The Horror Film Night Of The Living Dead

What comes to mind when you think of a zombie? For most, a zombie is seen as a fictional creature. What people don’t realize is zombies are real, at least to some people. In Haiti, zombies neither have the compulsion to eat human flesh, nor do they smell like death. To the people in Haiti, zombies are no joke. If Haitian people really believe this, how did our image of zombies get so distorted? The word zombie originated in West Africa. The word first came from slaves, and it advanced further because of voodoo. Voodoo is a religion that originates in Africa; it focuses on the human experience, even after death. Zombies were originally produced through spells and voodoo by a sorcerer called a Bokor. A person would die, then be brought back

The horror film The White Zombie was credited as the first zombie movie. In this movie, they used the proper origin of the real zombie; however, in movies and tv shows following it, they weren’t so accurate. In the more recent films, zombies come about because of a pandemic. A pandemic is a widespread disease across a country or the world. In George Romero’s movie Night of the Living Dead the audience saw the people being brought to life as zombies. In this film, instead of being slaves in Haiti, the zombies could be anyone around you: your neighbors, family, or friends. This is when zombies stopped being voodoo, and they went to being what we know them as today. Today, what we know is before the zombie is created, there is a human. A human is morphed into a zombie by being bitten by another zombie. Zombies look as if they are decaying from lack of life; they are rotten and green. Not only do the people change physically, but they change mentally as well. After someone turns into a zombie, their cognitive ability to think and reason for themselves is gone. They live a monotonous life that is colorless, dreary, and dismal. These characteristics are what is portrayed in many movies and television