#30 Hotel Rwanda: What Are We Afraid Of?

Site updates have been a bit patch for the last couple of months, mainly because circumstances forced me to move from my conveniently placed zombie fortress and I'm now having to secure a whole new building. However, now that everything's to my satisfaction, we're going to be seeing updates much more regularly here from now on, and I've got some great stuff lined up for this month alone. Starting with this blog entry.

A couple of days before Halloween I travelled down to the University of Winchester (so called because they have a rifle above the Student Union bar, I assume) for their first Zombosium (for those wondering, yes, the plural is Zombosia). It was an interesting day that involved studies of the zombie survival strategy debate on Mumsnet,  examinations of The WalkingDead and Dead Set, and some great theories about ways to zombie-proof people’s homes. While there, I gave the following talk on a subject I've been working up to writing about on the blog for a while.

What are we Afraid of?: Hotel Rwanda as a Zombie Movie

I’m going to start off with a couple of things that ought to go without saying, but I’ll say them anyway. Firstly- It is not the intention of this talk to be in any way flippant about the Rwandan Genocide in 1994. Secondly- The focus of this talk is the movie Hotel Rwanda, not the events it was based on. I am going to argue that in terms of its plot structure and themes, the movie has a lot in common with movies in the zombie apocalypse genre. Fans of science fiction and horror like to say that our genres of choice deal with the big issues. If that’s the case, I think it’s worth comparing the way a historical biopic and a sub-genre of horror movie approach the same themes.

The Genocide

Before we get onto that however, I think it’s important to remind ourselves just what the historical events were that the movie was based on. Over 100 days in 1994 between half a million and a million people were massacred.  The targets of the massacre were the Tutsi people, an ethnic group that had been given positions of power during Belgian colonial times because the colonialists believed that they had more Caucasian features. During the genocide rape was systematically used as a weapon and men, women and children were murdered with machetes.

While this was happening, in the Rwandan capital city of Kigali Paul Rusesabagina of the Hôtel des Mille Collines was able to shelter 1,268 Tutsis, including his family, by bribing the militia and army with money and alcohol.

It’s Paul Rusesabagina’s story that is told in the film Hotel Rwanda. However, no matter how truthful director Terry George wanted to be in telling this story, it was a necessity to change some details. Multiple real life people were combined to create composite characters. Events that took place over a number of days instead happened in a single scene, rough edges were smoothed. Because he was telling a true story dramatically, the tools available to Terry George were the same tools available to any fictional film maker.

So what we’re going to do now is go through the movie, look at those tools, and see how the same tools are used in zombie movies.

Everything is Normal

The opening act of Hotel Rwanda establishes our characters and the world they live in. We see Paul talking to businessmen and running his hotel. We see the pleasant suburban neighbourhood he lives in, the kids that play there and how he spends time with his friends and family.

You’ll see similar scenes at the start of a bunch of zombie movies. Night of the Living Dead opens up with a brother and sister bickering on their way to drop off flowers at their father’s grave. The opening act of Shaun of the Dead introduces us to Shaun’s relationship problems and his dead end job. The 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake shows a nurse finishing her shift, going back to the suburb where she lives, chatting to her neighbour’s daughter and spending time with her husband.

The purpose of these scenes in a zombie movie is pretty straight forward. They exist to establish the main characters as people we can identify with. They have jobs and relationships and lives not that different from yours. The implication is loud and clear- these people are you. This could happen to you.

Likewise, on the commentary to Hotel Rwanda, Terry George says that he “Wanted to show they had a very Western lifestyle not unlike Europe and America".

Apart from the Problems in the Background

In Hotel Rwanda, while these scenes of domestic bliss are taking place, we can still see trouble brewing. A large part of this comes through news on the television and radio. The movie opens with radio propaganda from George Rutaganda saying why he hates to Tutsis. During the opening scenes we overhear news broadcasters talking about the Rwandan President’s involvement in peace talks.

Then in the background we see other details. While Paul is buying food and drink for the hotel, a crate tips over revealing it’s full of machetes. A neighbour is mysteriously dragged away by the army. Roads are mysteriously empty. Paul’s brother-in-law comes to him begging him to leave the country, and even while Paul is reassuring him that everything will be fine, there’s a power cut.

Again, we can see this reflected in a lot of zombie movies.

The first clue that things might be wrong in Night of the Living Dead is a news report about a crashed space probe from Venus, which the brother and sister promptly switch off without listening to. The Dawn of the Dead remake’s opening scenes have a background filled with mysteriously ill patients suffering bite wounds, news broadcasts that are almost immediately switched over to music stations, and “emergency bulletins” appearing on muted tellies.

Perhaps there’s no better example of this trope than Shaun of the Dead. The opening scenes of Shaun of the Dead are filled with half glimpsed headlines containing words like “mutilated remains” “GM crops blamed” and “Super-flu scares public”. A story about a space probe returning to Earth is heard on a passing radio, and the scenery is full of background hints such as sick people falling over in the street, ambulances and army trucks dashing about and a couple outside the pub who appear to be making out, right until one of their heads falls off.

The purpose of these scenes again, is pretty self evident. It’s that old saying about boiling a frog, gently ramping up the danger level so that our protagonists don’t notice it until it’s too late, while also firmly rooting a story that is about a small group of people in a much larger event.

