Though some recent hype for Zack Snyder was developing, his zombie film Army Of The Dead didn't do so well with audiences. The Walking Dead franchise has three shows and is getting a fourth plus three movies. And The Last Of Us is in production for HBO Max. Should the zombie subgenre give it a rest? Though a zombie movie always sounds like a fun, summer blockbuster, viewers seem to be getting tired of the same narrative: zombie pandemic starts, a group of heroes has to survive, they need to go from point A to point B to accomplish C, some of them die, and they live long enough to realize people are more of a threat than the dead.
The zombie subgenre doesn't appear to be dying anytime soon, as they are still a major element in most horror video games. There's also at least one big budget undead movie every couple of years. Many independent filmmakers will turn to zombies as their antagonist in low budget horror films because it is cheap to do this kind of makeup (like in the 1981 cult classic Evil Dead), and there is still a large crowd appeal for a cannibalistic apocalypse. There are several shows about zombies such as The Walking Dead, The Rain, Z Nation, iZOMBIE, and Daybreak to name a few.
The zombie subgenre can be stretched to fit into any other genre. Zombie Comedy movies like Zombieland have done well enough to become cult classics and even bring in enough viewers to get a sequel. Zombie Horror is probably the most popular type of film to make that includes the walking undead. But brain eating corpses can fit into other genres like psychological, drama, or romance (as seen in Warm Bodies). Not only can zombie stories be told with different emotional tones, but the zombies themselves can be switched up.
The zombies in The Walking Dead are much different than the ones in World War Z or Train To Busan because of their different speeds, strength, and aggression levels. And the zombies in those works of media are also even more different than the ones in low budget movies like the 2015 film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Abigail Breslin titled Maggie. This zombie flick opts to go for a more realistic approach to a global, undead apocalypse where the zombies aren't much more of a threat than any other highly contagious flu virus, but are still deadly if bitten by.
Maggie is a drama about a dad trying to save his child from a bite she has received and be with her until the moment she turns. It is told much like a drama about cancer, where the sickness can be prolonged but death is only a matter of time. In Zack Snyder's Army Of The Dead, after a zombie being transported by military breaches its containment and attacks the city of Las Vegas, the government puts the city under a walled quarantine. The military plans to deploy a nuclear strike on the city, and a group of mercenaries is hired to retrieve a large sum of money from a casino before this happens. Both of these movies show how differently the world could react to a situation like this.
Because zombies have made their way into every other genre, maybe it's time to take a break from the narrative and finally put it to rest. Even if put to rest for a little while, the zombie subgenre can always rise again. But it would make these types of movies more special if they were not made as frequently as they are. It seems many people are starting to get tired of the subgenre and find themselves rolling their eyes instead of getting excited when a new zombie movie or television show is announced. It seems many filmmakers are aware of this, as there appears to be a push for more creative ways to utilize the undead.
Although, if there are still untold, undead stories out there to be discovered and they still receive millions of viewers, why not continue exploring the subgenre? Because this is such an easy subject matter to form into any story that will get viewers' attention, the zombie subgenre can be taken advantage of until the point where it's just a sad, overused cliché. Filmmakers need to find a new way to tell zombie stories or else they run the risk of killing the subgenre. In media, zombies represent the idea of death. The zombies (usually) stalk their prey slow and steady in their approach.
They are unstoppable and inescapable, like death itself. The film It Follows is an interesting spin on the zombie subgenre, as the virus of death is not explicitly stated to be a zombie. The undead can also be a metaphor for the paranoia people feel about others, especially ones that do not look or act like themself. Although Army Of The Dead was a fun idea, maybe it would have done better in a world with less zombie media.