Zombies are all the rage right now. Zombieland being a hit at the box office is just the most recent example of how the cannibalistic undead have infiltrated our popular culture.

On the literary front, Seth Grahame-Smith brought us the odd yet entertaining Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a parody of Jane Austens classic novel. And it would be shameful not to mention Max Brooks Zombie Survival Guide.

Zombie films are nothing new. In fact, I would argue that they are much more prevalent than one might think. If a zombie is simply defined as an animated corpse, then Frankensteins monster would be considered a zombie. Jason Voorhees, the infamous mass murderer of the Friday the 13th films would also fit this definition.

Each character has been the focus of several films, with the Frankenstein monster emerging as a cultural icon. Even those who refuse to see any film featuring Jason are most likely familiar with his name. While no one disputes that Jason Voorhees and the Frankenstein monster are examples of the walking dead, few would label them zombies.

I Walked With a Zombie (1943) is one of the first zombie films that I remember seeing as a child. This film focused on voodoo rituals to raise the dead. Voodoo zombies really arent anything like modern zombie films, and it really doesnt have anything to do with when the film was made. The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988) is a much more modern voodoo zombie film that bears little resemblance to zombie fare of the last four decades. These films lack the defining element we have grown accustomed to in modern zombie films: the devouring of human flesh.

For all practical purposes, the modern zombie emerged in the classic George A. Romero film Night of the Living Dead (1968). Romero is to modern zombie movies what George Lucas is to the Star Wars universe: he is the undisputed master. Much of the action in Night of the Living Dead is set in a farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania; several characters find themselves trapped as the undead horde surrounds them. The survivors spend nearly as much time fighting each other as they do the zombies.

Anti-war sentiment bleeds through this film, particularly the grisly way in which the fighting of the zombies on television mirrored the Vietnam war coverage on television during that era.

Romero continued this type of protest in the sequel, Dawn of the Dead (1978). While many have discussed the social satire of this film, the way it mocks consumerism by setting the action in a suburban shopping mall, this film has much more going for it besides the setting. The film captures the post Vietnam era in a sense Ive not seen anywhere else.

Let down by a failure in Vietnam, many soldiers were brought home to an ambivalent government and largely uncaring population, while the rest of the people obsessed about material goods.

It would be easy to attribute the recent wave of popularity of zombie media to the fact that, since the fall of 2001, America has been at war. Plenty of examples could support this theory. A remake of Dawn of the Dead (2004), Shaun of the Dead (2004), Resident Evil (2002) and its sequels, and a couple of new entries by Romero himself, Land of the Dead (2005) and Diary of the Dead (2007) all happen to follow Americas entries into wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, I feel that such a vision is quite limited and provides too simple of an explanation to a phenomenon that is much more complex.

Plus, it completely ignores 1980s era zombie movies, like "Return of the Living Dead" (1985), Day of the Dead (1985), and Night of the Comet (1984) that were made outside of wartime.

In Romeros original Dawn of the Dead, Ken Foree utters the line, When there is no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth. This is one of the most haunting lines Ive ever heard in a horror movie. The implications that Hell could run out of room, forcing the damned to walk the Earth is both pessimistic and depressing. Notice that no provision is given that if Heaven gets full, the righteous will walk the Earth.

Many elements of modern zombies are a rejection of strongly held religious convictions. The simple presence of a zombie perverts and distorts the concept of life after death. Instead of salvation, life after death results in the worst type of damnation. The consumption of flesh is a perversion the Christian tradition of eating the bread and wine. Many erroneously believe that in a religious service, this ritual is merely symbolic. In fact, early Catholics were persecuted and labeled cannibals because their belief in transubstantiation: the belief that the bread and wine literally becomes the flesh and blood of Christ.

Some might argue that vampirism, with similar life after death themes and its focus on the consumption of blood, is yet another perversion of the Christian ritual of Holy Communion.

The consuming of flesh is really a metaphor for mans rejection of modern civility and an emergence of his destructive nature. The turn to cannibalism eliminates the potential for salvation, and this inherent pessimism is central to modern zombie films. Killing simply isnt enough dehumanization for a zombie film to make its point. That is why the Frankenstein monster and Jason Voorhees really arent zombies in the modern sense of the word — they kill, but dont eat their victims.

Thats not to say that zombie movies have to put forth any type of message or criticism to be enjoyed. Sometimes, a zombie movie simply lets the viewer experience mankind at its worst, from the comfort of a soft chair.

HomeworkThe Zombie Survival Guide by Max BrooksPride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith