Poll: Do you like zombie movies?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=521008

by froo • 17 years ago

20 53 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

aditya2• 17 years ago

Resident Evil FTW!

froo11• 17 years ago

I'm guessing you're talking about the Milla Jovovich ones and not Resident Evil Degeneration right?

aditya2• 17 years ago

Yeah. Do I get disqualified if I like the movies because of her, though? :-)

(Not sure why I got downvoted, but I did answer a legit question!)

unalone4• 17 years ago

I'll be honest - Shaun of the Dead is the only one I've seen. I've always felt weird about zombie movies, because like Westerns, without having seen any they all feel very samey. So I wouldn't know where to start watching.

michaelneale2• 17 years ago

I have been told by aficionados that shaun of the dead's zombies are pretty good, authentic even.

In modern times there is a biozombie trend, when they aren't really "undead" so much as a sick human (eg I am Legend, 28 days later etc). I am not sure if it co-incides, but these biozombies seem to have enhanced reflexes, strength and hearing and speed etc... (whereas the old school ones were slow, sad things).

froo11• 17 years ago

I do like both to be honest, the shambling ones I like because it looks very well done in large packs of zombies. Also I do understand why people use the enhanced reflex ones, because they can use those traits to startle an audience effectively.

Personally, from a startup perspective, I'd be more inclined to go with a shambling type zombie, purely because keyframing the animation can be achieved fairly effectively with python scripts and then motions adjusted with bezier curves on an individual basis.

Doing more with less basically.

Also, stylistically I think the whole "tortoise and the hare" effect with fast protagonists and slow moving, shambling antagonists is quite amusing.

unalone4• 17 years ago

I'm an enormous fan of Simon Pegg as a writer. He wrote an incredible article in defense of zombies and convinced me a lot. (His article was actually about how the slow model of zombie is the only worthwhile kind.) And Edgar Wright is a brilliant director: Shaun of the Dead is a very scary movie at the same time as it's incredibly hilarious.

That said, I'd love to compare it to Night of the Living Dead. I'm just scared that it'll be a letdown.

ojbyrne2• 17 years ago

I think all genre movies are the same. It just takes good writing, and that usually means 1 in 10 are great, 2 in 10 are entertaining, the other 70% suck.

anamax• 17 years ago

If only 70% of genre movies suck, they are an exeception to Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crap).

unalone4• 17 years ago

It also takes good direction. I appreciated that fact a lot more after Shaun of the Dead.

That said, it's hard to sort out the good stuff from the crap when you've seen nothing.

lionhearted2• 17 years ago

I voted no, because I don't really like zombie movies on balance. But I am a lover of film and cinema in general.

My beef with zombie movies is that they're usually cliche, and are going for "cheap scares" first and foremost. Often they're punctuated by gore for the sake of gore, and it's done tastelessly. Frequently there's a large cast that you feel no real attachment to and don't bond with, because they need lots of people to kill in a variety of ways.

But the upside: Apocalyptic scenarios in general give lots of options for plot and character development and interaction. I'd say take a look at something like Mad Max - it's a bit campy at times, but I remember some very interesting scenes. There was a relatively small cast that you developed some attachment to, and the sometimes slow pacing made the heavy action scenes really stand out.

Off the top of my head, I can't think of a zombie movie with really exceptional acting and minimal cliches. (If someone who is a fan of this genre can recommend one, I'll check it out). What I'd want out of a zombie movie is focus on character development of just a few people who interact with a broken world. And the filmmaker resisting the temptation to have the "dumb, defiant, big-boobed blond girl who doesn't listen to the leader and thus gets impaled on a fence and eaten" - the zombie scenario itself isn't unsuitable for a good movie, but the execution in these films leaves a lot to be desired.

For inspiration into some unique elements, you might check out the first two Fallout games. It's been a few years and I've not checked out the third, but the first two had some interesting scenarios and plots. In particular, humans interacting with other humans during the apocalypse/zombies could lead to interesting dilemmas and development. In Fallout, the world had fallen apart, and yet there were still people being really petty and villainous instead of uniting. This jives with my understanding of human nature, and makes the games more interesting. Human/human conflicts amidst a zombie background could be a fascinating way to break from the cliches.

froo11• 17 years ago

But the upside: Apocalyptic scenarios in general give lots of options for plot and character development and interaction.

