When I was a kid, it always struck me how slow scary things moved in horror movies. Frankenstein’s Monster, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Mummies, and countless others, all seemed to be dragging along, while their hapless victims scurried away. The sluggish creature was never more than a few steps behind them, stiffly reaching out with its gnarly fingers, despite all their prey’s frantic strides! I never understood this. In fact, the entire genre of horror movies never really made sense to me. Why would someone want to purposely scare themselves? And of all the sub-categories of frightful flicks, none is so popular as the zombie movie. Since 1932 there have been over 500 films dedicated to some dreadful tale of the undead roaming the regions of the earth, seeking human flesh to devour. And that’s another oddity – why are these revenant monsters always cannibals? Why, with a world full of other nourishment, do they only desire to feed on other humans? As I pondered these things recently, I was convinced there are testimonies to our God, even in these terrible stories. Allow me to explain.
The word “zombie” first appears in 1819 in an English poem about Brazil’s history. In its original references, it was always related to the results of some supernatural incantation of a Haitian voodoo practitioner or witch doctor. It is interesting to note that as our societies have moved away from belief in any kind of spiritual reality, so the causes of our dire predicaments in our current horror movies almost always revolve around some scientific project gone awry, or perhaps a personified nature wreaking havoc on the oppressive human species. A spell resuscitated these terrors long ago, now a virus will do the trick. In short, we saw ourselves as victims of evil in the past but recipients of our just desert in the present. The entire environmental movement seems largely fueled by this guilty sense of breaking some unspoken law, and having already disposed of our Heavenly Father, all we have left is the wrath of Mother Nature. Bearing the image of God, we intuitively understand that any fallout from all our transgressions will ultimately be harvested in its effects upon our race. Thus, when we imagine the most horrific future and seek to tell it in our stories, we can’t help seeing twisted humanity as the apex of that demise. In this way, our zombie tales are inverted acknowledgments of our Creator and our violations of His laws.
But these cinematic stories of soulless human shells are more than just the height of horror, there was also an abject sadness in older zombie films. Simon Pegg, an actor in and co-writer of the apocalyptic comedy “Shaun of the Dead” has noted that modern zombie movies, like “World War Z” with their “fast zombies,” and “furious velociraptor screeches” are missing what made such works as George Romero’s 1968 classic “Night of the Living Dead” so haunting. He writes, “the absence of rage or aggression in slow zombies makes them oddly sympathetic” while the new movies are lacking the “mournful moans of longing” we found in the older ones. The double grotesqueness of zombies is not just that they are the living dead, but that they used to be regular moms and dads, businessmen and neighbors, and now wander around with gaping mouths and pathetic, unblinking eyes. They represent a picture of unredeemable loss. “The harvest is passed, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.” (Jeremiah 8:20) But I’m convinced the prolific production of these stories stems from the fact that we secretly recognize this not as our ugly future but as our current predicament. This is precisely the description we find of mankind in the pages of Scripture. When Paul writes of those who are now believers, he refers to them as those who “were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world..” (Eph. 2:1). And he warns us elsewhere that “if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.” (Gal. 5:15) So here we see that all the attributes of the “Walking Dead” are the natural conditions from which we must be saved. In other words, we do not climb out of the dirt of some decaying cemetery to sadly roam the world but come out of the womb as the living dead.
But perhaps the plethora of zombie movies is just a wicked attempt by our enemy to mock our only hope. They present hordes of the living dead past all redemption and fit only for decapitation or some other form of destruction. But the Gospel presents a single shoot that sprang up from the “stump of Jesse,” (Isa. 11:1) a God-man, who folded up his grave clothes and walked out of the tomb. He alone can save us from this horrid, un-dead existence in which our father Adam left us, bearing the name of those who are alive but who are really dead. (Rev. 3:1) Our Lord didn’t come forth merely resuscitated but as the Resurrection and the Life. Matthew tells us that “many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, went into the holy city and appeared to many. (Chapter 27:52-53) But don’t imagine these as zombies, shuffling through the streets of Jerusalem, but as those made hardy and hale by the King of Life, and as the first fruits of His coming new creation. Hear Him as He says to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die…” (John 11:25-26) Trust Him and you will pass from death to life!
