Dante's Heart
allude to, and withhold details and plot points
until they’re at their most-poignant and
scariest; on the other, provide texture,
variation, and multiple points of view. Zombie
movies tend to be local: this city or suburb,
town, or even house, so as to show the street
overrun with zombies with the protagonists
barricaded in their house. But unlike the
typical movie’s scope, WWZ does not
privilege an American point of view; instead,
through the frame of its interviewer hearing the
stories of myriad survivors after the war is over
and the humans are left to rebuild their
damaged world, it provides international
until they’re at their most-poignant and
scariest; on the other, provide texture,
variation, and multiple points of view. Zombie
movies tend to be local: this city or suburb,
town, or even house, so as to show the street
overrun with zombies with the protagonists
barricaded in their house. But unlike the
typical movie’s scope, WWZ does not
privilege an American point of view; instead,
through the frame of its interviewer hearing the
stories of myriad survivors after the war is over
and the humans are left to rebuild their
damaged world, it provides international
points of view, even down to an astronaut trapped in space, helpless as he sees
the world decay below him.
In that sense, WWZ’s tapestry narration resembles the classic monster novels in
its form—Frankenstein is a surprisingly modern frame story, Dracula and The
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde both create and shape their stories
through letters, journals, and newspaper clippings, from multiple points of view,
and Interview with the Vampire is largely a story within a story. But the book also
resembles these stories in its meaning, for WWZ is not, in the end, about
zombies. It is, of course, about people, “the human factor,” as the interviewer
tells us early on. And so we see a story of struggle, sacrifice, and salvation. In
doing so, the “Zombie War” depicted specifically evokes AIDS, civil war,
nuclear strikes, geopolitical shifts, massive displacement, natural disaster, and
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the world decay below him.
In that sense, WWZ’s tapestry narration resembles the classic monster novels in
its form—Frankenstein is a surprisingly modern frame story, Dracula and The
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde both create and shape their stories
through letters, journals, and newspaper clippings, from multiple points of view,
and Interview with the Vampire is largely a story within a story. But the book also
resembles these stories in its meaning, for WWZ is not, in the end, about
zombies. It is, of course, about people, “the human factor,” as the interviewer
tells us early on. And so we see a story of struggle, sacrifice, and salvation. In
doing so, the “Zombie War” depicted specifically evokes AIDS, civil war,
nuclear strikes, geopolitical shifts, massive displacement, natural disaster, and
Back Page 3
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