"They're us, that's all"

Of all the film genres out there, horror is perhaps the most transient. Rom-coms will always work with a variant on the 'meet-cute' formula, in the same way that most thrillers focus on the 'wrong man' scenario. By contrast, horror has to remain contemporary in order to maintain its edge. To be truly effective, it needs to visualise the terrors of modern society, and reflect the issues that keep us awake at night.

The genre itself might have been through more phases than David Bowie, but every once in a while a film comes along which transcends its 'of the moment' setting and resonates for subsequent generations. The fashions may date, and the effects may start to wrinkle around the edges, but the subtext remains as relevant as the day it was filmed. And in light of the events of last week, I can't think of a more compelling example than George Romero's Dawn of the Dead.

Horror is no stranger to dreck. Its annals are littered with chancers, losers and bullshit artists, convinced that a handful of topless screamers and a bucketload of offal would be enough to secure their place in the horror hall of fame. Which makes Romero's unflinching social commentary and rich subtext all the more unique. This was a man who invented the modern concept of the living dead (shuffling and shambolic, with a taste for human flesh) in 1968, whilst also adding a groaning voice to the discussion around the civil rights movement. The critics may have balked at the indecorous ghouls chomping on grue, but it was Romero's harrowing portrayal of man's inhumanity to man that really horrified his audiences.

At the end of Night of the Living Dead, it seemed as though we were winning the battle against the undead hordes, as the military were deployed, alongside a redneck militia, to clean up the country. Ten years later, and Romero checked in with his pasty-faced progeny to find that they had claimed the upper hand. And were busy chewing on its fingers.

Dawn of the Dead opens in a TV news studio that's struggling to stay on the air. Amidst the hysteria, a lone voice of reason is being rudely shouted down for attempting to understand the issue. Meanwhile, all hell is breaking loose in the poverty-stricken projects, where the African-American underclass have effectively been barricaded into their homes. As the military attempts to enforce marshall law, many of the soldiers seem incapable of differentiating between the living and the dead residents.

The rest of the film follows our four main protagonists as they attempt to flee the city in a helicopter, eventually taking refuge in the Monroeville mall, east of Pittsburgh. They set up camp in some disused office space, and eventually clear the mall of its shuffling inhabitants. At one point, news producer Francine and her boyfriend Stephen look down at the undead crowds, drifting aimlessly towards the mecca of consumption. "Why do they come here?" she asks incredulously. " Stephen replies "Memory, a kind of instinct. What they used to do. This was an important place in their lives."

From that point onwards, Romero's film undergoes a subtle shift in tone. Suddenly, it's clear that we're watching a pitch black parody, rather than a straight-forward horror piece. Bright colours, jaunty music, and a bunch of slapstick that manages to culminate in a custard pie fight. There's still plenty of gruesome limb severing and disembowelments. But there's also a scene where someone gets separated from their arm, leaving the bloodied limb stuck in a 'check your blood pressure' machine. I didn't say any of it was in good taste. But at the heart of it all, is the lament that the afterlife promises no peace or serenity, just an eternity of shuffling from store to store, thumping impotently at the windows.

However, it's not just the zombie underclass who waste their days decaying in the aisles. Our four heroes soon feel the need to cosy up their domestic environment and start browsing for home comforts. We're treated to countless scenes of Frannie and her cohorts rifling through the stores' stock, trying on fur coats, and pushing a shopping cart round the delicatessen. By the time a bunch of greasy bikers attempt to lay claim to the shopping mall, the gang's makeshift pad looks like the inside of a show-home, albeit one that could easily play host to Abigail's Party. And yet their conspicuous consumption does nothing to kill the ennui from which they're all suffering. They're just going though the motions, waiting for real life to intrude - to the point that they're almost glad to re-engage their survival instinct once their inner-sanctum is penetrated by the bikers.

So what's Romero's point? Well, for a start, he knows that when civilisation breaks down, a mindless society pre-conditioned to consume, will instinctively head for the shops. But consumerism isn't limited to the lower classes - it infects all of us. And those who look down on the uncivilised masses as a mindless rabble aren't immune to the need to accumulate possessions. They just exhibit slightly better taste when the ransacking starts.

Looking at the recent spate of civil unrest, it's tempting to suggest that Romero saw it all coming. Lawlessness, violence, judgement and looting, perpetrated by an underclass that was just doing as it had been told for several generations. Not to mention a news media that was devoid of answers, and unwilling to address the root causes. To paraphrase Peter, the closest thing Dawn has to a hero, "When there's no more room in Hell, the dead will walk to Carphone Warehouse."

