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1. Zombie Research!
Emma Marshall

2. Conventions of Zombie Films:
• Isolation
• Unaware of their disease
• Urban and abandoned locations
• Set in an apocalyptic worlds (dirty, deserted…)
• Contrasts between slow paced and fast paced editing
• Characters who are out to kill the zombie
• Character who has emotional attachment to the
zombie (for example, sympathy)
• Usually about survival
• Have to be shot in the head to die

3. Conventional Props:
• Gory make up (scars and wounds often created with liquid
latex, wax, fake blood, bruising)
• Blood
• Weapons (for example, guns, knives, baseball bats…)
Conventional Locations:
• Shopping malls
• Homes
• Desolated suburban areas
• Farm houses
• Secluded cabins
• Anywhere relatively deserted

4. Conventional Endings:
• Cliffhangers
• Lots of deaths
• Zombies killed/ everyone is saved
• Zombies are cured

5. Early Zombie Conventions
• They were also known as the ‘living dead,’ usually
controlled by a voodoo spell and were servants to a
‘master’ figure who raised them.
• Their appearance was similar to humans, but they had
rugged skin and dark, sunken eyes
• They tended to be mute, were very slow moving, and
mindlessly followed instructions from their ‘master.’
• Often their master would lose control by the end of the
film.

6. Romero Zombie Conventions
• Zombies were driven by an uncontrollable hunger
to eat the living.
• Zombie attacks were always in explicit detail,
heightening the gore for cinema
• Zombies could be killed by damage to the brain
• Being a zombie was contagious and could be
spread by a bite
Romero’s film in which he discovered these
conventions was the famous, ‘Night Of The Living
Dead.’
Once he had discovered these conventions, it became
the grounds for all films.

7. Zombie conventions: NOW!
Modern zombie conventions still tend to be in
line with Romero’s conventions.
However, there are more of a variety now, in
that there are more films in which we see:
• zombies moving quickly,
• are a lot harder to kill,
• are more intelligent.