Tag: zombies

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Z Nation

I never really got into The Walking Dead (TWD). Which is odd, because I’m into most things zombie-ish. Don’t get me wrong; I loved the comic book, TWD, written by Robert Kirkman, but the television show was never that interesting to me. The bleak flavor of storytelling that made the comic so compelling, just came off as grim and joyless on the screen. And while this production of TWD was completely devoid of fun, how the heck else would a show about a post-apocalyptic, zombie-filled wasteland be? Then, back in 2014, the Syfy network aired a little show called Z Nation. I don’t expect there are many fellow fans of this show. It was NOT the most watched show, on a niche network and most fans of the zombie genre prefer their shows with a bit more horror. A good chunk of Z Nation was pure silliness.

If you’ve ever watched any zombie show, you know the basics. The dead now walk the Earth, hungry for human flesh, an apocalypse of the undead, destroying civilization and reducing nations to bands of tribal humans fighting over the scraps that are left. In the specific instance of Z Nation, the show starts 3 years into the zombie apocalypse, and scientists are trying to find a cure. They do so by injecting prison inmates with a cocktail of experimental drugs, often causing a painful death, but what are ya gonna do? On one such occasion, while the experiments are taking place, a horde of zombies break in and devour everyone in the room. Well, everyone except one of the inmates, an insufferable example of humanity named Murphy (Keith Allen of Stumptown and The Good Doctor) . In some bizarre twist of fate, the experimental drug he received, along with the zombie bites he suffered, turn him into the only person on Earth to be immune to whatever it is turning people into the undead. This suddenly makes him the most important person in the world and Sgt. Charles Garnett (Tom Everett Scott of La La Land and 13 Reasons Why) is charged with the task of transporting Murphy to the last remaining lab of the. He is assisted in this journey by Lt. Roberta Warren (Kellita Smith of The Bernie Mack Show and The First Family), who really becomes the star of the show.

Along the way, they are joined by other survivors. Doc (Russell Hodgkinson of Leverage and Grimm) was a wellness counselor and recovering drug addict before the apocalypse, but now serves as the group’s healer. His character is mostly stoner, burn-out comic relief, with the occasional flashes of hippie wisdom. Then there’s 10K (Nat Zang of, of … nothing else, really), the youngest member of the group, whose oddly numerical name is based on his goal of killing 10,000 zombies. Addy Carver (Anastasia Baranova of Scout’s Safari and Veronica Mars) is described by the Z Nation Wikipedia page as the group’s communication specialist, but I’ve completely forgotten about exactly what she did. It’s been years since I’ve seen an episode of Z Nation and she didn’t really stand out among the cast when I was watching it. I’m leaving out quite a number of cast members. One reason for this is that I don’t want to write any spoilers, so I’m sticking strictly to characters in the first season. The second is that the cast is huge; across all 5 seasons of the show, I don’t have the room to include every single cast member. The cast member I can’t leave out is Citizen Z (DJ Qualls of My Name is Earl and Supernatural). I’m a big fan of Qualls and feel that his awkward goofiness adds some fun to any show he’s a part of. On Z Nation, he plays an ex-hacker, NSA agent that was at a listening post in the Arctic circle when the apocalypse occurred. Relatively safe in his frozen bunker, he monitors the group as they make their journey, warning them of dangers and pointing out areas of interest.

The show works for a number of reasons. I found the characters likable and unique. Allen plays Murphy amazingly well, alternately making fans want to punch him in his stupid face and root for him to succeed. Doc is the lovable Cheech and Chong extra and 10K the brooding assassin with goth appeal. I kind of liked Addy, but I thought her character was much less fleshed out than the rest of the cast. Then there were the writers. I found the story lines fresh and inventive, adding quirkiness and humor into a genre I didn’t know needed it. The show had several different types of zombies, including exploding ones, and they were usually dispatched in ultra-violent and amusing ways. If those two descriptors don’t seem to go together, you need to watch the show. It didn’t always work. When the show first started, whenever they would “kill” a zombie, they would say the phrase, “I give you mercy.” That phrase was even a part of their intro theme song, but, holy shit, did that get old fast. I get it; they saw the undeath of being a zombie as a fate worse than death, but it really lost its impact over time.

A few years ago, after Z Nation had ended, the Asylum (the fine folks who brought the Sharknado series), the production company that created Z Nation, put out a prequel called Black Summer. I was so excited for it to come out. Z Nation had been off the air for about a year or so and I was missing some of that zombie action. It had been said that this wouldn’t be done in the same tongue in cheek style as Z Nation, but nothing could prepare me for the soul crushing desolation of this show. It was neither bad nor exceptionally good, but it offered no respite from the violence and tension in each episode. There was no binging this one; after a single episode, my mood was so depressed that I couldn’t even dream of watching a second episode.

