Taken on its own, the trailer for Viral, new from some of the Paranormal Activity folks, looks like a decent virus-driven-fast-zombie film. Read the comments under the YouTube posting of the trailer (seen almost 10 million times!) and you’ll see something more: those folks just hate it: it’s a rip-off of 28 Days Later or The Strain or The Last of Us or all of the above. Take a look:
… and yes it is. But seriously, folks: is that a bad thing?
The zombie genre is almost by definition a imitative or anti-imitative niche. To all intents and purposes, and with only rare exceptions (Serpent and teh Rainbow comes to mind), all zombie movies are either derive from or in reaction to the tropes established by George Romero and his peeps way way in the 1950’s. The zombie movies we love (or hate) are either just like them (but better, prettier,m ore modern) or exactly the opposite of them (fast zombies, insect-like zombies, smart zombies in open rebellion, etc. etc.). So calling Viral — or any other zombie flick — “derivative” is kind of beside the point. The question is … does it work? Does it freak you out, scare you, make you jump — whatever it is you were looking for when you walked into the theater or clicked on the icon?
It’s pretty obvious: there’s absolutely nothing shown in that lengthy trailer that we haven’t seen many many times before. But never mind that: is it good? If it is, I’m in. If it’s not … well, the line for disappointing, unscary, uninspired and poorly made zombie flicks forms over tehre to the right, and it’s a long friggin’ line, people.
Let’s hope Viral doesn’t join the queue.
Opens here in the U.S. of A. on July 29.
