Editorials
How 2018 Proved That There is Still Life Left in the Zombie Genre
*Keep up with our ongoing end of the year coverage here*
If there are two things that can summarize the horror genre in the 2010s, they are the rise of think pieces using the term “elevated horror”, and people complaining about the horror genre being overdone. When The Walking Dead first aired on AMC it paved the way for genre shows to become huge cultural phenomena like Game of Thrones. It also paved the way for thousands of hot takes that declare that the sub-genre is dead and there are no more stories to be told with zombies.
The past two decades have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of zombie films, which is not a surprise given the political and social climate of the past two decades. Director Julius Avery thinks zombies are popular because they are simple, yet primal. “They embody our fears of death and that on the other side there is nothing but suffering and more hunger.” The 21st century also made the threat of zombies as real as it had ever been. Zombie films draw from our fear of other people – you must avoid crowds to survive, as an infected could be hiding among us at any time – and the threat of a biological attack with unforeseen consequences, so we live in the best time for zombie stories. Of course, like any other genre that becomes popular, there are enough zombie films made constantly to make the bad ones stand out, causing audiences to dismiss the entire genre (funny how no one thought of saying “superhero fatigue” until bad films like Fantastic Four came out).
But it only takes one Shaun of the Dead or a Train to Busan to prove that the sub-genre is anything but dead. This year has seen a wave of high-quality zombie films that put unique twists on old tropes. One Cut of the Dead, Anna and the Apocalypse, Overlord, Rampant, Cargo – these are not only the breakthrough zombie films of the year (some already out, some seen in the festival circuit), but they show us just how little ground we have actually covered when it comes to the undead.
The undead can also be funny
The revival of the “zom-com” is attributed to Shaun of the Dead becoming a box office hit. So it isn’t surprising to see most of the best zombie films of the year try to at least homage it. Of the films listed above, two stand out as the clearer heirs to Shaun’s laugh empire. The little Japanese film that could, One Cut of the Dead is already replicating the success of Edgar Wright’s modern classic. After opening in just two theaters back in June, it just passed 2 million tickets sold in over 300 screens and received multiple audience awards at film festivals around the world. The other film is the Scottish Christmas High-School Zombie Musical Comedy Anna and the Apocalypse, which had its world premiere last year and has had a successful tour of the festival circuit.
The best zom-coms work because they juxtapose the carnal horror of your loved ones coming back to feast on your flesh, with funny gags to deflate the tension. One Cut of the Dead and Anna and the Apocalypse use zombies to cast a shadow on situations that on the surface seem light-hearted and cheerful but are also anxiety-inducing and in the process, they bring plenty of laughs. A small film crew trying to make a zombie film that finds itself in the middle of a zombie uprising, or a group of high-schoolers that must fight both their teenager issues and the actual undead on Christmas morning. Both use zombies as reflections of the characters’ real problems, and their setting.
Writer-director Shinichirou Ueda uses the zombie as a metaphor for a film crew. The camaraderie and reliance you have towards your fellow apocalypse survivors reflects the bond created between members of a film crew. The fear that a zombie could be at any corner, and the fear that an actor isn’t on cue, or that the camera crane breaks minutes before shooting stop sounding so different. Zombies are scary, but the stress of being overbudget and on a deadline can also be terrifying. And yet, One Cut of the Dead and its titular 37-minute-long one-take also shows how fun it is to be in the middle of a film shoot, how exhilarating it is to come out the other end alive and having made something of your own with your fellow filmmakers. If you’ve read anything about this film, you’ve read about how tired the beginning is, as the initial long-take sequence looks like just another schlocky riff on the genre. But then this marvelous matryoshka doll of a film reveals its true intent, and it becomes a satirical tribute to DIY filmmaking and how the walking dead have always been the no-budget horror filmmaker’s best friend in ways no other zombie-comedy has done. Then the film goes beyond meta to comment not only on the zombie genre or horror films, but became a satirical testament to filmmaking in general and even on itself, as it makes you re-examine just what the hell you were watching this whole time with sight gags that reference earlier scenes in the film. By the end, you will want to pick up a camera, call some friends, and make something of your own.
Similarly, Anna and the Apocalypse uses “the most wonderful time of the year” and the glee of the holidays to showcase the horrors lurking at every corner of a teenager’s life. Anna and the Apocalypse may not be the first horror musical, or the first zombie Christmas film, but it may well be the first to combine all those sub-genres with a little Scottish flavour and a high-school setting. Director John McPhail thinks it’s the mixing of colors that make Christmas horror films so popular: “Even as it is freezing cold outside, people are smiling because it’s Christmas, but then you add those vibrant reds and people screaming and you’ve got a whole new thing going.” Like One Cut of the Dead, this film uses the zombies as an external representation of the titular Anna’s problems. Her bully of an ex-boyfriend, of course, turns out to be the stereotypical macho zombie-killer, and the headmaster of her school turns out to be the actual psychopath they always joked he was. The use of the Christmas setting sets this film apart from other comedies or musicals, as McPhail uses color to juxtapose the white snow and the bright holiday yellows with the blood-soaking reds of a zombie apocalypse. The film also takes advantage of Christmas traditions to introduce new riffs on classic holiday songs that you will instantly want to add to your annual playlist. It is when all these elements come together – the Christmas setting, the catchy music, the high-school plot, and the zombies – that you realize how easily Anna and the Apocalypse balances its different genres and becomes more than the sum of its parts, but a whole new twist on known tropes.
