Realism in zombie films?

[Bunsher]

Instead of a zombie film having its own stylized 'world' like Dawn of the Dead, in which everything is in a very manic and comic-book-esque style, or a film that feels like a film in the respect that it follows generic conventions that seperate it from reality, but zombie films that are realistic and portray a realistic and accurate portrayal of our world, and what would happen if zombies occured.

I'd say both Night and Day were realistic examples, and more recently, Shaun of the Dead, which took the completely normal and real lifestyles of two modern Brits and threw them in the zombie mix.

[fulci fan]

Alot of the bites in zombie movies aren't realistic. Even though they look awesome in movies, bites don't look that spectacular in real life. Also, zombies in movies that supposedly have been around a while isn't too realistic. Bodies rot pretty quick and I don't think that zombies would be able to move after a month let alone a year or so. Another thing that I don't see in zombie movies is the characters being affected by killing zombies. Sometimes it is addressed but rarely.

[Legion2213]

Another thing that I don't see in zombie movies is the characters being affected by killing zombies. Sometimes it is addressed but rarely.

The first scene of "Night 1990" really nails the reaction to killing zombies for me...the first time I saw this movie I just *knew* that Tony Todd was going to be the definitive Ben (for me anyways).

I think Fran looking at that baseball player in "Dawn" (as they prepare to masacre the mall zombies) is also one of those moments.

[Trin]

Peter and Roger in the apartments. And all the SWAT guys. Even Wooley. Revulsion, nausea, freaked out, broken down. They all did a great job of showing reactions to the situation.

[clanglee]

I'm gonna have have to say that Shaun of the Dead was most definitely not a realistic movie. Fun. . . but come on. . . .

[darth los]

I think Miguel in day did a god job at being totally freaked out by the situation he found himself in. I gather that's how most would have behaved.

It was a good change of pace from characters just dealing with it and becoming instant sharpshooters.

:cool:

[Zombie Snack]

In a long term apocolyptic situation I think everyone would be filthy, dirty, nasty from a lack of clean clothes and running water and the chance for your nightly bubble bath..hair would be greasy and mangy and lice would be all in there hair, minor scrapes and cuts and such would get infected and full of puss and after a month or two you wouldnt hardly be able to tell a human from a zed. I havent really seen alot of that in the zombie movies, it's amazing how most of them still have all the nice comforts of home at their fingertips even weeks/months/years after the outbreak....amazing.

[hadrian0117]

In a long term apocolyptic situation I think everyone would be filthy, dirty, nasty from a lack of clean clothes and running water and the chance for your nightly bubble bath..hair would be greasy and mangy and lice would be all in there hair...

Lori Cardille mentioned this on the commentary for Day. She thought everyone, including her character, should've locked alot worse for wear to the extent they'd be missing teeth. Romero disagreed.

It's not just a problem with zombie films. Look at period piece; even filthy medieval peasants will have perfect teeth and the women will have hairless legs & underarms (& in more recent films the men will have hairless chests). Most filmmakers simply don't want to go that far in "uglifying" their casts(especially leading actresses).


... Also, zombies in movies that supposedly have been around a while isn't too realistic. Bodies rot pretty quick...

On the flip side some films go way overboard on makeup for fresh zombies. A zombie that just revived and was dead less than an hour isn't going to look much different that a living person (aside from any injuries). The Dawn remake was guilty of this.

Night '90 had some of the best zombie makeup I've ever seen (it helped that most of the zombies were only a few hours old).

[CooperWasRight]

Lori Cardille mentioned this on the commentary for Day. She thought everyone, including her character, should've locked alot worse for wear to the extent they'd be missing teeth. Romero disagreed.

It's not just a problem with zombie films. Look at period piece; even filthy medieval peasants will have perfect teeth and the women will have hairless legs & underarms (& in more recent films the men will have hairless chests). Most filmmakers simply don't want to go that far in "uglifying" their casts(especially leading actresses).



On the flip side some films go way overboard on makeup for fresh zombies. A zombie that just revived and was dead less than an hour isn't going to look much different that a living person (aside from any injuries). The Dawn remake was guilty of this.

Night '90 had some of the best zombie makeup I've ever seen (it helped that most of the zombies were only a few hours old).

Im gonna have to side with George on this one...The were in a facility with running water... There is no reason to believe they would let themselves go to shit.

On your 2nd point Roger had been going over a number of days... From professional and personal experience I can tell you someone going from disease that causes the body to shut down it really does not take mach for someone to look awful... Take a look at stage IV cancer victims and you begin to see its no stretch at all.

[Zombie Snack]

[/COLOR]
Lori Cardille mentioned this on the commentary for Day. She thought everyone, including her character, should've locked alot worse for wear to the extent they'd be missing teeth. Romero disagreed.

It's not just a problem with zombie films. Look at period piece; even filthy medieval peasants will have perfect teeth and the women will have hairless legs & underarms (& in more recent films the men will have hairless chests). Most filmmakers simply don't want to go that far in "uglifying" their casts(especially leading actresses).



