fuhd (another question: what university hires a six year old crazed killer onto the faculty) has survived the Zombie Apocalypse in the Littlest Zombieverse by being part of a secret shadow government force buried deep underground. In fact, so far the Apocalypse is going quite well for her; she’s a xenobiologist by preference and Zombies are fascinating to study, which the shadow government indulges her in so long as she returns results on various projects, including an army of cyborg supersoldiers.

Fuhd’s mania (and penchant for shooting disobedient males in the testicles with her handgun) is placing an enormous strain on her relationship with her patrons at the same time as a new batch of ‘cutie-wooties’ is brought into the base for experiments. Included amongst them is, of course, the Littlest Zombie, and that’s where the story really takes off.

(I told you it was unconventionally plotted)

Unfortunately, even for a very misguided Zombie like LZ, torments and horrors await him in Fuhd’s care, torments no little boy, living or Undead, should ever have to face, the almost unspeakable nightmare known as:

a Tea Party.

*shudder* The horror… the horror.

I mean, just look at how the comic’s poor Zombie protagonist suffers, in his pink sunhat, chained to a chair, forced to not-drink tea (which is probably imaginary most of the time, as these things go).

Having found her cutest specimen ever, Professor Fuhd makes her plans to betray her superiors before they betray her, and concocts a plan to survive the Zombie Apocalypse in a somewhat.. unconventional manner: voluntary Zombification.

Hmm. We’re seeing a lot of that lately; it was a featured plot event in the Victorian Undead Sherlock Holmes comic too.

So how does it all go down? I won’t spoil it for you, but it’s not particularly Zombie friendly, let’s just say that.

Once again, by virtue of presenting truly horrific Living characters alongside the (somewhat) more palatable Differently Animated, Littlest Zombie #2 has skated past being officially Living Supremacist, and earns an Anti-Zombie ‘award’.

Hating the Living is no excuse for abusing the Undead, Mr. Perry. For shame.

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Tags: Comics, ZRC Reviews

Posted By John Sears on December 7, 2010

This is another comic we spotted at The Vintage Phoenix in Bloomington, actually, and purely by chance lying on their sort of last chance table. Needless to say, I had to snatch it up after noting that it features another story of The Littlest Zombie, whose unfortunately anti-social antics we last reviewed here.

A Very Zombie Summer contains two stories, actually; one is about the flesh-eating rival to our own far more positive role model Tim the Zombie Spokesurchin, and the other is about some mad scientist and his two hench-wenches going to the beach and inadvertantly causing a Zompocalypse.

I had no idea who those people were supposed to be (recurring characters from another series perhaps?), and it seemed to consist of a lot of jokes about bad bodily smells and genitalia, so let’s skip over it and say that it’s offensive to the Undead, but nothing stands out in the world of Anti-Zombie comics.

The Littlest Zombie story is more interesting, if still in the confusing vein of the previous tale, wherein the Littlest Zombie has a mixed grab bag of childlike intelligence, adult reasoning abilities and patience, and utter, amoral, sociopathic slaughtering capabilities. Bizarre, I know.

I previously discussed confusion over the author’s stated intention to depict beings with roughly cat-level intelligence; this comic confuses me even further as it shows said Littlest Zombie using tools. Cats… also can’t do that, so far as I know. Primates, sure. But cats?

*shrug*

Anyway, our story opens with the Littlest Zombie underwater, trying to find a way to get to a boat full of (supposedly) delicious Survivors above, and doubting himself and his abilities to, err, savagely rend them limb from limb.

It’s moving, in the same way an Ed Gein bedtime story might be. You feel pity for the Littlest Zombie. Someone should take him aside, teach him that eating people isn’t all a Zombie has to look forward to in life, show him some compassion and a decent home life. It might just turn his whole Unlife around.

Sadly I expect we’ll get to see more comics like this one, where he feasts upon, or attempts to feast upon, Living people who also coincidentally are total jerks (so that the audience doesn’t have to feel bad, I suppose, for wanting them dead).

Sigh.

A Very Zombie Summer gets our second-lowest rating, that of Anti-Zombie, and even barely manages to scrape that one out by virtue of the author’s misanthropy toward, seemingly, all sentient humanoids, not just Zombies, which puts the obvious Anti-Zombie prejudice a tiny bit into perspective.

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Tags: Comics, ZRC Reviews

Posted By John Sears on December 7, 2010

While we were in Bloomington, Indiana for The Dark Carnival Film Festival, the art director and I stopped at landmark Bloomington comic book store The Vintage Phoenix for a bit of window shopping, as we usually do when we’re in the neighborhood.

(It really is a fantastic old-school comic book store with an extensive indie selection and even a decent toy/merchandise room. Makes those soulless Comic Carnival places look like the place fun goes to die)

While there I saw, and was compelled by ZRC interests to purchase a trade paperback for review, entitled ‘Victorian Undead’, with a prominent subtitle:

‘Sherlock Holmes vs. Zombies!’

