It’s official: the zombie apocalypse is here.  The living dead have been lurking in popular culture since the 1930s, but they have never been as ubiquitous or as widely-embraced as they are today.

Zombie Cinema is a lively and accessible introduction to this massively popular genre. Presenting a historical overview of zombie appearances in cinema and on television, Ian Olney also considers why, more than any other horror movie monster, zombies have captured the imagination of twenty-first-century audiences.

Surveying the landmarks of zombie film and TV, from White Zombie to The Walking Dead, the book also offers unique insight into why zombies have gone global, spreading well beyond the borders of American and European cinema to turn up in films from countries as far-flung as Cuba, India, Japan, New Zealand, and Nigeria. Both fun and thought-provoking, Zombie Cinema will give readers a new perspective on our ravenous hunger for the living dead.    

 

IAN OLNEY is an associate professor of English at York College of Pennsylvania in York. He is the author of Euro Horror: Classic European Horror Cinema in Contemporary American Culture.
 

"Zombie Cinema is a brisk, informative read that gives us a zesty tour through an amazingly prolific and popular contemporary film cycle. He's clearly done his homework in excavating–or disinterring, as the case may be–zombie movies from disparate cultural and historical contexts."

"Zombie Cinema offers both a pithy overview of zombie cinema and a fresh perspective on the most trenchant themes highlighted in zombie films. Olney manages to deftly weave [a quantity of scholarly as well as cinematic research] into the lithe booklet, all while presenting his own argument. It can be read in a matter of hours, but the observations Olney puts forth are sure to stick with the reader for much longer."

"What the vampire was to the 1980s and 90s, the zombie has become for early twenty-first century audiences, the monster of choice, spreading through a multitude of media texts. Ian Olney organizes the history of the zombie in popular culture from Haitian voodoo practice to the present, providing clear analysis of its evolution and development. Theoretically informed, the writing is engaging and accessible throughout."