Then Things Go Horribly Wrong

So, it’s at this point in the film that things start to really go bad. The president is assassinated. Tutsis from around the neighbourhood arrive at Paul’s house, begging for help. Soldiers turn up at the house, loading everybody into a van and driving them through the city. As they drive through Kigali, we see just how bad things have become. We see front gardens littered with corpses, people running around the streets with machetes, shouting and screaming and attacking other people. It really doesn’t take that much of a leap at all to see how these scenes resemble the scenes in a zombie movie. It’s a portrait of a society that’s fallen apart.

But for the sake of argument, we can see these scenes mirrored in the same zombie films we’ve been looking at already. When Ana runs out of the house to escape her zombie husband in the Dawn of the Dead remake, we see the city burning, people running and screaming through the streets, an ambulance ploughing someone down as it speeds past. In Shaun of the Dead, when they finally leave to pick up Shaun’s mum we see parks full of zombies and body bags struggling in the backs of crashed ambulances.

These scenes are crucial for setting the scene, because before long each of these films goes onto the next stage of the plot, which is the siege.

The Siege

In Hotel Rwanda the story really begins once the characters are inside the Hôtel des Mille Collines. More than anything else, Hotel Rwanda is the story of how Tutsi refugees are kept safe inside that hotel.

More than anything else, this is something Hotel Rwanda has in common with the vast majority of zombie movies. Whether it’s the pub in Shaun of the Dead, the farmhouse in Night of the Living Dead, the mall in either Dawn of the Dead movie, the Big Brother House in Dead Set, the radio station in Pontypool, the stately home in the final act of 28 Days Later or the campsite in the first series of The Walking Dead, the pattern is the same.

Most zombie apocalypse movies work by first establishing a vast, world shattering catastrophe and then narrowing the action to a single group of people at a single location.

The Apocalypse will be Televised

Of course, while the characters in Hotel Rwanda spend much of the film restricted to the grounds of the hotel, we are still given a picture of the world beyond the hotel’s walls. We see footage from news crews that have been out there, depicting the slaughter. We hear stories from aid workers and refugees who come to the hotel after Paul and his family have arrived there.

The techniques used here are techniques used all over the place in zombie movies. George Romero likes his gore, but some of the most horrifying things that happen in Night of the Living Dead are things that we hear about, not things we see. One of the creepiest scenes in that movie is when Ben tells the story of a flaming truck he saw barrelling down the road, with attacking ghouls all over it. The fights between the characters are often over who has control of the radio or the television, which becomes a lifeline that the survivors use to find out about the extent of the outbreak of dead cannibals. The same is true of both Dawn of the Dead films, and in Shaun of the Dead, we know the problem is widespread because by the time they get to the pub none of the TV channels are broadcasting.

Nobody’s Coming to Help You

The refugees hiding in the hotel place there hope in the international community to intervene. Paul’s hope is that all he needs to do is hold out long enough for military intervention. His hope proves to be unfounded- the white guests at the hotel are evacuated, the UN pulls out.

A reporter responds to Paul’s hope that footage of the massacre will drive people to action by telling him “I think if people see this footage, they'll say Oh, my God, that's horrible. And then they'll go on eating their dinners.” Eventually Paul tells the refugees “There will be no rescue, no intervention for us. We can only save ourselves.”

Zombie movies are quick to demonstrate that the protagonists can expect no help from anyone in authority. In Night of the Living Dead, news broadcasts feature lists of refugee camps where people will be safe. In the original Dawn of the Dead it’s pointed out that those same lists are out of date and people are going to their deaths.

In the Dawn of the Dead remake, attempts to get attention from passing military helicopters are in vain, and the constant news footage only serves to emphasise how little the government knows about what’s actually going on, and in 28 Days Later a military outpost that claims it has the “answer to infection” turns out to be run by a madman.

The Siege Breaks

Now a siege narrative can only end one way- with the siege being broken. Every zombie movie that uses the siege narrative ends with their defences being broken down, the hordes coming in, and if the characters are lucky they will make their escape by helicopter, pub trapdoor or homemade heavily armoured van.

While the siege of the hotel in Hotel Rwanda is less literal than in the movies we’ve been talking about so far- using bribes and political influence as defences rather than boarded up windows and shotguns, this film ends the same way, and during the mass exodus of the hotel the only visible difference between the attacking militia and the hordes in 28 Days Later or the Dawn of the Dead remake is that these people have machetes. They aren’t individual characters, they are a mass.

So what?

Having been through the similarities between Hotel Rwanda and films such as 28 Days Later, Dawn of the Dead, and Shaun of the Dead, the next big question is “So what?”

I’m not going to argue that Terry George deliberately copied a bunch of tropes from zombie movies to tell this story. I think this film resembles a zombie movie because it’s preying on the same fears.

A lot of people have talked about what zombies represent. They have been used as stand-ins for our fear of mortality, consumerism, our love of celebrity or couch potato culture. But before a zombie is any of those things, it is preying on a fear that is far more straight-forward and literal. They prey on the fear that ordinary people such as your friends, your local shopkeeper or your neighbours, could turn into homicidal maniacs.