That's kinda what I was aiming at, plus on the upside, one can generate lots of zombie models randomly fairly quickly and use scripts to animate their shambling.

What I'd want out of a zombie movie is some focus on some character development and the filmmaker resisting the temptation to have the "dumb, defiant, big-boobed blond girl who doesn't listen to the leader and thus gets impaled on a fence and eaten"

Well one of the things I'm looking at is producing episodic web content, so character development (and subsequent demise) is on the agenda. I'm pulling a lot of influence from the Band of Brother's series in that respect.

My beef with zombie movies is that they're usually cliche, and are going for "cheap scares" first and foremost. Often they're punctuated by gore for the sake of gore,

Yeah, I'm trying to judge what people's expectations on blood are.

Thanks for your comments mate, really appreciated.

lionhearted2• 17 years ago

My pleasure - as for gore, it depends on the audience. I greatly enjoy international films, and personally think that less gore makes it much more effective as a tool - take a look at Japanese horror on one extreme, and compare it to a Schwarzenegger movie. In Total Recall, a guy gets a pipe stuck through his head, and it has no effect on the audience. But it was what was - a fun, man's man action movie. If you produce for intelligent people, you can potentially get a lot of hardcore and intelligent fans. But that means needing to break from the formulas and execute well, neither of which are easy. The mass market stuff works for the mass market of course - so have a think on what you're going for. Maybe take a look at some enthusiast forums or communities - that'd be a smart place to first promote yourself. What are their expectations? What do they like? You can always sell out to the mass market later once you get popular :)

noodle• 17 years ago

shaun of the dead, evil dead, dellamorte dellamore, dawn of the dead (only cliche because it created the cliches)

michaelneale2• 17 years ago

A thought: we are hot blooded fast living mammals that took over the earth pretty quickly. Is it possible that to a prehistoric reptilian species/race that in fact we are the zombies?

numair2• 17 years ago

The selection bias present in this data makes it pointless for the purposes of a profitable entertainment project. You are better off going to your local middle school and having the 8th grade math class run the survey for you.

froo11• 17 years ago

You're wrong actually, and I'll tell you why.

I have a hunch that people who are early adopters of things online are usually the same kind of people who are into Zombie films. The whole point of putting this onto HN (as opposed to a movie site) is that I would get intelligent discussion, with people articulating what it specifically is about these films that appeals to them (or not) - which is the exact type of data I'm seeing.

The reason I left it as a simple binary choice was so that I could gauge to what extent my hunch was correct (as a rough percentage). So far, the results are about what I expected, so I'm fairly pleased with it up until now, but I'll wait until a few days to pass final judgement.

numair2• 17 years ago

First, I'll note that what you wrote here somewhat contradicts your original post. Also, HN is comprised of a very small subset of early adopters - namely, the sort who create their own services. This is an absurdly small and misleading sample, even within your stated target.

Second, again -- you're looking at a potential audience of 0.01% (HN-reading zombie-movie-lovers) versus a large, general audience of young viewers who enjoy (and pay for) digital animation content. How does that make sense? You specifically stated that you wanted to do this as a low-cost thing -- thus you can't be making high-quality, specialized content that caters specifically to a dedicated audience of zombie-movie-lovers who would be willing to pay for it... Have you thought out your business plan here?

sharkbrainguy2• 17 years ago

Is a digital animation studio a startup?

It doesn't really have a huge scaling potential does it? Your output is constrained by your animation stable surely.

The closest analogue to a breakaway product or hot patent would be a hugely popular IP, but you don't need to be a studio to develop a property.

Perhaps you intend to develop animation productivity tools and the studio provides the opportunity to dogfood. That kind of software still has headroom I guess.

As an animator/programmer I'd be very interested in an animation suite that could do what emacs/vim does for my text editing.

froo11• 17 years ago

  Is a digital animation studio a startup?