While I write these little pieces to show my love for these shows, it’s hard for me to recommend Z Nation to anyone else. It does have a 6.7 rating on IMDB, so I can’t be alone in my fandom, but I, personally, have never met anyone who spoke fondly of the show. Plus, my tastes tend to be somewhat unique. I’ve given many a recommendation which resulted in those who listened looking at me a little differently, and not in a good way. But if you’re looking for a show that balances the Yin of violence and death with the Yang of humor, then Z Nation might be the one for you. You could certainly do worse (I’m looking at you, Fear the Walking Dead).

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Pontypool

This is a film that doesn’t get nearly enough love. I get it; it might not be for everyone. It’s a zombie movie with no undead, flesh-eating zombies. It’s a horror movie with little blood and the secret weapon against the apocalypse is poetry. It’s weird. It’s unique. Dare I say, it’s a thinking man’s zombie movie. And the threat isn’t a monster or a virus or a demon; it’s language, it’s a meme. I would say that Pontypool is way ahead of its time in demonstrating how dangerous the wrong meme can be. I actually feel a little bad about calling this a zombie movie, in that the producer has explicitly said that this is not a zombie movie, referring to the infected, instead, as conversationalists. That being said, the infected were once normal humans who have been turned into mindless creatures bent on violence and everyone else calls them zombies, too.

I don’t think many people have seen this movie, so I’ll give a brief description. It’s a bottle movie, almost the entire movie takes place at a small radio station in the town of Pontypool, Ontario, reminiscent of 10 Cloverfield Lane. We soon meet shock jock DJ, Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie of Watchmen and Come to Daddy), a grizzled renegade, abrasive and slightly arrogant due to being a big fish in a little pond. He comes into the station to do his show on a cold and snowy day, assisted by the station manager, Sydney (Lisa Houle of Cold Squad and Scene of the Crime). Given that it’s talk radio, his show involves taking calls from listeners, but the first call is from their “eye in the sky” traffic reporter. He describes an odd scene in which a group of people seem to be attacking another and then he gets cut off. That sets off a series of calls, each one more bizarre and frightening than the last, the story of a zombie apocalypse told in snippets. Finally, the infection and the infected arrive at the studio and death enters the bottle.

It feels like a radio show, almost more so than it does a movie. There’s a good reason for that, in that, not only was the production inspired by Orson Welles, War of the Worlds, but it was also made into a radio play at the same time it was filmed. Based on a book, Pontypool Changes Everything, written by Tony Burgess, who also adapted it for the movie, it is part of a trilogy. The first book in the trilogy is The Hellmouths of Brewdley, followed by Pontypool Changes Everything and finally, Caesarea. I say trilogy, because that’s what’s on the Wikipedia page. Reading the descriptions of the three books , however, I have no idea how they are related. In addition to writing the screenplay for Pontypool, Burgess has written 7 other screen plays, including Septic Man and Hellmouth. He has even been in a number of his own movies, including Pontypool (he played Tony Lawrence).

In order to be complete in my research, I started tracking down these other movies. Septic Man involves a sewerage worker who gets trapped in a septic tank and becomes mutated by toxic sewage. It addition to sounding too much like The Toxic Avenger, it just sounded incredibly disgusting. Ejecta got horrible reviews, scoring a 4.6 on IMDB and sounded like it might be tortuous to watch. So, Hellmouth it was. Much like Pontypool, it seemed as if were made on a show string budget. Filmed in black and white and making liberal use of cheap editing tricks, it has the feel of the movie, Sin City. It’s the story of Sydney, an old and dying cemetery caretaker. He receives a box that contains a key and a mysterious map. Hellmouth was …okay. Watchable, but not too compelling. Somewhat disappointing, really. I’m writing this post because I LOVED Pontypool. I though it was amazing enough that I’ve seen it three times and I would see it again in an instant, and I rarely see movies more than once.

At the start of this post, I mentioned the word meme. While I have never heard anyone else associate Pontypool with memes, the connection seems obvious. A meme is defined as an idea, behavior or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person. Many of these are merely humorous, like Bad Luck Brian and Business Cat, but memes can be weaponized. In 2015, The journal, Defense Strategic Communications published an article by Jeff Giesea titled, It’s Time to Embrace Memetic Warfare, urging that, as countries prepare for cyber warfare, they should also be preparing for memetic warfare. One passage reads:

Cyber warfare is about taking control of data. Memetic warfare is about taking control of the dialogue, narrative, and psychological space. It’s about denigrating, disrupting, and subverting the enemy’s effort to do the same. Like cyber warfare, memetic warfare is asymmetrical in impact. It can be highly effective relative to cost. The attack surface can be large or small. Memetic warfare can be used in conjunction with troops, ships, aircraft, and missiles, or it can be employed without any kinetic military force at all. It operates in the communications battlespace.

Anyone who has been online in the last few years knows how pervasive a good meme can be, influencing large segments of society. I believe that Pontypool mimics this effect, though pushed to nightmarish conclusions.

