After the Apocalypse

After the Apocalypse, when zombies are a nightmare of the past or a hope for the future.

Zombie themed stories often take place according to a timeline, like most stories. For the Zombie Gift Guide, we have divided them up for our media related products depending on if they start when zombies are just a fad, when zombies are a problem, and where zombies are a normal, every day occurrence (or inconvenience) using these categories

Before the Outbreak – These types of stories give us the sense of everything being mostly okay until it’s not. Fear the Walking Dead is a great example of this category.
During the Outbreak – These stories take place in the middle of things, like The Walking Dead. Rick wakes up at the peak of the zombie pandemic, or whatever is really turning people into zombies.
After the Apocalypse – Most zombie outbreaks ARE the end of the world, but rarely do they actually end the world as we know it. Fido and Warm Bodies are good examples of this category.

This category applies to use of zombies in media specifically, as zombie products are as timeless as the seemingly immortal rotting corpses they’re designed after.

Fido (2006)

Fido (2006): A Satire, a Sequel, A Romance?

Movie / Shambler/ Years After the Apocalypse

Even big-time zombie movie fans may have mostly missed Fido. It came and went with barely a whisper back in 2006, maybe because of its Canadian origins and poor distribution; maybe because nobody knew what to make of it. Is it a comedy? A satire? A skewed love story? Tor is it, in fact, a skewed sequel to Romero’s classic Night of the Living Dead (1968)? That’s still a good question, but there’s no doubt this is one of the least expected and most watchable of the “dark comedies” to come out of the genre… and it might be brand new to the zomfan in your life (or unlife).

Comedian and satirist Billy Connolly is virtually unrecognizable as Fido, the domesticated zombie “contracted” to Carrie-Anne Moss‘s family. They’re part of a bizarre alternative America in which radiation brought about the rising of the dead in the early Fifties, it seems, and led to a long-ago, hard-won set of “zombie wars.” Now the world, or at least as much as we see of it, is a weirdly static Perfect 1950’s World, kept that way by the ubiquitous ZomCom Corporation (you have to love that name!) that created electronic collars that allow the calming and control of your classic Romero slow zombies with the touch of a button. And that’s what Fido is – just one of the shuffling, voiceless, undead slaves in this odd world – until the family he’s working for develops an equally odd affection for him. Then the collar malfunctions and Fido kills a neighbor (who deserved it, but still …

From the beginning, Fido is not what you expect, and the entire presentation – from the off-puttingly realistic Fifties Paradise to the performances of Moss, Connolly, Dylan Baker (currently in Hunters) and the rest, are flawless and devoid of any wink-wink nudge-nudge to the audience. It’s a shame Fido’s been nearly forgotten since its appearance fifteen years ago, but that can change with a click… and it should. We’re willing to bet you’ll like this hidden gem.

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Call of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War

Call of Duty: When All You Want To Do Is Kill Zombies. A LOT of Zombies.

Video Game / First Person Shooter

One of the great attractions of the zombie apocalypse is – well, shooting things. You can guiltlessly take potshots at vaguely human-shaped figures, blow them to smithereens, and never be bothered with technicalities like murder in cold blood or assault with a deadly weapon. And we admit it, there are days – sometimes multiple days – when that’s simply glorious.

If you’re in the mood for nothing more complicated than a plink-plink-fall-down-dead game, skip the drama of Last of Us or the spooky tension of Resident Evil, or the scrolling silliness of Plants vs. Zombies and head straight for Call of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War. The reasons are simple, few, and inescapable:

First-person shooter.
With zombies.
From the best first-person shooter game franchise in the biz.

Sure, there are plenty of other CoD modules that don’t feature the reanimated, but … why bother? Go for the gold – the suppurating, shambling, teeth-chattered gold, man. ‘Cause when it comes to just blowin’ up the walkers real good, you can’t do better than Call of Duty.

If that’s your thing, or you know a gamer who just loves this kinda stuff, you can’t go wrong.

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Boneshaker

Boneshaker:
A Gearpunk Alternative History,with Zombies

Book (Series) / Long After the Outbreak / Underrated

Zombies aren’t limited to a single timeline...and terrific authors like Cherie Priest can make them horribly real in any reality.