Why not? I wouldn't have thought startups are limited only to webapps/software? We're building from the ground up?

  It doesn't really have a huge scaling potential does it?

Why not? You don't think Pixar (800+ employees) and Dreamworks (1400+ employees) started out as large companies did you?

In fact, to further illustrate my point, I'll actually give you a rough timeline on how Disney started.

  1923 - Walt Disney animating on own, formed company with brother in August of that year
  1924 - Joined by Ub Iwerks and others from Kansas city
  1925 - Company size grows to 12
  1929 - Sound comes in, steamboat willie released
  1930 - Staff increased to 30
  1932 - More than 100 employees
  1934 - More than 200 employees, Work on first film starts (snow white)
  1935 - more than 400 employees
  1937 - more than 800 employees
  1939 - more than 1000 employees

So by 1939, they had only just released their first Cinema release, were working on 4 films concurrently (but had many small scale projects under their belt) and had essentially defined the entire field of animation for generations to come. In fact, a lot of the stuff they figured out back then is still applicable today.

What's even more startling is when you consider just how much they did, when each film at the time required approximately 2.5 million drawings to complete.

  Your output is constrained by your animation stable surely.

I'd say no, it really depends on how you set up the animation pipeline.

I've got a different model in mind. I don't want to say too much on how it works, but it has potential to create lots of content with a significantly smaller sized team (to start out with).

That's not to say I don't have aspirations to scale it, I do. I'm just focussing on building something from the ground up.

sharkbrainguy2• 17 years ago

I don't use "startup" generically to mean any small/new company that hopes to one day be big. That isn't to say that my definition is definitive (what?) or that a small company that doesn't fit into it is less worthy.

I've always used the term startup for a company whose potential earning is not constrained by its size. Who are developing something that will generate wealth that is disproportionate to the size of the company.

With a software startup the duplication cost for their product is practically nothing therefore they could fill up their target market overnight. With a web-app you can server tens of thousands of customers relatively easily.

The market is the only real constraint and this puts these small companies on almost equal footing with the big companies in the same market.

With every animation studio it seems that the potential to generate wealth is constrained by their size (and their skill but the scaling power of skill is finite).

The power of a successful IP to generate disproportionate wealth is the exception (and is often independent of the studio).

The Disney story to me re-inforces the idea that in this space, to compete you need more people and your ability to produce is directly proportionate to the number of people you employ.

The growth curve doesn't look like a startup to me, when they were small they did shorts, as they grew over years they did features.

If they had developed a way for 12 animators to make a feature of that could compete with the features being made by 100-200 animators then sure, they were a startup (by my entirely arbitrary definition).

Although where Disney (the company) innovated (IMO) was by producing a product that the other studios couldn't no matter how many employees they had unless they had the disney training and skills.

I've written way too much for how "compelling" my point is so I'm stopping here.

modoc• 17 years ago

I like Action Zombie films, like Resident Evil (Milla doesn't hurt either), and don't really like Horror Zombie films (or really most Horror films)

sketerpot• 17 years ago

The thing I love about zombies is coming up with clever ways of dealing with them. Think about it: the zombies have a numerical advantage, and sometimes decent speed, but they're idiots. Humans have brains, a base of operations that'll be safeish for a while, and a bunch of abandoned hardware lying around. It's like "Junkyard Wars", but spiced up with the living dead.

Also, the single best zombie variety I've seen come from Zombie Hunters: http://www.thezombiehunters.com/

They've got the zombies set up almost like social insects: a vast majority of slow lumbering, easy-to-animate ones, plus a few special zombies to spice things up a little. Like the zombies that can spit acid. And infected people don't turn into zombies until they die of natural causes. This doesn't give you the opportunity for "kill your lived one before he turns" moments, but I'm kind of sick of those; they strike me as cheap.