On the flip side some films go way overboard on makeup for fresh zombies. A zombie that just revived and was dead less than an hour isn't going to look much different that a living person (aside from any injuries). The Dawn remake was guilty of this.

Night '90 had some of the best zombie makeup I've ever seen (it helped that most of the zombies were only a few hours old).

I was thinking about things that previousily were very minor situations, easily taken care of that would be total hardships in an apocolyptic zombie outbreak, like a bad toothache or absessed tooth, I thought about the movie Cast Away with Tom Hanks, when he was alone on the island and his tooth was hurting him, how he dealt with that...damn..ouch...they had old Tom looking pretty rough on that Island, It looked like he had been a cast away for 3 years..I think I read where he lost over 30 lbs to film those scenes, to give a more realistic look to his character...but in some of these zombie movies where civilization has crumbled and fallen these people still have plenty of meat on the bones...and pretty pearly whites with no cavities...amazing!!

---------- Post added at 08:49 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:43 PM ----------


Im gonna have to side with George on this one...The were in a facility with running water... There is no reason to believe they would let themselves go to shit.

On your 2nd point Roger had been going over a number of days... From professional and personal experience I can tell you someone going from disease that causes the body to shut down it really does not take mach for someone to look awful... Take a look at stage IV cancer victims and you begin to see its no stretch at all.


How was the water still running in Day..I believe Mcdermot said in case you havent heard the power is off on the mainland and all the shopping malls are closed..they had been up and down the coast 100 miles in each directions and found no sign of NO ONE....so who was working at the water dept.??? who was repairing broken water lines, who was keeping the septic sewer systems flushing.. I admit it would really really be cool to be one of the last known people alive in a zombie world and still be able to walk over to the water fountain and get ya a cool drink of water..LOL..

[Rancid Carcass]

I'm gonna have have to say that Shaun of the Dead was most definitely not a realistic movie. Fun. . . but come on. . . .

Actually, that is almost exactly how we'd deal with a zombie apocalypse on this side of the pond. :lol:

[CooperWasRight]

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I was thinking about things that previousily were very minor situations, easily taken care of that would be total hardships in an apocolyptic zombie outbreak, like a bad toothache or absessed tooth, I thought about the movie Cast Away with Tom Hanks, when he was alone on the island and his tooth was hurting him, how he dealt with that...damn..ouch...they had old Tom looking pretty rough on that Island, It looked like he had been a cast away for 3 years..I think I read where he lost over 30 lbs to film those scenes, to give a more realistic look to his character...but in some of these zombie movies where civilization has crumbled and fallen these people still have plenty of meat on the bones...and pretty pearly whites with no cavities...amazing!!

---------- Post added at 08:49 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:43 PM ----------




How was the water still running in Day..I believe Mcdermot said in case you havent heard the power is off on the mainland and all the shopping malls are closed..they had been up and down the coast 100 miles in each directions and found no sign of NO ONE....so who was working at the water dept.??? who was repairing broken water lines, who was keeping the septic sewer systems flushing.. I admit it would really really be cool to be one of the last known people alive in a zombie world and still be able to walk over to the water fountain and get ya a cool drink of water..LOL..

Well they were in a military emergency bunker of some sort. They are generally set up for fallout/war so they have there own water system.

[MaximusIncredulous]

Stinky zeds would be covered in insects from head to toe, regardless of how much they moved. As we see in Day, zeds seem to slow down and reside in dark places when lacking food which would encourage further feeding by insects.

[Legion2213]

Actually, if they were edible, the Zeds may only be a problem for a few weeks...before they'd all been totally consumed...insects are always on the scoff.

[Trin]

...it would really really be cool to be one of the last known people alive in a zombie world and still be able to walk over to the water fountain and get ya a cool drink of water..LOL..
The water fountain in Day was still working. Sarah got a cool drink of water from it on camera.

[Zombie Snack]

yea i was being a little sarcastic with that, that is the scene I was speaking of, Day is my fav film of the original trilogy, but really to expect the water system to still be operational for such an extended amount of time is almost as far of a stretch as.....well as the dead rising.

[CooperWasRight]

yea i was being a little sarcastic with that, that is the scene I was speaking of, Day is my fav film of the original trilogy, but really to expect the water system to still be operational for such an extended amount of time is almost as far of a stretch as.....well as the dead rising.

Ah...no... Even standard military bases have there own power/water and sewer. Let alone military fallout/bunkers.

[Gemini]

The water fountain in Day was still working. Sarah got a cool drink of water from it on camera.

Yeah, I think zombie snack was poking fun at that scene in his post.

However, like another post on here states, I think the shelter in Day would be self sufficient and obviously equipped to deal with apocalyptic events so running water does not surprise me.

As far as decomposition from maggots down to microscopic microbes Day puts forth the theory of a slow rot "as long as 10 years" and Max Brooks' books take it further by stating that the slow rot is caused by the disease which is repellant to any living organism.

