"I still can't watch Quint get eaten alive by the shark in "Jaws" (1975), but I will happily replay the climactic kill scene from "Day of the Dead" (1985), in which a highly hissable villain, Captain Rhodes, gets dismembered by a horde of the hungry undead. Is it the gristly, lip-smacking hilarity of the carnage-the taffy-like ease with which they pull Rhodes's flesh apart,"
"Romero's work has influenced virtually every zombie movie since, although, in the case of the British thriller "28 Days Later" (2003), which was directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland, the deviations were pronounced. The "infected," as Boyle's zombies are known, carry a seemingly incurable rage virus, which has turned them into an army of sprinting, shrieking superspreaders-faster and more ferocious than the zombies who groan and shamble their way through Romero's movies."
Zombie cinema can provide a peculiar relief by conflating gruesome spectacle with moral retribution, allowing viewers to relish violent comeuppances visited on despised characters. George A. Romero mastered the genre by turning graphic feeding frenzies into crowd-pleasing cinematic set pieces that accommodated even the gore-averse. Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later reinvented the trope with "infected" who carry a rage virus and attack at high speed, introducing urgent, modern terror. The infected's sprinting, shrieking assaults intensified the threat across 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later, while sequels examine how human cruelty and collapse can overshadow the undead menace.
Read at The New Yorker
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