On the commentary to the film, when he is asked if he realised the scale of the massacres at the beginning of the genocide, the real Paul said, "No at that time I didn't realise. I knew it was happening in Kigali but I never thought my neighbour back home in the village where I came from could kill his neighbour."

It’s no secret that George Romero had the Vietnam War on his mind when he was making Night of the Living Dead. In that war clean-cut American college kids were sent off to another country, and found themselves having to do horrendous and unspeakable things. Then Romero released a movie where the threat was that ordinary people were turning into killers.

Over the last ten years we’ve seen more zombie movies released than ever before. During that period our biggest fears haven’t been that we will be invaded- that foreign troops will walk through our streets or bombs will drop out of the sky. What we’ve been afraid of is that someone down the street from us- a doctor, or a student, or a teenager who’s been hanging with the wrong crowds or reading the wrong websites, will try and kill us on our way to work. Most of the comparisons I have made with Hotel Rwanda could also be made with 2006 film Right at Your Door, about a man holing himself up in his house after a dirty bomb is set off.

I believe that the reason the zombies have entered the popular consciousness in a way that slasher movies or alien invasions haven’t, is that the images we see in zombie movies could easily be from the news. You look at events in Katrina, or Haiti, or even our London riots and it doesn’t take a tremendous amount of imagination to picture zombies running through those streets.

The Fear and the Fantasy

But there’s another side to this, and here is where things get disturbing- because we aren’t just afraid of a zombie apocalypse. We fantasise about it. There are countless books, magazine articles and websites about how you can survive the zombie apocalypse. The Centre for Disease Control in the US even tried to cash in on this with a blog using zombie survival plans as a jumping off point to talk about disaster preparedness- and it was so popular that it crashed the site.

In the movies, alongside the horror there’s a big dose of wish fulfilment. The Dawn of the Dead films, 28 Days Later and Night of the Comet all feature scenes of the survivors happily running through shops taking whatever they like. Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland both feature protagonists who have trouble dealing with the pre-apocalypse world, but who turn into action heroes when the zombies attack.

A big part of that fantasy, and a reason why zombies continue to be popular foes in videogames, is that more than terrorists, or Nazis or even invading aliens, zombies are creatures who you can murder wholesale without a shred of remorse.

I don’t think I even need to name a film where a character is told to shoot someone they knew who has become a zombie because “it’s not them anymore”. I’d be more interested in hearing if anyone knows of a zombie film where this doesn’t happen. Anybody who shows reluctance to kill zombies in a zombie apocalypse movie is portrayed as at best naive, and at worst dangerous.

Put simply, part of the fantasy of the zombie apocalypse is the ability to kill without any legal or moral consequences. I’m not saying this a bastion of moral superiority- at time of writing I have killed 45,022 zombies in Left 4 Dead- the equivalent of the population of Winchester- and it was a hoot.

Coming back to Hotel Rwanda, when the real Paul was discussing the way Tutsis were treated he said it was “dehumanising, like [they were] insects of no value". We see this all the way through the film. The Tutsis are constantly referred to as “cockroaches”. The Hutus are able to do what they do because, like the survivors in a zombie movie, they cease to see the people they are killing as in any way human.

One of the reasons I like zombie movies, and why I’ve kept following the genre for so long, is that so many zombie apocalypse stories don’t ignore these implications- they directly address them. In 28 Days Later the villain says at one point, “This is what I've seen in the four weeks since infection. People killing people. Which is much what I saw in the four weeks before infection, and the four weeks before that.”

I’ve already said that Night of the Living Dead is a movie about ordinary people becoming killers. It’s worth revisiting that and pointing out that the ghouls are not the only ordinary people who become killers in that film- the survivors do as well.

And that film was a direct take off the Vampire apocalypse novel I Am Legend, where the protagonist spends the book killing inhuman monsters only to discover at the end that they see him as the inhuman monster.

Before I finish I want to point out one major difference between Hotel Rwanda and all the other films we’ve been looking at.  That difference is gore. In Hotel Rwanda the violence is seen in the imaginations of the viewers, and in an interview Paul has said of the film that “a lot of it is less violent than real life."

The reason for this, the director says, is that “Physically close to a million people were macheted or bludgeoned death and I didn't think I could get close to the horror of this.” At one point he even looked into using actual journalistic footage of the genocide, but decided against it because it would “it would have turned the film into some sort of weird snuff movie".

Zombie movies don’t face such restrictions, because, crucially, the events of those films never happened. In the films I’ve been talking about we see eyes gauged out, decomposed skulls, heads removed, people literally torn apart and their guts spilling out as it happens. There’s the occasional discretion shot, but more often than not the camera will linger, forcing us to look directly at the consequences of stabbing, shooting or bludgeoning someone.

Sometimes maybe the gore in these movies is just splatter, but personally I think there’s more to it than that. I think these films are able to do things that films like Hotel Rwanda can’t. In the context of fiction we have an opportunity see just how terrible violent death is up close.

At their very best, zombie movies aren’t just violent films, they are films about violence.

