The Z-Word (Part 1)

23 Apr, 2026

I just finished watching Night of the Living Deb (2015), a “zom-rom-com” that is not very funny but very 2015 — the sense of humor reminded me a lot of You’re the Worst (2014). I can’t really recommend the film, but it is worth mentioning as an example of a pattern in zombie movies: it’s almost exclusively horror comedies that actually use the word “zombie” in their dialogue, and the characters’ willingness (or unwillingness) to do so is itself a joke. For instance, early on in Deb:

“What is this?”

“Well, I’ve never seen one before, but it seems sort of like a zombie apocalypse.”

And later on:

“Wait, so you knew last night that people were gonna turn into zombies?”

“No, no, no, no. These people aren’t... what you said. They’re just ordinary citizens who happen to have contracted a parasite-borne virus that makes their corporal bodies decompose and gives them an insatiable appetite for human flesh.”

Or in the more famous zom-rom-com, Shaun of the Dead (2004):

“Any zombies out there?”

“Don’t say that.”

“What?”

“That.”

“What?”

“That. The Z word. Don’t say it.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s ridiculous.”

Or again in The Dead Don’t Die (2019), another zombie comedy, though not a romantic one:

“So, what are you thinking?”

“You... you really want to know? I’m thinking zombies.”

“What?”

“You know, zombies. Ghouls. The undead.”

“Are you... you're trying to tell me... you’re thinking zombies did this?”

“Yup.”

And it’s not just that reluctance to accept the reality of zombies is a convention of the genre, in the same way that characters in other horror movies often struggle to overcome their disbelief in the supernatural. In straight zombie films, the concept of a zombie can’t preexist; they either have no name at all, or have to be called by some neologism (in The Walking Dead, the choice of term — walker, rotter, etc. — actually becomes a marker of what community someone belongs to, unlike the shared language inherited from the time before).

There is no folklore about zombies to be unearthed in libraries or gotten from reluctant locals,¹ as there is about vampires or werewolves, because by convention, their appearance is sudden and unanticipated (if not always inexplicable), and completely upsets the order of human life. This is the particular kind of psychological shock, the kind of existential challenge they represent; something like COVID-19, or the nuclear bomb. Thus, characters break the fourth wall simply by being aware of the idea of a zombie apocalypse before it happens, in a way that referring to traditional ghost stories or alien abduction experiences does not. In fact, the opposite is the case: it’s a common trope of narratives about aliens and ghosts that these beings are already known, even if that knowledge has been hidden or disavowed.

Just on this basis, we can distinguish with very little ambiguity between (1) the zombie genre¹ in a strict sense, meaning films in the vein of Night of the Living Dead (1968); (2) comedies that play with the genre’s contrivances, like Return of the Living Dead (1985); and (3) fiction that borrows the figure of the zombie, but disregards the constitutive elements of the genre, such as Freaks of Nature (2015). With other figures in horror, like the witch or the devil, such distinctions are often much harder to draw, or do not apply at all.

Nano-reviews of films mentioned in this post (rated 1–5 brains):

• Night of the Living Dead (1968): all-time classic (🧠🧠🧠🧠🧠).
• Return of the Living Dead (1985): perfect comedy, even more pessimistic than Night (🧠🧠🧠🧠🧠).
• Shaun of the Dead (2004): perfectly executed, only a little trivial (🧠🧠🧠🧠).
• Freaks of Nature (2015): delightful horror/sci-fi pastiche (🧠🧠🧠).
• Night of the Living Deb (2015): shoddy yet not without charm (🧠🧠).
• The Dead Don’t Die (2019): surreal as a dream, funny and dark (🧠🧠🧠🧠).

Note: