Intellectuals — ya gotta love ‘em. Who would have thought to write an academic treatise linking the ouevre of zombie-film maestro George Romero with classic themes of hell and death from literature and religion? Well, who better but a professor of religious studies whose previous books include The Truth Is Out There: Christian Faith and the Classics of TV Science Fiction? If you can settle down and stop laughing at the concept, Paffenroth presents refreshingly readable analyses of Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead and other classics, giving the brainy film fan much to chew on, e.g.: “Zombies … violate the natural world of physical and biological laws. Since they are not fully alive, zombies … cannot reproduce on their own. They are more like a cult of cannibalistic Shakers (an eighteenth-to nineteenth-century Christian sect who believed in celibacy for all members, not just clergy)…. Zombies fulfill the worst potentialities of humans to create a hellish kingdom on earth of endless, sterile repetition and boredom.” See? It’s fun.
Grade: A