#29 The Rapture: For Real This Time, Honest

Yesterday was the day of the rapture. Harold Camping was finally vindicated, and the righteous were bodily lifted into the heavens, leaving us poor damned wretches behind. At least, that’s what I assume happened. To be totally honest, since I started freelancing I’ve not been getting out much, and don’t check the news all that often. Still, odds are Harold Camping was right- having predicted the apocalypse previously on 1994 and May 21^st this year he would have to really suck to have got it wrong a third time (EDIT: As of press time the rapture has been extended to sunset in Jerusalem on the 22^nd of October).

No harm in having a margin for error

So, while I haven’t turned on the telly or checked twitter to see if it’s really happened, I’m going to assume that all the Christians in the world have now been raptured away. After all, if God’s selection criteria for eternal paradise depends on your cultural background, upbringing, life circumstances and arbitrary gut feelings leading you to the right belief system, it’s only fair the God would spread a pretty wide net. It doesn’t matter that most Christians probably didn’t believe Harold Camping’s predictions or that the entire concept of the rapture only really dates back to the 19th century. It only makes sense that Fred Phelps, Rowan Williams, Stephen Colbert and Desmond Tutu have all gone to the same place, and to be fair, that’s a dinner party I’d pay real money to sit in on.

This leaves those of us left behind in an uncertain and terrifying world. The atheists among us are no doubt arguing that their Christian brothers and sisters were actually kidnapped by aliens and the Jewish and Muslim peoples are kicking themselves that they missed the right answer by one book.

But it’s time for us to move on. The creators of the Left Behind series have left us a wonderful “How To” video by the fictional PastorVernon Billings. But I’m sceptical about this (which admittedly, is how a lot of us got into this mess), since Vernon himself is pretty confident he wasn’t going to be here to deal with the world’s post-rapture consequences.

So here are some more practical tips for us as we move forward and try to reconstruct our society.

Tip One: Repurpose the Churches

Let’s face it, churches are great buildings. They look pretty and they are built to last.

You just can't get the medieval peasants anymore

In my adopted city of Norwich we had already made a good start on this before the rapture. We’ve something of an excess of churches, so we use the spares for things like puppet theatres and art centres while down in London they’ve converted a church into a pretty decent pub. These are lovely buildings and it’s a shame that non-believers have only ever been able to use them for family weddings and funerals. We’ll need to fix the heating and install some more comfortable chairs, obviously.

Tip Two: Do Away with Christmas

Finally! We can achieve what atheists, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Scientologists have dreamed of for centuries. We can do away with Christmas and establish Secular Gift Giving Day- a task we’ve had our best minds working on for years.

Once and for all we can replace tinsel, decorated trees, turkey, Santa Claus and watching The Great Escape with things that have nothing to do with Christianity!

And while we’re getting our hidden agendas out of the way-

Tip Three: Marry Your Pets

For as long as there have been people campaigning for the right of gay people to marry, there have been people saying that this will open the door to incestual and bestial marriages. Campaigners such as Rick Santorum who campaign on their Christian beliefs.

With them finally out of the way, we can end the subterfuge and legalise marrying both pets, and relatives. A generation from now our grandchildren will be able to do both at the same time.

Tip Four: Enjoy it While it Lasts

Yes, our new world of secular holidays, Starbucks cathedrals and dog/human hybrid cousins marrying each other is a glorious place and I’m sure we’re all going to have a great time. But you must enjoy it while you can, because on the 21^st (for some reason it’s always the 21^st) of December next year we’re due to get obliterated by the 2012 prophecy.

And if anyone thinks that I’ve been offensive to Christians in this blog, you just wait until you see the burns I’ve got prepared for the ancient Mayan religion!

Quetzalcoatl love, you've pulled!

Competition Time: See Dawn of the Dead in a Shopping Mall!

So, this month of crazy busy continues, and in between suddenly and unexpectedly finding myself house hunting (None of these placesare within my budget), my actual job, and an exciting Chris Writes About the End of the World related event next month, I’m having to come up with yet more creative ways to not write the blog.

This week- Throwing a competition!

Cue trailer:

Yes the seaside town of Worthing is holding a film festival,showing movies in themed settings. This includes seeing Toy Story 3 in a children’s nursery- and more appropriately for our blog (although not as terrifying) they will be showing the ultimate zombie movie, Dawn of the Dead in a shopping mall THIS SATURDAY. And I have two free tickets.

Chris, I Want To See Dawn of the Dead in a Shopping Mall, How Much Shall I Bribe You With Cash and Favours to Attain This Gift?

Calm yourself, my sycophantic hypothetical reader, no bribes are necessary this time.

Nope. All I want from you is your zombie survival strategy. Only, like I said, I’m kind of short on time at the moment. And also I’m easily bored. So your zombie survival plan must be in one of the following forms:

Tweet- Sum your whole plan up in 124 characters or less, with the hashtag #shortzombieplan. (While you're at it, follow me at #chriszombieblog)

Alternatively, you can email your plan to chrisfarnell ...at... googlemail.com deliver your plan in Haiku- 5 syllables, 7 syllables, and 5 syllables again.

I will also accept limerick form.

You have until seven pm on Thursday to send me your plans. The best one gets the two free tickets. Winner will be announced Friday. Runners up will be posted on here to save me writing another blog.

So go forth! Show me your zombie fighting wisdom!