This movie isn’t for everyone. The monsters in it are less monsterish than in most horror movies, and the deadly infection is somewhat conceptual in nature. Still, I feel that the actors are excellent and that the director does a fantastic job of slowly dialing up the tension until the viewer feels just as trapped and threatened as the people inside the tiny, small town, radio studio. The nature of the infection itself is so esoteric that I couldn’t stop thinking about it for weeks. The best horror movies are the ones that won’t let go. That hold onto one’s psyche. And, for me, Pontypool is exactly that. I may just have to watch it again.

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Contracted – The Most Disgusting Zombie Movie of All Time

If you know me, or if you’ve read enough of this blog, you know that it takes a bit to disturb me. As a former anatomy instructor, I’m no stranger to, not only dead bodies, but actively dismembering them. Sure, we call it dissection, but tomato/tomato. During my short term as a doctor, I’ve sewn up mangled hands and facial lacerations, driven a needle into a man’s stomach to draw fluid off (paracentesis), and, well, you get the idea. It should surprise no one that I am into the more extreme forms of horror. With that in mind, I want you to know that I am deadly serious when I say that Contracted, and its sequel, the inventively named, Contracted: Phase 2, are two of the most disturbing movies I have ever seen. These films fall squarely into the subgenre of body horror. What makes them more horrifying than most is their focus on sex.

Before I say more, let me tell you what these films are about. The first movie, Contracted, follows a young woman named Samantha (Najarra Townsend of Breakfast Buddies and Medinah) who is basically date raped at a party. Over the following days, she begins to feel sicker and sicker and fears that she has an STD. The rest of the movie is a slow burn, as we watch Samantha deteriorate, her symptoms becoming more and more disgusting. How disgusting, you ask? Well, there’s an awful lot of vaginal bleeding, hair and teeth falling out, vomiting, maggots under the skin; I could go on, but I’ll spare you the details. Equally disturbing is the gradual mental decline as the infection takes over. Her impulse control goes out the window and she begins to have violent outbursts. By the end of the film, she has become a full fledged zombie. Knowing this in no way takes anything away from the film; there is never any glimmer of hope for poor Samantha, as we watch her life crumble.

I can’t stress this enough, but absolutely do NOT watch this with someone you are romantically/sexually interested in. This is the opposite of a date movie and will completely destroy any sort of interest in sex, or even human contact. At least, it did for me. The is also the opposite of a feel good movie. I mean, it’s no Come and See, but the grim, bleakness embodied by this film will have you looking at the world through filth-colored glasses for a few days.

The sequel, Contracted: Phase 2, is not as good as the first movie. I would recommend skipping this one altogether, as it doesn’t improve the story any, exploring ideas within the first movie that didn’t really need exploring. Here we follow Riley (Matt Mercer of Auteur and Beyond the Gates), a friend of Samantha’s from the first movie, the two of them getting hot and heavy in one of the most skin crawling scenes I’ve ever seen. Starting to feel sick himself, and hearing of Samantha’s fate, Riley is appropriately worried and sees a doctor, who is frickin’ worthless. Allow me to digress a little here, since I’m a doctor and it always bothers me to see medical inaccuracies, but both of these characters received the most inept treatment possible. Fever, bleeding out of places that should not be bleeding, vomiting; if these people came into my office, I would be like WTF? The doctor doesn’t do a pelvic exam on Samantha, no blood cultures taken, and, in the second movie, where we learn that the government has knowledge of this virus, there’s no CDC alerts. I’m not saying that medical science is the end all, be all, but I wish they had a medical consultant for these movies, because the care they received did not at all ring true.

Anyway, enough of my rant. The second movie basically follows the exact same arc as the first, as we watch Riley slowly decline, oozing pus and peeing enough blood to stock a blood bank. Seriously, this movie took the disgusting theme and ran with it. No lie, the scene where he nose bleeds into the dip at a party, which is subsequently eaten by one of the guests, made me gag a little. Into this mix is thrown the additional plot behind the man spreading this virus, as a terrorist device, being hunted down by a police detective and, ultimately, the U.S. Government. This had the potential for adding depth in the narrative, but instead comes off as half baked and haphazardly tacked on. Where as Samantha was a tragic figure, I just wanted Riley to die already. There have been rumors about another movie, Contracted: Phase 3, but I have yet to find any solid information on this.

I like body horror, both because of the medical nature of most such films and because there is little I can think of that matches the terror of feeling one’s self rot away from the inside. The Fly, Cabin Fever, Splinter; I love these kinds of movies. I would contend that Contracted is a worthy entry into this genre, and that Contracted: Phase 2 is a sorry imitator. The first movie is like a case study in misery, Samantha’s life, health and, finally, sanity all slowly decaying with a morbid inevitability. If the second movie had just been a repeat of the first, only following Riley instead of Samantha, it would have been better. The terrorist side plot feels clunky and poorly executed and takes away from the film. But maybe that’s just me. Watch them for yourself and make up your own mind. But remember, and this is very important, DON’T see them with someone you love.