Oh boy.

First of all, it is, as they say, Exactly What It Says on the Tin. This is a Sherlock Holmes story set in Victorian London where he fights the Undead. Sometimes with Zombie products what you get is not precisely what’s advertised; Fulci’s landmark Zombi 2 wasn’t a sequel of any kind, for example, and who on earth knows what ‘evil’ is supposed to be ‘resident’ where in Resident Evil. (The game was originally titled Biohazard in Japan, which makes a lot more sense).

Here though, you get precisely what you should expect. Actually, given the nature of hurried Zombie tie-ins lately, you probably get a better executed version than you were expecting. Victorian Undead is fairly well drawn and colored, the writing feels like a Holmes story without being too intentionally antiquated, and there are some very nice touches here and there that help establish a Victorian setting and sensibility. Things move along pretty well, there are neither too few nor too many characters to keep track of, and Holmes fans will find at least a few appropriate references to the actual Arthur Conan Doyle works to chew on.

As for the rest, however… uggh.

Victorian Undead opens in 1854, when London is witness to a comet breaking up over the city, glowing ominously green as it does so. You can guess what this means; ‘Zombie’ Attack!

Flash forward to 1898, and Holmes and Watson are investigating a crime ring that seems to be brainwashing and then plundering wealthy men with discreet but dangerous appetites. When Holmes goes to bust the perpetrator, he discovers that it is, in fact, a clockwork automaton acting as stand-in. He manages to best the contrivance, but is a bit off-put by the fact that whoever was operating it remotely seemed to know him too well… The investigative duo are then called to their next case, a gruesome murder in the construction site of a new line of the London Underground, whose perpetrator has unexpectedly come back to life with a ravenous hunger for… well, you get the idea.

From there on it’s Holmes working to uncover the plot, a sinister nemesis from his past (no points for guessing that it is, in fact, Moriarty) working to raise an army of the Undead, and chaos and violence ensue, all while clever rationation leads to a second life and death (or perhaps life and Undeath) confrontation between the two supergeniuses.

Meanwhile, you know who suffers? The Zombies, that’s who. They always seem to get caught in the middle of these conflicts. Undead Moriarty has plans to use an Undead army to stage a revolution against the English government, which it is revealed has been persecuting the Differently Animated for over forty years in secret, even developing 19th century grade doomsday devices to fight them. Moriarty frames it as less of an apocalypse and more of a social uprising, though of course he improved the process of Zombification a bit for himself, granting him some kind of superpowered control over the rest of the Undead, who are treated most shabbily by both sides. I mean, yes, so you’ve come back from the dead and you’re both hungry and green. So what? Since when is that so wrong? Why should you have to choose between involuntary servitude at the hands of the Napoleon of Crime or extermination at the hands of the Worlds’ Greatest Detective?

Call me biased, but I think that the real (as in original) Sherlock Holmes would be far more open-minded. In the original works, Holmes works for all manner of clientele, and takes any case that strikes his fancy. He wouldn’t care if you were a Zombie, a Living person, or some sort of lycanthrope, so long as you had a fascinating mental puzzle to work out.

(Well… unless you were a Mormon.)

Holmes was also far less fond of violence than he is depicted here; whereas in this comic he often wades into whole mobs of Zombies with a wicked looking sort of a cross between a machete and a short sword, in the old stories he left the limited application of violence to Dr. Watson and his trusty revolver for the most part. Reason was supposed to triumph, after all, not force of arms.

Here his legendary detective skills are mostly used to figure out where, precisely, the next slaughter of the Differently Animated is to be staged, a long series of bloodbaths leading up to the final showdown between Moriarty and his Empire of the Dead and good old England and its champion, Mr. Holmes.

For indulging in vicious Anti-Zombie stereotypes and for placing the Undead squarely in the crossfire of a power struggle between these two fearsome intellects, not to mention just an appalling amount of Zombie blood and gore, the ZRC gives this comic our lowest rating and thusly designates it as Living Supremacist.

Category: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Tags: Comics, ZRC Reviews

Posted By John Sears on December 7, 2010

Just wanted to put up a quick post to show that not all the Zombie-related merchandise out there has to be negative. Both of these items came to our attention via the good people at The Horror Society, btw.

First is another entry in the sadly narrow crossover of Zombies and fashion: glow in the dark, Zombie themed high heels:

You’ve seen the Iron Fist Zombie Stompers high heels, flats even as a bikini. Now they have a limited edition glow in the dark high heel. SourPuss Clothing is taking pre-orders for these cause they are gonna go like fast zombies.

