[Inside Chodong] The Zombie Movie Craze Is Not So Welcome

Movie 'Peninsula' Still Cut

It is truly the golden age of zombie movies. Since the commercial success of Train to Busan (2016), they have been pouring out relentlessly. Rampant (2018), The Odd Family (2019), #Alive (2020), Peninsula (2020)... There are also mountains of upcoming films scheduled for production, such as Yeouido, Half, Bupyeong Underground Dungeon, and Blackout.

Few works rely solely on primal fear. Most create ironic situations to criticize political and social absurdities or maladies. Train to Busan highlighted the paralysis of the national system, alluding to the Sewol ferry disaster. Rampant and the drama Kingdom (2019?2020) turned even kings into zombies to point out incompetent and corrupt power.

Zombies exhibited a resistant and critical nature even before appearing in films. The meaning of "living corpse" originated from the voodoo rituals of the West Indies. It is a spell that extracts a human soul to make a slave.

The etymology traces back to the creator god called "Nzambi Mpungu." Nzambi Mpungu, who governs abundance and creation, was worshiped by the people of the Congo in Africa. The dignified being became regarded as an evil entity in the West Indies due to the punishment defined by voodoo. The concept that wrongdoers are turned into slaves who must work endlessly was condensed and passed down orally among people.

The starting point is known to be 15th-century Europe. At that time, white people enslaved black Africans they had kidnapped. Around then, Christopher Columbus discovered the American continent. European countries competed to colonize the New World, sending many African blacks as slaves.

Movie 'Rampant' Still Cut

Enduring all kinds of torment, black people called upon Nzambi whenever they could, seeking salvation from God. White people feared the name that came unanimously from the blacks. Since their only worshiped god was Jesus, they dismissed Nzambi as a demon or a false god.

Originally, voodoo was born from a mixture of the indigenous beliefs of Africans brought to the Americas through the slave trade and Christianity. Consequently, it contained much resentment toward whites. Complaints erupted here and there, eventually leading to a black nation being established in Haiti through a rebellion of black slaves and mixed-race people. The leader of the rebellion, Dutty Boukman, was a voodoo priest.

After the success of the Haitian Revolution, they executed whites as retribution for previous atrocities. For whites, voodoo was not only heresy but also a dangerous religion that posed a real threat to them.

The first movie to feature zombies was White Zombie (1932), set in Haiti. Voodoo was portrayed as a cult that creates zombies. The sorcerer Murder (Bela Lugosi) was commissioned by plantation owner Beaumont (Robert Frazer) to turn a white couple on their honeymoon into zombies. There were already many people turned into zombies there, all working like machines at a sugar refinery under Murder's command.

Movie 'White Zombie' Still Cut

The aggressive concept of zombies as we know it today was first presented in Night of the Living Dead (1968). It was a work criticizing the absurdities of 1960s American society. Government officials could not even figure out how zombies appeared. Ben (Duane Jones), a black man, defeats the zombies and selfish whites and survives alone.

However, he is killed by a white vigilante group that shoots without even checking whether someone is human or a zombie. Although the zombies were barely defeated, even worse humans awaited.

The tragic ending contained the anger of American society over the Vietnam War and racial discrimination at the time. Whites probably recalled black protests when zombies flooded the streets. Blacks, looking at Ben, likely thought of family and friends lost in the Vietnam War. After Night of the Living Dead, the flood of zombie movies that followed were probably not very welcome.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.