Best of luck in your project. I look forward to seeing what you make!

joshsharp• 17 years ago

The zombie TV series "Dead Set" really drew me in, though it did prompt Simon Pegg to write scathingly about its use of "fast-moving" zombies, instead of the traditional shuffling kind (as mentioned by unalone above). Which I kind of agree with. Still, brilliant series made with a small budget.

ericb2• 17 years ago

28 Days Later is the best Zombie movie I've seen. It could stand up to a film-class analysis, on top of its scariness. The "sequel" was terrible, though.

Runner up, for me, would be Dawn of the Dead (2004). Resident Evil isn't bad, either.

staunch• 17 years ago

I second your choices. I love the apocalyptic zombie movies. They have a kind of Red Dawn feel to em (which I also love).

This is also why I liked I am Legend to a lesser degree.

28 Days later seems like the best to imitate. Done on a fairly low budget I believe and came out great.

geuis• 17 years ago

28 Days Later and sequel are not zombie movies. They are stories about a viral sickness, not about the dead coming back to life. The infected are not dead and potentially can be cured.

ericb2• 17 years ago

I suppose in a literal sense, but really, how do you define life when the dead things are walking around and eating? Doesn't un-dead mean "not dead?" Seems like a technicality or minor plot point to me.

robotron• 17 years ago

I love the hell out of zombie movies but unless you're really going to do something unique it may end up being too cliche. I second the advice on just using another variation on the post-apocalyptic setting.

froo11• 17 years ago

I'm just investigating the idea at the moment, I don't have my heart set on the zombie genre.

I guess I'm really trying to feel my way through various settings that could be technologically doable with a small-scale team. This is just one of the proposals, but it seems a good fit for the moment.

brandnewlow• 17 years ago

Listen. You need to read the comic book "The Walking Dead." It's an ongoing, episodic story about zombie's taking over the world. It's well-written. It's well-drawn. It's been published for over 5 years. If you're looking for source material or just want to see someone do episodic zombies "right" look no further.

froo11• 17 years ago

Cheers for that. I haven't been in a comic book store for about 17 years, so I'll have to go check it out.

tjic• 17 years ago

You don't need to go to a comic book store - my startup HeavyInk will sell you a graphic novel, or give you a subscription. 20% off list, 99 cent shipping.

Feel free to read the reviews first.

http://heavyink.com/title/355-Walking-Dead

mattchew• 17 years ago

Pro. I'm not a zombie-movie aficionado, but I've seen several. My favorite is probably Dead and Breakfast. Comic horror, musical interludes. I liked it better than Shawn of the Dead. Fun.

If you're going for scary, though, I vote for shambling and relentless zombies. The good guys are smarter, and they're faster, but the zombies just...keep...coming...

andreyf• 17 years ago

Saw Shaun of the Dead, felt guilty for wasting my life, but not as guilty as I would have watching a "serious" zombie movie.

drhowarddrfine2• 17 years ago

I used to be in the "Hollywood scene" and my son is a professional actor. Let me tell you this, now you and every small time director wannabe is making a zombie movie. And there are hundreds of wannabes in every city in America.

Why do people do this? Cause it's cheap? Worst idea ever. If you want to make a movie it's because you have a story to tell. If your zombie movie is about zombies coming to life and killing everyone, guess what? It's been overdone.

The last I looked, about two years ago, there were no less than 5 zombie movies being put together in a two week period in my area. What an imaginative bunch.

I'm sick to death of zombie movies (and never liked them in the first place).

froo11• 17 years ago

I'm not sure if you're trolling or not (the general tone of your comments in the past seems to suggest a general negative attitude), but I thought I'd address some of your points.

Let me tell you this, now you and every small time director wannabe is making a zombie movie.

Actually, I'm merely investigating the possibility of exploring the zombie theme. I'm putting together a digital animation startup and I'm looking at various genre's that, from a technical standpoint, can be done with a smallish team size for the first project.

Zombies aren't hard to create models for (random human generator like makehuman, appropriate skintones, add gore) and animating them can be keyframed fairly efficiently with scripts, followed by the breakdowns and finally the inbetweens can be interpolated by the computer. Then theres adjusting movements with bezier curves to get realistic arcs happening in movement to really sell it.

