Most of the origins of vampire legends can be traced back to Eastern Europe. Not long ago, Joan Acocella published this handy summative report on the evolution of the vampire legend, from yesteryear through today. To me, it's impossible to conceptualize the vampire without acknowledging its heritage, from risen, shambling, rotting corpse all the way on up through Spike, the undead's answer to Billy Idol, from Buffy. The best I could find about the equally rich zombie legend heritage was this Wikipedia page. As with vampires, I can't really talk about zombies without pointing out what I know of the heritage of the legends. While vampires are a distinctly European monster, zombies hail from Africa. Or more specifically, they stowed away on slave ships and arrived on American shores as avatars of empowerment for the leaders of the amalgamated patois-religions throughout the Caribbean and the American South. Powerful Vodou priests would raise the dead and have these mindless laborers do their bidding. Let it not escape us that by "powerful Vodou priest," I mean "slave." And so, by extension, I also mean to point out that inherent in this origin of the zombie legends is the notion that the primary purpose of the zombie was to scare the everlivin' shit out of the white folks. They are slaves of slaves, but they are also vehicles of retribution against the smug, pale-faced captors. That they are the bogeyman of the Confederacy is as important now as it ever was.
Since these early days of The New World's restless corpses, the zombie legends have been appropriated a million times over. No longer do we understand zombies as the slaves of powerful magicians--they've come to serve as metaphors for all kinds of things. So many analyses of zombies in film have bitten written that I need not do more than hit the highlights here: they represent anxiety over biochemical warfare or the AIDS epidemic, depending on the analysis in question, in 28 Days Later. They're the rapid soul-death of modern middle class life in Shaun of the Dead. They cast allegorical shadows of Iraq War military occupations in 28 Weeks Later. And it's no coincidence that Romero's Night of the Living Dead apocalyptic zombie vision preceded the Cold War detente which began in 1969. Night of the Living Dead was released in 1968, when tensions were still relatively high. In other words, zombies are one of Hollywood's favorite
But all these subsequent iterations of the greater zombie collective body do not erase their slave culture narrative history. Or at least, they shouldn't-- not for an informed audience. Zombies carry a very specific genetic code of meaning that incorporates all of the versions of the story I've listed above as well as many others. That's an important thing to remember if you're going to take it upon yourself to grow a new branch to the zombie family tree. And a paucity of historical references may well be the only real bone I have to pick with Make-Out With Violence.
MOWV is a locally-made production, filmed on location in Hendersonville, a little suburb to the northeast of Nashville. In all honesty, it's remarkably accomplished. It's low-budget, for sure. But its soundtrack, written and performed by The Non-Commissioned Officers (to which I'm listening as I write (for mood), and which, I might add, I bought just a few hours ago directly from Leah High, who steals the show as Addy, the zombie's best friend) covers a wide tonal range, from sad to spooky to atmospheric to giddy/youthful. In wholly apropos fashion, its recurrent melodic schema occasionally even goes so far as to broach something like a Lynchian, Twin-Peaks-ish sound reference now and again.
Also, I found myself marveling at the dialogue throughout. For such young and relatively inexperienced filmmakers, the collaborative writing talents of The Deagol brothers, Cody DeVos and Eric Lehning display a not unimpressive sense of restraint. The script is pointedly understated and it keeps the exposition to a minimum-- for which I was deeply grateful. Moreover, it manages to capture the spirit of the teenage clique-- complete with idiosyncratic inside jokes (one character, for instance, is always called by both her first and last names: Anne Haran -- which rhymes and is therefore funnier.) -- without dumbing down the characters because of their youth. Or making them speak in some kind of Dawson's Creek-esque elevated shrink-speak diction.
But the story is a curious one in the lineage of the zombie movie. As it goes, one girl, Wendy, from a tight-knit group of friends goes missing in the summer after their high school graduation. The town searches for her. She is not found. They presume her death and have a funeral-like service. And then we cut to a shot of her body washed up on the edge of a river. She twitches. She stands. And then a couple scenes later, a couple of the kids find her strung up between two trees. They take her home and proceed to care for her all summer long, in the house of a friend who is out of town. She rots. She eats a rat. She breaks a toilet and a few champagne glasses. She lunges after one of the living kids a couple of times in an effort to eat him, too. But most of the time, she is relatively docile, as zombies go. And the usual social drama of teenagers continues around her.
Wendy does not trigger an epidemic, nor does she reflect any greater political anxieties of our culture. Instead, she is a whole new brand of zombie. She is the eternally unavailable girl, made only moreso by her death. Patrick, one of our band of compatriots, had long nursed a crush on the girl, when she was still pre-undead. Wendy, of course, had a boyfriend and showed no real romantic interest in poor Patrick. But Patrick quickly becomes the primary caretaker of our zombie invalid, as she lies in her bathtub bed. Despite his devotion, she remains aloof, if a little hungry, in her deadness. Though the physicality of their relationship becomes a reality, as he bathes her, puts make-up on her, tests the limits of her deathly numbness, Wendy remains utterly unmoved by Patrick's dedication. It is only through the titular make-out session, in which Wendy eats Patrick (weirdly reminiscent of the scene in Drawing Restraing 9 in which Bjork and Matthew Barney flay each other underwater, and then eat each others' skin, by the way), that his love for her reaches any sort of perverse fulfillment.
This story, in and of itself, is duly compelling. For a bunch of non-professional actors, these kids do a bang-up job. As I previously mentioned, I could watch Leah High all day long. However, I really do wonder how this film fits into the zombie tradition. While I quite enjoy this new spin on the trope, its failure to tie it back to its literary, cultural and filmic heritages raises a few questions. And, well, it's also likely that the script's admirable restraint left a hole or two in the narrative fabric. What I'm wondering is this: why is Wendy a zombie? How did she get that way? Is someone controlling her and the clues that would relay the identity of her puppeteer went over my head? Or is she more of the zombiehood-as-a-disease school? If so, why doesn't she try harder to pass her funk along? What, exactly, is it about her that makes her have more in common with the zombies of folklore and legend than, say, Bernie (as in the Weekend-at Bernie, I mean)? And who the hell tied her up to that tree, anyway?
So, OK, it's not perfect. But it's still, by far, the best conceived, best executed local film I've seen at the Nashville Film Festival. And well, it's just so hard not to love a zombie movie.
UPDATE: I forgot to include this gem in my abridgement of the zombie lineage. Clearly, it is a much needed step in the ladder.
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