Second is something the ZRC is interested in purchasing ourselves in time for the holidays, what with all their bready dessert goodness and all: humorously satirical cupcake molds shaped like human skulls:

Cupcake brains – the perfect thing for a sweet toothed zombie or a zombie in training. Check out these skull shaped cupcake molds at Fred & Friends.

Yes, Zombies can enjoy cake too, and we here at the ZRC are overjoyed that someone out there in manufacturing realizes this fact. As an added bonus these molds turn the not-so-old ‘Zombies eat brains’ stereotype on its head by letting everyone in on the ‘brain-eating’ fun, without any actual, you know, cruel and wanton slaughter.

That’s usually a plus in our experience.

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Tags: Zombie Products

Posted By John Sears on December 6, 2010

Another item from the Horror Society twitter-splosion is this piece about some World Cup related advertising run by Deoderant company Rexona (a subsidiary of Unilever, the brand is known here in the United States as Degree)

The Horror Society summed it up this way:

Here’s a fun little commercial that shows a growing mob of zombies hungry for futball as in soccer. The ad was generated for Rexona deodorant around the time of the very popular World Cup series. Oh if only it were this easy to cure zombie madness.

Yes, if only it WAS so easy to cure the hysteria surrounding the Undead.

The commercial itself is a pretty rabidly Anti-Zombie piece of television, showing the mania surrounding football fans (a mental disorder Americans are thankfully resistant to) turning fans of the sport (all men for some reason) into grey-skinned, staggering, lurching… well, you can guess what stereotype we’re talking about here.

Only instead of shambling about trying to eat anything warm-blooded, they go after any and all football merchandise and paraphrenalia. That is, until a Rexona anti-perspirant restores sanity, and, presumably, good body odor.

I’m both disturbed and utterly mystified. I guess this is what happens when Zombies become the zeitgeist’s chosen boogeyman… still, hopefully we won’t continue on this path. I’d hate to see what McDonalds would come up with to use the threat of the Zombie-pocalypse to sell Big Macs.

(I’d better stop it there; don’t want to give the Walking Dead people any tie-in ideas)

You can see the full ad here.

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Tags: Advertising

Posted By John Sears on December 6, 2010

I was alerted to this ‘Dead of the Class’ project by our friends at the Horror Society when a plugin went berserk and dumped a ton of older posts onto their twitter feed, so there’s a certain serendipity to the whole affair. At the first, it sounded somewhat promising:

Brian Cummings latest series Dead of the Class takes on high school stereotypes via yearbook photos.

He transforms everyone from the lunch lady to the school nurse, cheerleaders, a school mascot plus other memorable characters into zombies. I think high school might have been more enjoyable with a few of these zombies roaming the halls.

The ZRC also thinks that high school would be better with Zombies, but we tend to think that about a lot of things (and on a personal note my high school was so bad radioactive flesh devouring bacteria would have been an improvement so it’s not a high standard to meet)

However, once we got to the actual site and browsed the first series it quickly became clear that this was not a Zombie friendly project at all:

In my new series, Dead of the Class, high school stereotypes are explored through yearbook photos, before and after a zombie infestation. Can you tell which are the real zombies???

Firstly, as Terry Pratchett has noted, multiple exclamation marks are a sure sign of a diseased mind. So right off the bat it’s trouble. But just look at the terminology here: ‘zombie infestation’? ‘which are the real zombies’?

Aha, I see. Zombies are just an *infestation* to you, Mr. Cummings, and the only people you could adequately compare them to are social drones sleepwalking their way through high school life?

Repulsive, arrogant, and downright rude!

Regarding the actual ‘Dead of the Class’ photos themselves, there were several series (which you can view here if you really feel you must) and they all revolve around the same visual theme: vapid, vacuous high school stereotypes are turned into even more vacuous individuals, now also ravenous flesh-eating Undead. Har-har har.

Mr. Cummings is obviously a very unenlightened individual, and we feel sorry for him, here at the ZRC. A talent for photography should be used to illuminate the world and find the truth, even and especially about unconventional individuals (like Zombies). To see that noble goal perverted in this manner is just sad.

Thus, the Dead of the Class photography series is rated a solid Anti-Zombie by The Zombie Rights Campaign.

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Tags: Journamalism, ZRC Reviews

Posted By John Sears on December 4, 2010

The Prometheus Project, also apparently named The Frankenstein Syndrome, was the big feature length film to deal with the Differently Animated at the Dark carnival this year (or so we thought going in) As the new, second title suggests, the trailer for this movie is a bit misleading, and it’s much closer to a modern Frankenstein story than it is to a Zombie tale. However, the ZRC likes to take an expansive view of our clientele, and so we would be happy to represent, say, Frankenstein’s ‘Monster’, neck bolts or no neck bolts, should he require our aid. Heck, he’s even green in some depictions, right? Thus we were eager to review this movie.

