From the Grave to the Silver Screen

How Modern Film Has Changed Our Outlook on the Zombie

Zombies have been an integral part of the horror and sci-fi genres of film since 1968 with the release of George A. Romero’s film Night of the Living Dead. Romero’s film spawned a large number of zombie-based movies that would assist in creating a new culture based on the fear of a ‘zombie apocalypse’. These films have created the idea of the modern zombie with which most people have become familiar. However, they were not the first to depict zombies on the ‘big screen’.

Poster for Halperin's White Zombie (1932)

Believed to be the first zombie movie, White Zombie (1932) directed by Victor Halperin, depicts the zombie in a more traditional light by relating it back to African voodooism . Done on a much smaller scale, there is no sign of the ‘apocalypse’ that has spurned many of the popular notions and fears behind zombies. ‘Traditional’ zombies were the product of shaman black magic - empty shells whose souls were at the mercy of their master. The fear created by this movie was not necessarily rooted in the idea of a mindless walking corpse. Instead, it was the fact that an intelligent being was in control.

Romero played on the fear spurned by the Cold War. His zombies were the products of radioactive contamination rather than black magic. Numbers were the main source of the fear created by the modern zombie. The idea of an endless wave of single-minded beings driven by their ‘hunger for brains’ would form the basis for countless zombie movies to follow.