Lost in Found Footage

This seems to be the summer of revisionist history, as a number of blockbusters attempt to give their preposterous plotlines a little extra credibility by merging them with key moments that defined the twentieth century. X-Men: First Class managed to embroil its cast of youthful mutants in the Cuban missile crisis, whereas the latest instalment in the Transformers franchise suggests that loveable old Buzz Aldrin (who even makes a cameo appearance) explored a crashed alien spaceship when he and Neil first landed on the moon in 1969.

Up next is low-budget sci-fi horror Apollo 18, which details the exploits of a supposedly abandoned NASA expedition to the moon, and the shocking fate which befell its astronauts. Rather than using costly CGI to drop its cast into historically accurate footage, Apollo 18 is the latest addition to the burgeoning sub-genre of 'found footage'. 

Often unfairly dismissed as an amateurish way of making a horror film on the cheap, this relatively recent addition to the canon has been responsible for a number of genuinely unnerving movies over the last decade or so. It's interesting to note that the growing popularity of the sub-genre directly correlates with the impact of YouTube on popular culture. Think back to the major tragedies and disasters of the last decade - chances are, your recollections of them take the form of grainy hand-held smartphone footage, captured on the fly by would-be documentarians, even as they ran for their lives.

At first, this was seen to be the biggest flaw in any 'found footage' scenario - surely the moment we encountered danger or threat, the lens cap would be replaced and we'd run for our lives? But the reality is very different - fight or flight has become a triptych, with 'film' now the third, preferred option. Many people have attested to the fact that, when confronted with real-life horror, the view-finder offers the witness a comforting distance, as well as the illusion of control over the terrors that are unfolding. To paraphrase the strapline for Wes Craven's seminal exploitation film 'The Last House On The Left' - leaving the cameras rolling allows us to keep telling ourselves it's only a movie. Only a movie. Only a movie...

These films are not to everyone's taste, and certainly unsuitable for anyone who loves an artfully composed mise-en-scène. But if you can handle the occasional bout of motion sickness, and dialogue that wouldn't feel out of place on Made In Chelsea, there are some gems out there worth revisiting.

The Blair Witch Project

Filmed in eight days for around $25,000, The Blair Witch Project was a genuine phenomenon. Featuring an unknown cast of three, who were all listed on IMDB at the time as 'deceased', the film's greatest strength was the sophistication of its marketing. Its creators, Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick, created an entire mythology around the town of Burkittsville, and pioneered the use of the internet to drive word-of-mouth.

Although the film went on to gross almost a quarter of a billion dollars, it was in many ways a victim of its own success. Promised one of the most terrifying movie-going experiences of all time, audiences were disappointed to find themselves watching a trio of unlikable students stumbling around in the dark and getting freaked out by a pile of twigs. They could get that at Glastonbury. More than a decade after its release, the film itself still stands up to repeated viewing, particularly the closing scene set in the ruins of a house that belonged to child killer Rustin Parr. Even now, the final shot of Mike standing in the corner, facing the wall and awaiting his fate, is enough to send chills down the most cynical of spines. Heather's still an annoying bitch though.

REC

In the last few years, Spain has replaced Japan as the source of some of the best modern horror films. And Hollywood has responded by dutifully buying up all of the most interesting properties and remaking them for audiences who have an issue with reading. Remade the following year as 'Quarantine', 2007's REC is a nerve-shredding twist on Night of the Living Dead, only this time our protagonists are stuck inside the building with the zombies. OK, technically they may not be zombies, but they're definitely infected with something that gives them a taste for human flesh.

What starts out as a late night news segment following an inner city fire crew, becomes a battle for survival as a reporter and her colleagues are locked inside a tenement block that's placed under quarantine by the military. To be fair, the mid-section of the film becomes rather predictable and repetitive as the background characters are gradually chomped and infected. But by the time our plucky heroine finds herself switching on the night-vision in a locked apartment, you'll be chewing your nails down to the wrist. 

Cloverfield

Not all found-footage movies are low budget, they're just designed to look that way. Cloverfield, for instance, applied the techniques of the format to a much larger-scale story, as it attempted to depict the impact of a Godzilla-style attack from an everyman perspective. It doesn't get off to the most auspicious start, as we're introduced to the main characters at a party thrown for the most obnoxious person in their social circle.

