There has been a debate when it comes to zombies, which is better fast or slow?
For me I'm torn between the two, while I side more with the slow zombies. But every now and then who doesn't like a fast zombie?
The genre was started with slow moving zombies, which makes sense because zombies are reanimated corpses. They don't have the muscles needed to move at a high rate of speed due to decomposition. While they are easy to get away from (unless there is a huge horde of them), there is always the fear that eventually they will catch up with you and usually more will have joined in the hunt along the way. This leads to a horde that could be in the hundreds, spelling doom for you and whoever is with you. Not to mention what are you running into by running away from a zombie problem?
Fast zombies are in fact just that: fast. So fast that they could probably out run an Olympic sprinter. This means without transportation, you have to bunker down and try to defend a location. Problem with that is, just like slow zombies, that zombies will swarm and create hordes making impossible to fight them off. If you can survive the zombies, another mounting problem is supplies and sanitation.
Everybody poops and pees. So you're stuck and I doubt the water department is still up and running. The only solution is to be able to dump it outside. The supplies are limited and will run out. Stuck here and surrounded means that is all there is to live. Even if you could sneak out to scavenge, these super fast zombies would have you before you could yell help.
Both have their own element of horror, it really just depends on what you like and which you find scarier.
I am definitely a fan of the slow zombies more so than the fast. The fast zombies, while more intense, are also more unrealistic (insert irony comment here). I have no problem with a zombie who is able to move at the pace of a live human being, but when they have super human strength and speed they tend to lose the essence of the true zombie. Zombies are terrifying enough without adding the superhuman element.
ReplyDeleteThe slow zombies, in my opinion, rule the genre. The concept was based on historical events in the Caribbean where real zombies were said to walk the Earth. These 'original' zombies did not have superhuman powers and were therefore more like the brain dead walking, eating machines that we know and love today. Without speed and strength and the lack of problem solving capabilities, slow zombies may be easy to escape in small numbers...but that is the whole point of the idea of a zombie apocalypse...there will be no small numbers!!! Zombies will take over the Earth, and no matter what you do, you will not be able to escape them all.
To me, this is the most terrifying idea of all. The notion that hordes of brainless, walking eating machines will be able to overpower us all and bring down the existence of humanity. Oh, wait...maybe we are already in the zombie apocalypse...it sure seems like a lot of fat, brain dead idiots are walking around out there endangering us all!