#28 Zombies & Cigarettes: The Art of the 15 Minute Apocalypse

I am having an extremely mental week this week, so blog-writing duty has been handed over to our special guest blogger, Camiele White, writing about the short film Zombies & Cigarettes:

There have been many books written on the subject, many a hackneyed film portraying the event.  However, almost every single article on the impending zombie apocalypse neglects the most important aspect of survival:  time.  Think about it:  when you’re in a pinch, running for your life from mindless brain-hungry undead groupies, are you gonna want to try to remember every single step of the Zombie Survival Handbook, or are you gonna want a source that sums it up in 20 words or fewer?  ‘Nuff said.

In Rafa Martinez’s Zombies & Cigarettes, we get all the gory, delicious brain munching of Zombiegeddon; however, where even the master of mental mastication, George A. Romero, fails, Martinez succeeds…getting to the point as quickly as possible.  Not only are we plopped right in the social microcosm of a shopping mall in Spain (a location ripe for the fall and eventual regeneration of civilisation), we get all the violence, hubris, and character development necessary to ensure that even the casual viewer can get an idea of how vital speed is to survival.

While the idea of having the end of the world swirl around you like the fibres of cotton candy around a paper cone is intriguing unto itself, it’s the cleverness with which Martinez manages to focus on the fragility of time that impresses me.  I wouldn’t say that it’s a direct commentary on the plight of a society wound up in its insecurities; however, it does make a very interesting point about the preciousness of time, the lack of attention paid to the intricacies of life around you.  In as much time as it takes our hapless, lovesick hero to knock over a crate of passion fruit perfume, the world around him falls into absolute chaos:  a woman falls from the second floor of the mall right onto her face, suddenly there’s a barrage of machine gun fire, a man in a chicken suit --it’s absolute ANARCHY!

As much as any film about the end of the world tackles the question of humanity’s insignificance, Zombies & Cigarettes hits you right in the gut.  You’ve not only got to deal with the terror of eminent innard munching, you’ve got to figure out a way to survive and repopulate the world as you know it.  The subtle brilliance of setting the zombie apocalypse in the confines of a shopping mall is worth praise.  I imagine the person who created the mall saw his child making a shoebox diorama of the world and thought, “Yes.”  It’s with this same wide-eyed observation that Rafa Martinez must’ve conceived of this 15 minute gem. 

The mall:  a toxic, poignant portrait of the scope of humanity as a whole.  It illustrates the obsessive excess of society, the desire to have everything at your fingertips, grazing around a concrete mountain like robotic sheep.  And just like sheep, these people playing their part in the human carnival are moved and swayed by the bright colours and capitalistic chaos...and so comes the eventual downfall.  The zombies attack, feast, and infest, causing those too weak to get away to become swept up in another tragic collective of the mindless, hungry for the flesh of others, eager to gnaw on the minds of the delirious. 

As is the case in most zombie flicks, there’s always a contingent of eager few who will stop at nothing to survive.  These, too, are a representation of the varying types of personality in society:  the feisty sweetheart, the arsehole muscleman, the pudgy best friend, and, of course, the reluctant hero.  As is expected, the sweetheart and the hero make it to the end, ready to take on the mindless and free the flock.  Then as soon as humanity seems little more than an epigraph on Earth’s slate-coloured tombstone, the doors open to a confusing scene:  smiles, cheers, and cerveza for everyone. 

To measure the freak and folly of human nature with 15 minutes of madness is not only well-played, it’s just damn smart.  Rafa Martinez stumbled upon something truly genuine when he set out to make this campy horror flick.  Original?  Far from it.  However, Zombies & Cigarettes has got to be the most informative and honest to goodness zombie flick I’ve seen in the last five years.  I mean, the epic behaviour of being one slip away from your demise only to find out you’ve already missed the invasion is just too good to pass up.

If you’re a horror fundamentalist (I admit, I’m prone to wax philosophical about the imagery of the original When a Stranger Calls), this film may pass you by.  However, even the most die-hard horror fan wants a reprieve from the depth of 70s horror, even if it is for just 15 minutes.  Martinez’s short film is the perfect morsel wading through the slodge of new millennium horror flicks.  I tip my hat to the man and can’t wait to see more of what he has to offer.

Camiele White suffers from too much film information.  In order to remedy her psychosis she’s decided to write about it.  Right now, she’s trying something a bit different and writes about Theatrical Costumes.  If you want to engage in a little conversation (at your own risk) she can be reached at cmlewhite at gmail [dot] com.

#27 Zombie LARP II: Tales from Station Zero

Friar’s Walk, Reading, used to be a shopping mall. Harassed mothers would do their last minute Christmas shopping there, nervous graduates would shop around for their first Interview Suit, teenagers would shoplift from the Claire’s Accessories. Not anymore though. Now there is no Claire’s Accessories.

Because in Friar’s Walk, everybody died. Usually more than once. Now it is a dark place, a quiet place, a graveyard of empty shop fronts, disused kitchenettes, and a tragically unused jungle gym.

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!

But as you stand there, in the dark, if you listen carefully you can hear whispers. Because is Friar’s Walk the walls tell stories.

Stories about the massive Zombie LARP game that went on there last weekend.