God's way of stalling mother nature and punishing us for trying to "figure his shit out" :skull:

[Wyldwraith]

Just thought of something,
This facility in Day was set up for the scientists to study and come up with a solution to the undead crisis. Even at the very outset the people who sent them there would've been aware that the nature of the undead was highly infectious. Even if they didn't understand the exact why or how.

That said, why was there no sign of any security measures to prevent a catastrophic breach in the event that say, one of the scientists tasked with studying the undead made a mistake and got infected, or if an accident on the surface compromised the fenceline that seemed to be their first and last line of surface defense against the undead.

I mean we're talking realism right? I can accept the fence being all they had because of the undoubtedly rushed nature of their base setup/mission, but that the main entrance/exit to the surface had no built-in security beggars the imagination.

Forget the zombies for a second. It's an underground military base. How many of those have you heard of that all you need do to gain access to the main facility is push a single button?

Walmart warehouses have more security than that. Requiring a turned key to be inserted and remain there as long as you want the supply lifts to run. Even such a simple security measure would've prevented Miguel's betrayal.

Sure, they were rushed in setting up, and didn't have access to ideal working conditions because of the spreading undead population. Still, you'd think they'd have found somewhere with at least as much security as a standard army base.

Just a thought. Never occurred to me before to question why it was so easy to open the base up to zombie invasion.

[shootemindehead]

God's way of stalling mother nature and punishing us for trying to "figure his shit out" :skull:

Nah, it was because he didn't want to see us blow a big hole in his sky.

[CooperWasRight]

Actually he thought we were getting to big for our britches...

[Trin]

It's an underground military base.
I guess this raises the question. What kind of facility was the Day bunker? We saw what appeared to be an empty missile silo. The rest was a commercial underground storage facility.

I think it is clear that it was not a functioning military base. They had no military vehicles. No military radio or communication center (beyond the WWII stuff Bill mentions). No security measures. A scant dozen or so military personnel who didn't appear to be permanently stationed there.

The facility appeared to be a bit more outfitted for a scientific research team. The labs appeared to have sinks and cabinets similar to a medical office or lab. There was more medical equipment than military. But even that was scant compared to what you'd find in a CDC or hospital.

Maybe the site was chosen purely for its isolation and because it had once been a military facility, not because it was a military base or research lab at present?


...that the nature of the undead was highly infectious.I don't know if I agree with "highly infectious" considering it was only transmitted by bite. If a normal human had a condition of the same level of communicability they wouldn't be treated special.

[Debbieangel]

Just thought of something,
This facility in Day was set up for the scientists to study and come up with a solution to the undead crisis. Even at the very outset the people who sent them there would've been aware that the nature of the undead was highly infectious. Even if they didn't understand the exact why or how.

That said, why was there no sign of any security measures to prevent a catastrophic breach in the event that say, one of the scientists tasked with studying the undead made a mistake and got infected, or if an accident on the surface compromised the fenceline that seemed to be their first and last line of surface defense against the undead.

I mean we're talking realism right? I can accept the fence being all they had because of the undoubtedly rushed nature of their base setup/mission, but that the main entrance/exit to the surface had no built-in security beggars the imagination.

Forget the zombies for a second. It's an underground military base. How many of those have you heard of that all you need do to gain access to the main facility is push a single button?

Walmart warehouses have more security than that. Requiring a turned key to be inserted and remain there as long as you want the supply lifts to run. Even such a simple security measure would've prevented Miguel's betrayal.

Sure, they were rushed in setting up, and didn't have access to ideal working conditions because of the spreading undead population. Still, you'd think they'd have found somewhere with at least as much security as a standard army base.

Just a thought. Never occurred to me before to question why it was so easy to open the base up to zombie invasion.

Wlyd, you are putting today's thinking to so many years ago's reality. We didn't have all the gadgets and stuff like we do now.
When DAY was made if there were such things the general public wouldn't be aware of it so moviemakers wouldn't have the knowledge to put it in their films.
I see what you are saying about security measures but as I recall and it's been awhile since I watched DAY,but, as I remember a lot of the soldiers were killed during the outbreak.
Although, I would think there would be better fencing than they had in the movie to keep the zombies out? or keep the perimeter way away from where the opening to the shelter was located. In the movie they were much to close to where they had the helio in my opinion. That just don't seem right.

[shootemindehead]

Actually he thought we were getting to big for our britches...

Blowing holes in his sky...



*runs out the door and down the street*

[bassman]

I've always thought that the bunker/mine in Day is the same in the movie as it is in real life. A storage facility with office space. Storage facility explains the campers, rvs, and such while office space explains the halls and make shift labs.

This doesn't really explain the missile silo, but I just figure that the gubment stored it there. They have those things everywhere, anyway...

[shootemindehead]

Isn't it supposed to be an abandoned missile silo, that was being used as a storage facility?

That's the way I've always seen it.