June 19, 2010

Dark Forest of Death: Here's to the Bucolic Zombie

Horror fans jabber away about fast zombies versus slow zombies but how about city zombies versus country ones? Is there any difference between the pale-faced corpses who reanimate in urban environs and those who resurrect in the woods? Kim Jeong-min's low-budget Blair-Witch-meets-Dawn-of-the-Dead flick doesn't answer that question directly but the casualties in his Death Forest of Death are definitely victims of an evil woodland spirit, not a man-made disease run amok. It's man versus vengeful nature here, not man versus sinister science. And these zombies are sometimes fast, sometimes slow and always out to get you. Whether you join their ranks or not isn't dependent on whether you decapitate them before they make you bleed either. The only thing that can save your life is stopping your own blood from hitting that forest floor. Since no one here ever learns this basic rule of survival, their successive deaths are all unavoidable. Ignorance is death, as they used to say. Until someone sees the forest floor drink a whole bucket of blood and not just slurp up a few drops, visitors to this national park are going to continue to die one by one. Cleanliness is next to godliness after all.

1 comment: