Last Day: Z

April just went like water through my fingers and here we are now, facing the Z challenge. Unbelievable. I had a blast and hope you did, too. To all my new followers, I hope you continue to find interesting things among the many thoughts that compel me to write in this blog and I'll do my best to give you just that. To all the new friendships and bonds that the challenge gave me, I cherish you all. Thanks for extending me your virtual hand in a gesture of true kindness.

Movie.

Zombieland (2009)
Directed by Ruben Fleischer.

Plot: In the early twenty-first century when zombies have taken over America, a shy, inexperienced college student in Texas has survived by following his 30 rules. He then decides to travel to Ohio to see if his parents are alive. He gets a ride with a boisterous zombie-hating good-old boy headed for Florida, and soon they confront a young woman and her little sister who have survived by conning other survivors out of their food of getaway cars. An unlikely group, circumstances band them together in search of an LA amusement park they've heard is zombie free.

Review: This movie is neither small nor unknown but do forgive me, Z was an extremely difficult letter and my brain is not cooperating after a month long of heavy thinking. Zombie comedies are difficult to execute and hardly ever worth watching but Zombieland is one of those great exceptions. Part hilarious part scary, the movie has a touching backstory that makes sense and is developed with extreme subtleness but to great effect. The acting is superb and the dialogs are just brilliant. This move is up there with Shawn of the Dead and should not be missed.

Book.

World War Z by Max Brooks.
Published By Crown in 2006.

Blurb: The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time.World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.

Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War.

Most of all, the book captures with haunting immediacy the human dimension of this epochal event. Facing the often raw and vivid nature of these personal accounts requires a degree of courage on the part of the reader, but the effort is invaluable because, as Mr. Brooks says in his introduction, “By excluding the human factor, aren’t we risking the kind of personal detachment from history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? And in the end, isn’t the human factor the only true difference between us and the enemy we now refer to as ‘the living dead’?”

Note: Some of the numerical and factual material contained in this edition was previously published under the auspices of the United Nations Postwar Commission.

Review: I decided to go with this huge blurb because it depicts to perfection the style, voice, and mind behind the book. Narrated as a series of first person interviews, the book contains a hundred individual stories that paint a perfectly clear image of what it was to almost loose the war against zombies. I previously did an extended review of this book for Dark River Press, but suffice it to say it will hunt your dreams. World War Z is a tour-de-force that revived the zombie mythos in 2006, when it was dead and buried. Really zombies-que to bring them back like this, don't you think?

World War Z, My Review

Note: This Review is part of the contest 2011 Spooktacular October Paranormal Reading Challenge. For details or more reviews, please visit Sweetmarie Spooktacular October Paranormal

World War Z by Max Brooks is an iconic book. Not only it single-handily brought new life to the Zombie Genre and became a classic, but the book made zombies so cool and appealing that it kick-started the whole Zombie trend that has been sweeping the literary horror genre for years. I mean, even Stephen King cut a slice of dead meat pie with his book Cell.

For ages Zombies had been monsters for short stories and second rate movies; not since George Romero's mythic movies had the undead been so alive in our psyche. There were no novels solely dedicated to them and they were considered by most like truly dead myths, until in real Zombie-esque style Max Brooks came about and made them walk again.

These days Zombies are hot and everyone who is in the business of writing or selling horror books knows it. We, and them, owe it all to this amazing book. Rumor has it, Brad Pitt will play the lead in the movie version of the book that's in production this very moment.

Okay, back to the book.

It's written like a non-fiction story, very matter of fact, and even scarier because of that. The story starts ten years after the Zombie World War almost annihilated the human race. For twelve years every breathing being on the planet fought an all out war with an enemy that isn't organized, doesn't sleep, doesn't need to eat, and, technically, can't die; where everyone human that got killed in action, raised to fight against you. Three quarters of the world population died as a result of it, the planet got thrashed, and whole ecosystems went the same way Dinos did. Add to that the nuclear winter and you've got the scariest setting ever.

We never get to know the name of the author, all we know is he was in charge of writing a report for the United Nation's Postwar Commission but when he delivered it, the Commission Chair asked him to edit said report because it was all "too intimate", with "too many opinions". He had to prune his report and eliminate, as much as possible, the influence of the human factor. The author is appalled, considering it was precisely the human factor what allowed the catastrophe to occur, so he decides to write a memoir of the war with every interview he did.

The story is divided in three big sections: the first relating how it started and disseminated; the second talking about the moment of no return, when civility went out the window and panic followed suit; and the third telling how is it that the war was finally 'won'. It is redacted as a series of interviews with mostly military personal and a few first person encounters with people critical in either the creation of the problem, or its solution.

Now, allow me to say I haven't slept a decent night in three days and the fact that my husband was out of town didn't help matters. Every noise sent me into tachycardia and I kept dreaming about zombies trying to take my kids away. Seriously.

Even though the stories related to you are not always frightening, the atmosphere is very strong and gets under your skin. Because of its style, it's very easy to read and, to add credibility to it, Brooks used military terms or words in other languages when needed, using footnotes to clarify the meanings to the 'civil readers'. Brilliant.

Over all, it totally deserves the status it has gained and is now among my all-time favorites. If I had to say one bad thing about it, though, it would be that the winding down of the story is a bit slow. After it is explained how the war can be won (remember, we already know we won), the book visits a few of the most important battles fought to make it happen and it gets a bit repetitive. However, one chapter later you have utter brilliance in "Total War" (chapter 10) and you wish the book had two hundred more pages.

If you like horror, post-apocaliptic stories, zombies, or if you simply want to be part of contemporary history, you HAVE to read this book.