Zombies in general also don't need voice actors, which is another gain, as that means less voice talent. Ideally I'm investigating using inhouse talent to start out with, and morphing voices with various VST plugins to keep the costs low.

What this means is that we can get more done (using a nearly infinite set of zombies) with relatively few people animating the series over time.

Why do people do this? Cause it's cheap?

Probably, yeah... why spend money that you don't need too? Also I think that in general, people either love zombie movies or they despise them.

PG advocates finding a small group of users that LOVE your content and expand. This ethos seems to fit this genre.

If you want to make a movie

Actually I have no intention of making a movie. I'm planning on more episodic content that will be distributed via the web to start out with.

Since the whole studio model is being built on a shoestring budget, utilising open source software and different film-making techniques I'm taking a lot of PG's advice on board and treating this as a tech startup. That is what a 3D animation studio partially is, a blending of art and computer science.

As a result I think the zombie genre can adopt some of those "hacker values" for boot strapping a startup. For example, Iteration. If we don't like a character, or he's not resonating well with the audience... we can quite literally kill him off. If we take it too far, we can quite conceivably bring them back in some form.

The genre is flexible to the low capital studio concept, rather than a "wannabe director wants to make a zombie movie"

I'm sick to death of zombie movies (and never liked them in the first place).

See my point about its either something you love or something you dont. It has the potential to make a decent starting point.

my son is a professional actor

Which Starbucks can I find him working at then?

drhowarddrfine2• 17 years ago

"Which Starbucks can I find him working at then?"

This year, appearing in his 4th feature film at the ripe old age of 20. Now playing in Chicago theatre. Acting since the age of 8. Yes, you've seen his films. (Did you see me, too?)

thorax• 17 years ago

Play Left 4 Dead. Great "feel" of being stuck in with the zombies. 28 Days Later is better in feel. I Am Legend isn't terrible.

jeffool2• 17 years ago

Ahhh, finally, a question on HN I can answer!

Firstly, I'm a huge fan of the zombie apocalypse.

-So, why do I like it?

I love the genre because, by far and large, because it creates a reality that works very counter-intuitively. Sure, zombies are a threat, but bigger picture, they're just a background concern compared to the threat that other people present, and that's where the meat of good zombie apocalypse media resides: human interaction.

The scenario allows for an accelerated skewing of human interaction that extends not to just distrust of strangers, but absolute loyalty to anyone that's proven their trust. Anyone showing slight signs of mental instability is now a huge threat to your livelihood, and anyone not pulling their weight may have be killed or left for dead (which is effectively killing them yourself.) What, in our world, are the slightest of concerns, become large factors in a zombie infested world.

-Favorite zombie media? Night of the Living Dead (which is public domain and free at http://www.archive.org/details/night_of_the_living_dead http://www.archive.org/details/night_of_the_living_dead_dvd And Romero's others (Dawn, Day, Land, just not Diary.) Shaughn of the Dead, Zombi II (Shark v Zombie; how can you go wrong there? Otherwise blah) 28 Days Later (Yeah, yeah, whatever. Listen to the commentary. They know it's a zombie flick.) and the UK show Dead Set was worth watching too.

Most other zombie flicks just aren't that good.

The comic The Walking Dead is without a doubt some of the best zombie media out there (I collect it in TPBs, and need to grab the latest.)

Max Brooks' books World War Z (interview-like retelling of the Zombie War with veterans,) and Zombie Survival Guide (Almost like a 'for Dummies' book) are must-reads.

And the game Urban Dead http://www.urbandead.com is pretty fun initially as well, but didn't have a ood 'end-game' when I was playing. Now it all looks relatively safe: http://wiki.urbandead.com/index.php/Suburb (map)

-As for anything else I'd add...

Just that gore isn't necessarily required, but if you ARE going to do it, well, make it worthwhile. ;)

And feel free to email if you think of any follow-up questions for zombie fans.!

jacoblyles• 17 years ago

What did you think of "Planet Terror" in "Grindhouse"?

jeffool2• 17 years ago

I thought it absolutely enjoyable in an entirely non-zombie way. I loved the movie as it was great fun, exciting action, and gore abounds, but, I do not consider it the type of super-personal 'zombie film' that I love so much.