These are those stories.

Long-time readers will have already read about my last Zombie LARP adventure. There was one survivor.

This time around, most of the team was reunited. Myself, Alina Sandu and Matt Barnes were ready for action with a couple of important additions- One, Tom Harvey, Hello Bear bassist and our blog’s absolute favourite buttmonkey joined the team, as I felt it was important to have a red shirt character we could kill off easily and without remorse.

I'm not going to stop posting this picture until it's the top of Tom Harvey of Hello Bear's google results.

Secondly, and somewhat more impressively, we had Ninjas.

Somehow Alina is still the scariest person there.

Our team was assigned the moniker 2B, so we hilariously always referred to ourselves as Team 2B or Not 2B, because I insisted on it and never, ever got tired of that joke. I still haven’t.

The following game featured four hour-long runs. The rules were simple- Find eight batteries, plug them into the radio, then run for the roof where the “helicopter” would come and rescue us. Each run would begin with a quarter of the players as slow moving Romero zombies, and the rest as survivors. Personally, I thought this was stupid. One of the little suspension-of-disbelief tricks we always pull watching zombie movies, is accepting that groaning, slow-moving corpses are only that deadly in large numbers. Clearly a minority of these against an intelligent, fast moving and organised majority of humans would be quickly wiped out.

Run One

Our team was murdered pretty much instantly. I died screaming in the jungle gym.

This was a common story, but the human spirit prevails, and other teams fared better than hours, as survivor Anthony White’s video testimony proves:

Zombie LARP - Station Zero from Antony White on Vimeo.

Against adversity, the humans were able to unite, make a brave stand and escape, even though our team was completely... wait a second. What’s this?

Something isn't right here...

There, looking extremely cheerful considering that all his friends are dead, is Hello Bear bassist and blog buttmonkey Tom Harvey, right there among the people who made it out.

Outraged, I tracked down Tom Harvey, and made him account for his actions. His words, if you can believe them, are printed right here:


Testimony from Tom (Butt Monkey) Harvey

I soon found myself alone and bewildered, with no ammunition. Time passed, and the zombie hordes grew considerably. I was aimlessly wandering about, attempting to find other survivors, and to assist in collecting the precious batteries. I had been imformed that only one more was required in order to summon the helicopter. I casually strolled into a large room across from the childrens play area, and straight into the eyeline of a prowling white knight. This was not good. I had no ammunition, and no backup.

Okay, for those of you who don’t know, a White Knight is a cross between Rorschach from Watchmen, and Jack Nicholson’s character in The Shining.

Believe it or not, he is an alcoholic author and house-sitter.

So ensued a small game of cat and mouse around the pillars. However, the white knight allowed me just enough time to sprint away, and to safety. Unfortunately, in my haste, I ran straight into a large puddle of water. Suddenly I was running without having any forward acceleration whatsoever. The White Knight was metres away from me when I somehow managed to find some purchase, the shock of which caused me to stumble. Using my now useless gun to steady myself, I ran to safety, at least, for the time being.


The time following this terrifying incident is mainly blurry, but I imagine it mainly involved cowering and whimpering. My memory kicks in back in that same room, this time escaping a large horde of the undead. For reasons unknown, I stopped in my tracks for the briefest of moments, which allowed me to spot and collect the final battery. This was brilliant, I had a chance of surviving! Oh wait, there's a fuck tonne of zombies bearing down on me....forgot about that. My days were surely numbered, there was no escape.

However, my knight in shining armour arrived, in the form of a skull adorned ninja. We were being backed into a corner, but the opportuniy to escape somehow arose - a gap had formed, I merely had to make a break for it. It was then that I bravely ran away, leaving my ninja companion to distract the zombies long enough for me to safely navigate my way out and into the dark stairwell. I would like to say that this was pre-agreed with my stealthy ally. In reality, I believe the conversation was somewhere along the lines of "Sorry mate, I'm gonna have to leg it.....good luck". Unfortunately, he did not survive, but I did, so all was well with the world. My next aim was to safely return the battery to the saferoom....but where the fuck was I?


I found a small band of survivors, and attempted to communicate, with clarity, that I had the final battery in my possession. Admittedly this mainly consisted of waving it (the battery, you dirty bastard) about and shouting. Amazingly, my informative speech was not fully understood initially, and we continued looking for the battery, until I reitirated my original message, to which the response was "well why didn't you mention that before?".

The safe room, with me in it. Before Tom left me to die.

We safely navigated our way to the saferoom, and called the helicopter. We now had to make it to the roof, fight off the hordes, and await salvation. By now we had a decent sized group, but we were woefully under equipped. In our rush up the narrow stairs, I was injured by a passing zombie. Limping, I bravely hid behind my fellow survivors, fighting off the neverending surges of the undead with nothing but melee weapons. Realising my importance in this scenario, I valiantly yelled "Look out there's a fucking zombie" when it seemed appropriate. I even attempted to hide under the air conditioning units, alas the zombies had the same idea. I was left, cowering next to a dead pigeon, although still not regretting my generally traitorous ways. After what seemed like an eternity, the doors to the roof were open. Our rescue had arrived, we had survived! The high priest, regrettably, was taken at the last second, sacrificing himself for the greater good. The doors were closed, and relief flooded through me like some insensitive simile to do with a tsunami. We had survived, we had not been taken. My team had been.....but screw them, I was alive!