Unfortunately, despite being a modern spin on the Frankenstein tale (rather than a Zombie film as we previously thought),
it *still* isn’t really about the Differently Animated.

Let’s start with the good parts first. The Prometheus Project is well shot, directed, and acted. The movie maintains a consistent tone and atmosphere from beginning to end, the characters are (mostly) believable, and the confessionary
format/framing device is novel and helps keep things interesting and the story advancing. Tiffany Shepis in particular
delivers a strong performance, striking a tough balance between making her character sympathetic and showing her gradually slide into ever more reckless, amoral behavior as the film goes on. The road to hell, as they say, is paved with good intentions, and it’s nice to have a main character who can’t be easily pegged into some binary good vs evil
ideological scheme.

Now, when it comes to Zombie movies, or in this case, Frankenstein movies, I try not to hold bad science against
filmmakers. Let’s face it, with so many different kinds of Differently Animated individuals out there, and so many sources
of rumor, gossip and misinformation, it can be exceedingly difficult to keep all your facts straight.

In the case of the Prometheus Project, however, we’re dealing with yet another horror movie about stem cell research, and honestly, this is a serious case of Did Not Do the Research.

Sooner or later I’m going to put up a short, very basic layman’s guide to Stem Cells in the hope that horror filmmakers who
want to talk about them can avoid some of these errors. For now, let me just say that virtually every time Prometheus
talks about stem cells, it gets the facts completely and utterly wrong, and to someone who follows the subject, and
particularly its political implications, that fact is immensely distracting.

Quite frankly, some of the mistakes you’ll see in this film are so bad they seem like weird propaganda, and that worries me. People who watch this movie could come away with the impression that stem cells are a bizarre, dangerous, exotic field of research that could plausibly lead to reanimating the dead and creating superhuman monsters.

That is in no way, not even remotely, true. Research on stem cells, particularly embryonic stem cells, is an amazingly
promising area of scientific exploration that could lead to treatments or even cures for many of the most horrifying
diseases facing the human race. Cures for degenerative ailments, an end to shortages of human tissue, blood, even organs for transplantation; these are some of the goals.

Not, say, reviving the dead.

In fact, and this bears repeating: stem cells can’t be used to revive the dead/create Zombies/Differently Animated individuals per se. Sorry, trendy Zombie filmmakers. See, stem cells are themselves ALIVE. In addition, stem cells don’t reanimate existing tissue; that’s not how they function. Rather, they replace dead or defective cells, or can be induced to grow new tissue from scratch, even, potentially, entire orgrans.

Every human being already has stem cells in their body, right now, as we speak, doing their jobs, and yet, the bulk of you don’t turn into Zombies (or vampires or werewolves for that matter). Shocking, I know (not to mention disappointing for our membership recruitment drives).

That’s not the worst of it, however. In an utterly bizarre plot development, the embryonic stem cells being used in the Prometheus Project are derived fresh, with each and every batch, through compulsory abortions performed on a captive group of women.

What on Earth? That is NOT how this works! Not only is it not how stem cells are obtained for research, it’s completely
unnecessary. There are already entire lines of stem cells that are readily available; you don’t have to make
your own, you can just use some that are grown off from an existing, well understood lineage of cellular material. Even if you wanted to establish a new stem cell line, you wouldn’t abduct women, forcibly impregnate them, and then abort their
fetuses; that is not now, nor was it ever, how stem cell lines are obtained. In reality, human stem cell lines are usually made from discarded embryos from fertility clinics, and qualified researchers can order the cells for about a thousand bucks.

Doing things the Prometheus Project way is vaguely like killing a thousand people with a rusty razor blade in the hopes of obtaining some of their gold teeth to make into jewelry. It’s ridiculous, implausible, over the top and unnecessary supervillainy for no good purpose.

In the end, since stem cells are regular, living tissue, anything grown from them shouldn’t be Differently Animated, and thus the ZRC was left unsure what its role was in reviewing this movie. In spite of being technically impossible, a person treated with stem cells becomes somewhat Different, to be sure, in the course of this film. As in, superpowered, Akira-with-a-grudge Different.

Hmm. A living person who came back from the dead with superpowers, but is still, basically, a regularly animated, flesh and blood person? Are they part of our balliwick?

I’m going to have to say… no. Not as such. That would broaden our scope a bit too far; we’d have to not only represent Zombies, but everyone from Christopher Walken in The Dead Zone to Goku from Dragonball Z. Or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for that matter.

I think we’ll leave that task to other people. Plus Buffy and Goku can stand up for themselves.

Thus in the end, since this movie doesn’t involve the Differently Animated, we decided to give it a Zombie Neutral rating.

Actual Frankenstein ‘monsters’ with actual problems, feel free to contact us for help! We’re here for you.

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Tags: Movies, ZRC Reviews