From video games to big-screen epics to weekly TV shows, the zombie frenzy has reached boiling point. World War Z: Rise of the Dead goes beyond fiction to examine whether these nightmarish scenarios could happen in the real world. The result is an incredible portrait, as chilling as any created by a Hollywood studio.
The concept of a zombie apocalypse might be far-fetched, but nature can manipulate a reality close enough. For example, a Japanese wasp lays its eggs in the abdomen of arachnids. Once fertilized, the spiders are believed to be influenced by a mind-altering hormone that causes them to protect the wasp eggs at all costs, despite facing death once the eggs hatch.
In the human realm, there is no shortage of illegal substances capable of altering mind and consciousness. The worst of these are known on the street as crokidile – the zombie drug – and cause flesh to disintegrate and startling inertness, mirroring our media-driven vision of the walking dead. As unlikely as it seems, if this drug got into our water supply, the result could resemble a zombie infection at the end of the day.
People are susceptible to influences that place them in a strange state between life and death. On the viral side, 70% of rabies cases involve involuntary outbursts of irrational behavior, hyperactivity and violence. In the field of behavior modification, a child can exist in a zombie-like mode for the rest of his life. Then, when the fallen were revived minutes or days after being declared dead, there were cases where medical explanations failed.
World War Z: Rise of the Undead features countless truly disturbing images, including twitching victims, bones poking out from behind rotting hunks of flesh, and rabid patients foaming at the mouth. The flashes of the carnage are brief but impactful, striving to create a sense of realism and unease.
For those who can accept it, the film underscores the ability of reality to transcend even our fanciest fiction.