In fact, for two excellent types of such super-personal films that predate the modern zombie film (1968,) look at Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944) and Sidney Lumet's 12 Angry Men (1957, though he's best known for Serpico). Both include small groups of people completely reliant upon each other to make it (to a verdict, or to just survive.)

That said, I also absolutely love Robert Rodriguez and his style of "grab the camera, we're about to make a movie!"-filmmaking. I think he's able to relate his energy in a way that usually takes AAA directing (I'd categorize his style as one of 'potential' over 'polish,' but he's also capable of selling what he's doing to the viewer, two characteristics that work amazingly in tandem, at least for me.)

So, what did I think? In short, I absolutely loved it, but I didn't mention it because I don't think it fits in with what I love about zombies.

dkokelley• 17 years ago

I voted yes. I like these and other apocalyptic movies for a number of reasons, but mostly because they allow time for thinking and planning by the characters (while not being a 'chick-flick'). Many other movies I find to be too action-packed to be interesting for anything other than choreographic purposes.

Similar movies to this are CIA based films or bank robberies/hostage movies. Each of them allow the viewer to actually participate by providing the time for the viewer to ask "what would I do in this situation? How would I respond given x resources and y amount of time?"

I particularly despise the go for gore zombie flicks. I like movies that stimulate my intellectually, not ones that remind me of student horror films.

wlievens• 17 years ago

I like zombie flics that start off with a well-intended pseudo-scientific backdrop. Cure for cancer goes awry, for instance (like the last I Am Legend remake).

ErrantX• 17 years ago

In my mind the best zombie films are - Dawn of the Dead (modern version) - The first Resident Evil - 28 Days Later

The common theme in them is they are different and "non cheesy". I hate cheesy horror films (Scream made me laugh so hard ;)).

Dawn of the Dead has fast zombies in (Day of the Dead failed partly because they slowed down :() which is a great idea. The "gritty" camera work also works well with that (the sort of hand camera filmed look) speed as you really get the horror etc.

Resident Evil was just epic full stop. Verged on cheesy but elegantly avoided it. Not particularly scary but the sexy lead kicking ass = good :D Also it was somewhat intelligent - it explained the Zombies fairly logically (and mixed in an acutally good storyline - the memory loss etc.) and crucially kept them locked into one location. None of this "spreading across the world" thing. It could happen :D

28 Days Later is far and away one of the best. The Zombies only make up a small portion of the film and the rest focuses on humanity facing the end of life as they know it. It was an extremely good story (really, very very simple but hugely effective) and didnt push the reality enevlop too far.

So IMO what makes a good zombie flick?

- Realism (as far as possible)

- Good, sensible, logical story (it could happen!)

- No cheese (OMG were all gonna dieeee)

- Hot lead optional

- Gritty (camera work and writing)

Hope that helps :D

EDIT: oh yeh make it logical. Slow zombies are never really a threat - I always hate those films where they fail to avoid lumbering zombies. Please :(

Also, I never thought Shaun of the Dead would count. If it does this pips 28 Days Later as my fav zombie film. The writing/story is pure brilliance and the production is very very good. It nails it's genre perfectly.

Killjoy• 17 years ago

I find zombies uninteresting. They don't really provide anything to a story, other than a thing to run away from. Especially the recent biozombie movement -- the lesson here is "you cannot fight the zombies forever." Eventually you either have to hide, or you will become a zombie.

Not particularly uplifting; the idea is that you HAVE to give in to other people's base instincts, or else you must retreat from life. It's really just an adaptation on an Atlas Shrugged type theme.

herval• 17 years ago

"zombies are a metaphorical representation of man's consumism, herd behavior and contained aggressiveness - the whole 'brains' thing is nothing more than a representation of the deliberate consumption of our minds done by traditional media and general mass market byproducts..."

- my wife

ps.: I love zombie movies!!!

Poll: Do you like zombie movies?

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