Take Boneshaker’s world, for instance. In this universe, in the early days of the Civil War, an inventor named Leviticus Blue (Priest always comes up with the coolest character names) creates a huge machine that can drill right through the Alaska permafrost and bring gold up to the surface of the Klondike… except the Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill hits a cavern filled with very bad gas that blasts a crater into the middle of Seattle and transforms much of the populace into “rotters” (yet another cool name for zombies. We have to make a list someday). The government, in its wisdom, solves the problem by building a wall around the devastated city and abandoning it. But that doesn’t mean it disappears.

Cut to sixteen years later, as Priest relates the adventures of the heroes, villains, and monsters who scrape out a living in the remains of Seattle – outside the wall and occasionally inside the wall. The story is filled with great speculative history, action, awesome devices, and some of the smartest and most admirable female characters in zomfic. It may be the first, and one of the best, examples of steampunk fiction – and maybe the only zombie steampunk fiction around.

Best of all, Boneshaker is only the first of Priest’s five-book series, The Clockwork Century, and every one of them is better than the last. And this first book – all of them, actually – also has one of the coolest covers around.

Come on. Zombies and dirigibles. What more could you want?

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Blood Quantum (2019)

Blood Quantum:
Native Americans vs. Zombies in a Grim, Effective Film

Movie / Post-Apocalypse / Underrated

With so many low-budget zombie movies sneaking in through streaming services or film festivals, it’s easy to miss unexpected quality and creativity when it appears. Here’s an example.

Blood Quantum (sorry, kind of an awful and pretty much inexplicable name) has your standard virus-based flesh-eaters, and the opening scenes that establish it are deceptively familiar. But the truly intriguing part comes after a timeshift, as we focus on the stories that rotate around the effect of the zombie apocalypse on the First Nations and an already devastated Mi’kmaq reservation – a reservation that survives because Native Americans seem to be immune to the zombie virus, maybe because of their connection to the Earth itself.

Virtually all the principle players here are Native Americans, and many of them came from and went on to fascinating careers. Elle-Maija Tailfeathers is a multi-award-winning actor, writer, producer and director; her co-star Michael Greyeyes paid his zombie-dues in multiple episodes of Fear the Walking Dead, showed up after Blood Quantum, in the not-wonderful V Wars, and was excellent in the underrated mystery series Home Before Dark. He also has the dubious distinction of playing Rainbird in the otherwise awful remake if Firestarter in 2022. No George C. Scott, maybe, but at least the part was played, more than passably well, by an actual member of the First Nations as Stephen King meant it to be. The writer and director, Jeff Barnaby, is a member of the Mi’kmaq himself, and continues his work on projects based on the realities and fantasies of native Americans, past present and future.

It’s a bleak and brutal plot and worldview, but not without good reason, and probably one of the best – and most overlooked – ‘serious’ zombie movies of the decade.

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28 Weeks Later (2008)

28 Weeks Later: A Good But Not Great Sequel To The Classic

Movie(Series)/Outbreak&Aftermath/FastZombies

Sequels are an iffy business. For every Alien or Evil Dead 2 there are half a dozen lame, tired, and uninteresting sequels to pretty great movies, even in the world of the undead. By our estimation, 28 Weeks Later falls somewhere in the middle… but then it’s got a lot to live up to when it comes to its ground-breaking predecessor.

Of course, we all want to know what happened with Rage and all of the UK after the initial outbreak. The solution to move a few months downstream seemed promising; the main plot of trying to establish a “safe zone” in the middle of deserted, infected London seemed less so. And the fact that Danny Boyle, who remained as executive producer, stepped away to direct the hugely underrated Sunshine didn’t help.

The action is great, the jump scares are well-earned. And like the first film, it’s got a great cast, including Robert Carlyle, Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner (hey, remember him?) and some guy named “Idris Elba“ (Look him up. He has promise.). The notion of following two impulsive and dumb-ass kids was a fairly unpopular decision, and the lack of shock and detail of the first film made most zomfans go, “Yeah, it was okay, BUT…”

Still: You could do way worse when it comes to a sequel, and there are plenty of packages where you can buy both movies together. The makings of a great movie night!A

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