The zombie genre may shuffle into some very different dramatic territory, including some more humane considerations of the undead, says horror expert Roger Luckhurst.

The Walking Dead returns to US screens on14 February with a typically blood-soaked instalment – the perfect way to celebrate Valentine's Day. But in case the show isn't enough to satisfy your desire for grisly tales of the undead, you might be wondering where to go next for your zombie fix.



This is a good moment to reflect that The Walking Dead remains very loyal to the cinema model of the zombie apocalypse as invented in the films of George Romero, from Night of the Living Dead (1968) onwards. There are direct lines of connection, of course: the key producer, director and special effects person on The Walking Dead is Greg Nicotero, who first made his mark working with Romero on The Day of the Dead (1985). The TV series hasn’t messed much with the Romero formula.
Fans get very fixed on the ‘rules’ of the genre. There was outrage when Danny Boyle’s film 28 Days Later… (2002) introduced zombies that no longer shuffled but ran around in murderous rage. There were further doubts this was a proper zombie film, since the outbreak was explained as a virus contagion. How times have changed: this is now the standard back-story for most zombie disaster tales.

So we can conclude that the zombie is never particularly fixed in a set of conventions, and is instead an incredibly mobile and malleable metaphor. And actually, just watching The Walking Dead disguises the fact that there have recently been some very striking changes in cultural uses of the zombie.
For Rick Grimes and his crew on The Walking Dead, zombies are merely anonymous hordes, there to be dispatched. They are rarely individualised. Rick perhaps shows a little pity in the very first episode of the entire series, but after that it is all about learning to live without sentiment. They are the implacable enemy.