Zombies spread like a pandemic

Roadblocks at state borders; fights in grocery stores over toilet paper; global uncertainty; snap lockdowns — if the zombie apocalypse arrived tomorrow, humanity would be primed for the chaos.

Roadblocks at state borders; fights in grocery stores over toilet paper; global uncertainty; snap lockdowns — if the zombie apocalypse arrived tomorrow, humanity would be primed for the chaos.

If it feels like zombies are everywhere at the moment, it’s because they are.

American director Zack Snyder’s much anticipated R-rated zombie action film Army of the Dead, complete with a zombie tiger, has a May 21 Netflix release.

Meanwhile, Twilight of the Dead, the final zombie movie by George A.Romero, who laun­ched the zombie into the popular psyche with his Night of the Living Dead series, is to be finished by his widow Suzanne.

Hit series The Walking Dead is consistently among the most popular shows on streamer Binge and will begin its bloody conclusion in August with the release of the first eight of the 24-episode final season.

Then there is yours truly, set to appear, albeit very briefly, as an honorary cast member in Wyrmwood: Apocalypse, a low-budget Australian action horror movie recently filmed 54km north of Sydney — during a real-life global health pandemic.

Bruce Isaacs, associate professor of film studies at the University of Sydney, said the zombie was a fitting archetypal monster for the COVID era because they appeared en masse.

“If you think of monsters from traditional horror movies, they tend to be individuals, as in slasher films, or serial killers or the Devil,” Isaacs said. “Zombies are huge faceless, nameless, unthinking masses of bodies. Virtually all the zombie movies are about an outbreak and it’s often a virus that brings on the condition of the living dead.”

A meteor shower is what brings on the zombie outbreak in 2015’s Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead, but the monsters in this sequel are no less contagious. The film was created across four years on a “gaffer-tape budget” by Sydney brothers Kiah and Tristan Roache-Turner, through their production company Guerilla (sic) Films, which has teamed with Bronte Pictures for the sequel, to be released early 2022.

“It’s going be tricky for you,” said director Kiah Roache-Turner when Review arrived on set for the last day of filming for Wyrmwood: Apocalypse. “The Wyrmwood zombie is kind of very specific.”

Review spent hours in make-up with prosthetics expert Mariel McClorey and the costume department to prepare for the role.

Then it was on to a crash course on how to fall safely with stunt co-ordinator George Saliba. “So you’re going to get shot and die, I believe?” he asked, with a smile.

Review film critic Stephen Romei said the zombie genre was going nowhere in a hurry. “They tap into our darkest fear: extinction,” he said. “Zombies, by and large, arise from near-apocalyptic events, and decide to finish the job. This goes to the other deep fear they inspire: that we will become one of them, a drooling, mumbling, stumbling, brain eater.”

In Review: Behind the scenes on Wyrmwood: Apocalypse with zombie extra Bridget Cormack.