Some Thoughts On The World's End

The World's End is a zombie film, but not as we know them. Forget the trademarks of Romero-esque zombies such as groaning and pallid skin. Pegg, Frost and Wright already covered that in Shaun of the Dead. The World's End, however has taken the essence of zombie and updated it to the modern world.

When you think zombie, you think of a literal corpse. You think of decayed skin and blank eyes. You think of death. That's ultimately what Zombies represent, but they also represent other, subtler things. The pale crowds of near identical rotting faces, shuffling and groaning in time, represents the fear of losing individuality and identity. Zombies aren't unique. All zombies have the same skills (none). Unlike Vampires or Werewolves, no part of you except your body remains, and even that goes eventually. That's what makes zombies scary.

Why else would they make us afraid? They're slow, dumb and lack the most basic of co-ordination. Unlike Vampires and Werewolves, Zombies can easily be hacked, whacked, maimed or even out-run. You don't even need any specific weapon, like stakes or silver bullets, just any blunt object will do. Zombies are tenacious, but easy to defeat. This provides hope, the most crucial aspect to any horror film. It provides hope against the collectivist threat. (Perhaps why Romero was popular in the Cold War?)

These traits, the essence of zombie, are ever present in the antagonistic "blanks" of The World's End. A group of 5 drunk, middle-aged males can defeat a whole room of these mechanical drones, whose limbs come off as easily as a zombies and will continue to writhe despite being disconnected. While they're fast and seem to have mild martial art skills, they can be beaten.

However, the fears of losing individuality have been updated. The blanks are still blanks. Sure, the automatons have the personalities of the people they replaced, as well as looking and sounding like them, but they still all give the impression of being the same. As the number of blanks grow the individual voices get lost in the masses of the connected network. The individualism is still lost, not because everyone becomes the same, but because they are all connected into a system where their individual contribution is negligible. Sounds a lot like this thing called The Internet. Hopefully, since you're reading this, you've heard of it.

The World's End is a very clever film. It adapts the spirit of the zombie (paradox?) into our modern, hyper-linked world, all the while weaving it into a story about the teenage desire to rebel and do what you want. This may just be a load of rubbish, the classic ploy of finding meaning where there was none intended. I'm not forcing my views onto you, just putting them out into this connected world we live in.

Thanks for reading.