Run Two

Following our disastrous first run (I can’t believe Tom managed outlive me!) we agreed that we needed a more unified, organised approach. We would stick together, shouting our team name out if we became separated, and shoot Tom in the back if he tried to run.

Of course, this plan went to pot when the game started, and we realised Alina was nowhere to be found. Despite this, our team pushed on ahead, running and gunning our way through the mall. A many great acts of heroism occurred during this run. By people who weren’t on our team.

Testimony from Grant Hewitt

I'm playing the preacher in the Safe Room, and I hear an almighty scream from down the corridor on the main concourse. Two guys burst into view - one with a lead pipe, and one with a pistol, both running like mad. The lead pipe wielder draws too much attention from zombies and gets dragged down - the other guy, spooked, pushes past me into the safe room and collapses against a wall. I cry out to the man who didn't make it, saying that he'll "find solace in the peace of death" and then, just before he stops moving, he flings something at me. Hard. It hits me in the neck and I'm about to chew him out for it, but I look down and realise it's a powercell. What a guy. True warrior of Christ, he was.

Meanwhile, our stick together plan worked fine right until we passed through the jungle gym, where promptly I lost everyone on my team. Bravely carrying on alone (unlike Tom, who ruthlessly left his team mates to die) I moved onwards and upwards. I got to the roof of the mall, found it to be a dead end, and turned back. This was when I saw survivors charging up the stairs.

Testimony from Alina Sandu

Pictured: Apparently not dead.

My new team seemed well organised and competent (Editor’s Note: By now Alina had joined another team. She isn’t talking about 2B or Not 2B) and we made our way through the mall painlessly. I even found a gun I could use after starting unarmed.

We stopped in the safe room very briefly, and I hoped I'd meet up with 2B there but didn't. We carried on up and down for a while, until we heard the helicopter was on its way. It seemed a bit early in the run but everyone was going towards the exit so we followed.

That's when I ran into what was left of 2B. Matt wasn't with them, but nobody could confirm that he was dead, so I decided to think he was alright.

We made it to the top of the building and waited for the helicopter. And waited some more. A few zombies were getting close but it didn't seem much of a problem. We kept waiting.

After a while, I started feeling guilty that I hadn't managed to meet up with Matt. I imagined he was waiting for me around the safe house since that was supposed to be our meeting point.

As we waited, the zombies continued to mass, but we held them at bay. Alina started arguing that we should go back to save Matt, but I told her he was probably dead already, pointed out that he’d happily left her to die at the last Zombie LARP, and when that failed, slapped her hard about the face and told her to pull herself together (That last bit was a lie- hitting women hard around the face is wrong. Even LARP-safe hitting hard around the face).

Then, I turned around for one second and turned back to discover Alina had run off on her own, completely unarmed, to save her already dead boyfriend. Because that always works in the films.

Realising I was also about to do something incredibly stupid, I asked another survivor for his gun- a pistol with two bullets left, and was ready to set off after Alina, when the next bunch of zombies arrived. This time we were out of ammo, and the zombies had found ways to climb over and crawl under our defences. Soon we fell back to the door of the roof. I tracked down one of the people who had been shouting about the imminent helicopter, and he swore it was on its way.

It wasn’t on its way.

I was one of the last to die, and went down heroically hiding in a crack behind the big A/C unit on the roof, trying to shove another survivor out into the open so that he wouldn’t give away my position. I’d do it again in an instant.

Run 3- The Zombie Run

Team 2B or Not 2B were zombies for this round. I spent pretty much the entire round hiding behind a locker in the basement, waiting for someone to come and pick up a battery hidden in there.

That and working on the pitch for our movie "Twilight Only Gay and with Zombies"

Other zombies had better luck

Testimony from Zombie Matt Barnes

My most enduring (and endearing) memory from being a zombie is best presented, I think, in the form of an ASCII map:

              | H | 
|=============  H |
|   Z           H | 
|   ==------======
|
|     Z  Z  Z
|      Z   Z

The humans were heading down to the (pitch-dark, of course) basement through a corridor. They turned a corner, and were faced with a glass wall to their left and one Zed dead ahead. While that zombie was getting a pretty decent bashing, the humans had apparently failed to appreciate that the glass wall in question was not -entirely- glass. 

I say apparently because they didn't seem to be expecting four undead arms to suddenly burst through the gap and start groping for human flesh. The looks on their faces were pretty special.

Of course, not all the survivors were simply trying to call the helicopter and get out. Some players like to bring along a selection of NERF weapons so extravagant that they can only arm themselves with the benefit of an Evil Dead II style Bruce Campbell montage. Not wanting to break the game, the organisers offered these players the option of playing the Left Hand of God mission. While everyone else was running about like headless chickens, a team that accepted this mission would be allowed to take only their own guns- with nothing from the communal gun pool, and be assigned to kill a mysterious, deadly creature known as the Leech.

This is the story of one such team:

Testimony from Grant Hewitt

I'm on Leech duty. It's very quiet, and Liam saunters through the basement.