Zombies can make you cry too…
On the opposite end of the “fun” spectrum, is the tear-jerker zombie film Cargo, which fellow Bloody Disgusting writer Matt Donato pointed at in his piece about parental horror. This Martin Freeman-led film about a father having to care for his infant daughter while fighting the walking dead speaks not only about fears too real to any parent but is also a damn good zombie film. Sure, you have your standard zombie tropes make an appearance, mostly anything involving not trusting other humans. But the real standout is the father-daughter relationship at the center of the story. Writer-director duo Yolanda Ramke and Ben Howling make an interesting addition to the zombie mythos like having the undead literally burrow their heads in the sand, and having the infection take control of your body in exactly 48 hours. The result is more than just Australian The Walking Dead – though it does share a lot of plot points and tone with the show, but done better – but a loving story about parental sacrifice. We have seen zombie dramas before (remember Maggie?) that really make the effort to make you care about the characters, but Cargo makes the entire film revolve around that core relationship in an intimate way we haven’t seen before.
And now we turn back the clocks…
Making a completely original zombie film is not impossible, but it is really hard without at least touching upon things already done by older films. What the best ones do is take those old tropes and give them a fresh perspective in order to breathe new life into them. We’ve seen zombie films about WWII before, and other period pieces like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but those lean more towards camp, and don’t have nearly the same level of craftmanship (or budget) as these two 2018 productions. The idea of a film featuring Nazi zombies or medieval Korean zombies could easily fall flat, but Overlord and Rampant both make their settings into the starts of the film, which makes for more serious films that make the descent into chaos even more entertaining. While Overlord takes a while to embrace its outlandish premise by being a war film first, Rampant goes for epic scale Lord of the Rings-inspired set pieces and enough characters to rival Game of Thrones. Yet when the period setting finally gets mixed with zombies, they make for highly entertaining and fresh takes on the genre.
Overlord achieves its dramatic tone by making the zombies take a backseat to the trials and tribulations of war. From the start, we are thrown into a gritty viewing experience – and that’s even before we see a detached head in a jar talking. The opening scene alone is a nerve-wracking display in craftmanship, as we are placed inside an aircraft about to drop in Nazi-occupied France on the eve of D-Day, before the planes start getting shot down in brutal fashion taken straight out of Saving Private Ryan. Director Julius Avery uses this opening scene to make you care for the characters, which was important for him. “You have to care for your characters before they step into a crazy world, before John McClane hangs off the side of the building, we know about his family situation.” He does the same in Overlord through its opening scene. By prioritizing wartime intensity over B-movie shenanigans, Overlord tricks you into thinking you’re seeing a compelling war drama through its first half, and by sticking to its gritty and serious tone it makes the more fantastical elements of the story feel like a natural progression. When the zombies finally show up, we don’t consider it a left-turn because they serve as an instinctive extension of the monstrosity of the Nazis – think Predator and how we don’t bat an eye at how it goes from being Rambo into a full-blown sci-fi bro-fest.
Likewise, Korean period zombie film Rampant sets the stage by focusing on its period setting. After a thrilling opening scene featuring the naval boarding of a pirate ship, a group of medieval Joseon soldiers find a not-so-dead crewmember that bites one of them. For better or worse, the film kind of forgets about the zombies for a while, in order to explore a complex political conspiracy involving the monarchy and an attempt to take over the kingdom. Director Kim Sung-hoon makes Rampant feel like a prestige epic drama, with grand sets, elaborate costume designs and gorgeous cinematography. More akin to a biblical epic than say, Day of the Dead, once the zombies start attacking the medieval Korean castle, the film’s setting truly shines. If there is one thing we haven’t seen in a zombie film before is a big-budget The Two Towers-style siege of the royal palace with swarms of exquisitely dressed zombies being hacked and slashed via stunning choreography and very, very sharp swords.
A bright future
The thing about zombies is that they are quite versatile, you can make a film and add zombies as a metaphor for almost anything, and it wouldn’t be too outlandish. Likewise, as a horror villain, zombies can be easily explained in any circumstance, from films going back to the beginning of time, across cultures, to even the distant future. The simplicity of the concept gives the genre infinite potential, and as seen with the commercial success of films like One Cut of the Dead, the only thing making the genre feel overdone are bad ideas. It only takes one good and original film to breathe new life into the genre that refuses to die and make us believe in the walking dead once more.
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
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