Thankfully, just as you find yourself wishing a gruesome fate to befall all of them, the attack comes without warning. Appropriating the clouds of dust and debris, as well as the blind panic, of 9/11, the film cleverly puts your preconceptions on hold. Witnessing the chaos through the viewfinder of a video-camera, the viewer is caught up in the action. You might not care about the characters you're with, you just want to be able to turn a corner without staring into the dripping mandibles of the inscrutable sea monster laying waste to Manhattan. 

Diary of the Dead

For over forty years, George Romero has used his zombie cohorts to address every major cultural and philosophical issue facing society. Racism, consumerism, military aggression - they've all been slowly disemboweled by his lumbering, unblinking hordes. So it was probably only a matter of time before he turned the cameras on, well, the cameras themselves.

Skewering the YouTube generation, as well as the fine line between news and propaganda, Diary of the Dead offered him the chance to reboot his entire series and start back at day one of the undead outbreak. Although far from a masterpiece, the film shows that George still knows how to push society's buttons and give us something meaty to chew on, as his grey-faced army does exactly the same thing. 

Paranormal Activity

On the surface, Oren Peli's breakout hit is as dull as it sounds - 90 minutes of watching CCTV footage. If that's how I wanted to spend my free time I'd get a job as a security guard. Another low budget triumph of ingenuity over expertise, Paranormal Activity once again presents us with an unlikeable pair of protagonists, who set up a video camera to try and capture the weird goings-on that take place whenever they go to sleep.

The filmic equivalent of a spot-the-difference competition, Peli's movie invites us to scrutinise every inch of the screen looking for something out of place or unusual. It's the classic magician's trick of misdirection - the moment we take things for granted, he presents us with something new and it shocks us out of our complacency. Ordinarily, the idea of a door opening of its own accord would be about as terrifying as Saturday Kitchen. But once the film has drawn you into its static, wall-mounted world, the slightest movement might just launch you from your seat.

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

T.S. Eliot once wrote that the world would end not with a bang, but with a whimper. However, this weekend, the only person whimpering was Harold Camping. He's the 89-year-old radio broadcaster who's spent years pumping millions of dollars into an advertising campaign to convince the easily manipulated that armageddon was due on May 21st, 2011.

It's easy for a secular nation like ours to scoff at the idiocy of people who walk the streets with a sandwich board proclaiming that 'the end of the world is nigh'. But in the U.S., Camping had developed a considerable following who genuinely believed that their time was almost up. They didn't even seem to care that he'd already announced the world's end in 1994, although he was at least smart enough to caveat his declaration with a question mark.

This time around, Camping was taking no chances. Despite predicting a happy finish for 200 million people, his vision of the rapture held less promising outcomes for the rest of the world's seven billion-strong population. Those that didn't enjoy a triumphant ascension to the kingdom of heaven would be left behind to endure 153 days of torture and torment. Like being stuck in a lift with Edna from The Apprentice.

The threats were sufficiently compelling to drive one woman in California to slit her daughters' throats and attempt suicide, in the hope that she might prevent them suffering through the world's end. Thankfully, the children survived their injuries and have been released to the custody of the Department of Children's Services.

Poor old Harold is now facing double disappointment. Not only was he not called to greatness, his once-prospering radio business is likely to meet its maker quicker than he will. The International Business Times speculates that its $72 million value is going to be decimated: "In all likelihood, his ministry will be destroyed...there is no escaping his failed 2011 'Doomsday' prediction. He painted himself into a corner by using words like 'guaranteed' and 'without any shadow of doubt.' His massive publicity campaign just made it worse." If only he'd taken a tip from Carlsberg and hedged his bets. He's probably kicking himself right now.

Even so, it's interesting that the Centers for Disease, Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a new survival guide recently, to teach Americans about how to cope in an armageddon scenario. Titled Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse, the guide presents all the usual advice - bottled water, food, sanitation and hygiene clothing and bedding, important documents - but in the context of a societal breakdown that would give George Romero a shit-fit.

Rather than just shouting "Shoot 'em in the head" or hiding out in a shopping mall until the bikers attack, the guide recommends more practical solutions. With tongue poking through a gruesome hole torn in its cheek, it reads "There are all kinds of emergencies out there that we can prepare for. Take a zombie apocalypse for example. That’s right, I said z-o-m-b-i-e a-p-o-c-a-l-y-p-s-e. You may laugh now, but when it happens you’ll be happy you read this, and hey, maybe you’ll even learn a thing or two about how to prepare for a real emergency."

It's actually a pretty smart way of encouraging people to read useful information about how to prepare for an emergency, especially in a country that's recently endured more than its fair share of natural disasters. But as the rapture debacle clearly illustrated, some people will believe anything they read. Look out Barbara, maybe they're coming to get you after all...