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Zombie Films Used to Have Brains. Now They’re Right-Wing Drivel.
In the decade between ‘Zombieland’ movies, Hollywood’s mindless monsters have become vehicles for racism and xenophobia
The 2009 horror comedy Zombieland, whose sequel comes out this week, begins with a lament for the United States: “I wish I could tell you that this was still America.” The voice-over, delivered by Jesse Eisenberg, plays over a shot of an American flag and a wrecked, post-apocalyptic U.S. Capitol. Lest this strike the viewer as too subtle, a distorted version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” plays on the soundtrack.
I shouldn’t have to tell you that a movie which opens with a shot of a flaming Washington might have some kind of political subtext, but if you somehow missed it, here it is: the United States had elected its first black president the year before Zombieland came out. Even back then, when white guys talked about “not recognizing America any more,” they were sending one specific, unmistakable message; you didn’t need to see them put on a red MAGA hat to know what they meant. Zombieland has a reputation as a stupid comedy with a fun Bill Murray cameo — which, for the most part, it is — but it also represents the downfall of the zombie genre, in which a monster that began as a socially progressive metaphor became an overtly right-wing trope. Ten years later, Zombieland: Double Tap, a movie critics have hailed as “worthless” and “utterly devoid of necessity,” follows a run of ceaseless zombie films — World War Z[ombies]! Pride and Prejudice and Zombies! Walking Dead (the titular dead are zombies!) — to bring us back to that same hippie-punching, bimbo-mocking territory.
To say that Zombieland has aged poorly in the past ten years is an overstatement. Watching it in 2019 instantly makes 2009 feel like a very long time ago; it is jarringly gross, in a post-GamerGate universe, to realize that the movie’s hero is the lonely, virginal, video-game obsessed white guy who tries to reclaim his masculinity by…