He's about to do something really badass isn't he? You can tell.

So I pop up to him and ask him quietly - "Oh, man, how did you die?" because I figure he's been taken out of action early on.

"Well," he says, "technically I didn't die." And RUNS. I've already given up the power cell I had after a team graciously gave me one of their number, so I figure - what the hell? I give chase. Liam flees through corridors and takes turns almost at random, searching for a staircase. I get shot a couple of times as we run past people, but whatever - I'm screaming "I CAN SMELL YOUR BLOOD! THIRSTY! THIRSTY! I CAN HEAR IT IN YOUR FUCKING VEINS!" and I'm going to get him and drink him dry.

Unfortunately, he managed to find a staircase - and the leech doesn't leave the basement, so I let him run, and turned around to go back to my lair. Behind me in a doorway is team Hand of God, who shoot me to pieces whilst chanting "The power of Christ compels you!" over and over, unloading what must have been around thirty or forty bullets into me at point blank range until I slumped against a wall, unmoving.

Now that is the stuff of legend people. That is the sort of thing that should only be taken on by heroes or fools.

Run 4- The Left Hand of God

After Run 3, our team were sat around, relaxing, planning our strategy for the next run. We’d come to affectionately know the ninjas as Darth Vader and Skull Face. As we chatted, one of the ninjas, I believe it was Darth Vader, said “We want to do the Hand of God mission.”

It took a split second for us to think this over and say “Nooooo! Nope. No. No way. Not doing that. Nadda.”

“For the Hand of God you can only take your own guns with you,” I pointed out. “None of us have brought any weapons.”

Then Darth Vader said something that would eventually doom us all. He looked at me and said, “We can kit you out.”

“We’ve got a massive box full of guns,” Skull Face added. “Plenty of weapons for everyone.”

There was a long, pregnant pause. On second thoughts, maybe it was what I said next that doomed us all.

I said, “Show us the box.”

That's a nice box.

We tooled up. Took as many guns as we could carry and crammed out pockets full of ammunition. This time we weren’t going to be a bunch of panicked civilians, fleeing for our lives. This time we would be a crack time of combat specialists, with a mission, and purpose.

Our mission was to kill the monster known as the Leech, a mysterious creature that could be harmed with acts of religious devotion- With Atheism not counting as a religion, Grant felt the need to point out to me for some reason.

In keeping with our new professional attitude, I said we should probably assign a leader, and it was unanimously agreed that this leader should be Skull Face, because nothing gives inspiring leadership like a man with a skull for a face.

I see no problem here.

Testimony from Matt Barnes

We were tooled up to the eyeballs. I had the biggest gun I'd ever picked up, and two pockets stuffed full of spare ammunition. Obviously not even any need for one of the swords I was offered. We had one objective: kill the Red Leech, described variously as "scared of religion" and "not as hard as the White Knights". No problem.

We first headed down to the basement where we had been reliably informed that the Leech always hung out. While one team member kept the handful of normal zombies at bay, the rest of us chanted piously while pummelling the target with more bullets than it could handle. When it fell to the ground, a couple more shots were enough to put it down for good, and we grabbed its energy cell and melee weapon before heading to the safe room.

Our general assistance was enough to ensure that everything else needed to escape was gathered in no time, and we headed to the exit. Like a well-oiled machine we cleared the path to the doors, stopping just before them, and holding the exit for the other survivors with our overwhelming firepower.

That was the plan, anyway. It was a good plan, as well.

This picture has nothing to do with this part of the story, but Christ it looks awesome.

Testimony from Darth Vader

We headed into the depths of the Mall, Theravadic chanting under masks and medics wielding glow stick crosses, we felt damned invincible. We joked about hanging a crucifix round the leech's neck. But in the dark, something drew the zombies to us like moths to a flame. Tap, pin. Tap, move. Tap, pin. Tap, move, but still they kept coming.

Testimony from Matt Barnes

It was actually all going pretty well when we met our first zombie. We all immediately opened fire, and six darts found their home, almost simultaneously, in the centre of its chest. One more once he was down to put him out of commission. We then advanced cautiously and slowly through the basement, double-checking behind every obstruction to make sure there was no possibility of a surprise.

In retrospect, this was an excellent plan for making sure we weren't ambushed, but a dreadful one for making sure that loads of other zombies didn't use this extra time to turn up hoping for tasty, tasty brains. Coming at us from all sides in the dark, we held them off for a short time but the inevitable happened soon enough. A couple of us (including one random survivor from another team, who I can only assume arrived at some time while we weren't paying attention) managed to clear a path long enough to escape upstairs... directly into the welcoming arms of a cheerful-looking White Knight.


So this was when things started to fall apart. Quickly, we realised our weapons were occasionally a bit more jammed than we’d like, and we were being completely outnumbered. I found our brave, skull-faced leader on the floor and ran over to heal him, only to turn round in time to see a White Knight bearing down on me with an axe.

Still somehow the team carried on without me. Darth Vader was somehow still alive.

Testimony from Darth Vader

Ahead, crouched by a pillar, I saw our leader. Armour still on, still armed, very still. I retreated back crouched down next to him, and asked "How'd you get through that?"

Alas, poor Skull Face. He loved the jungle gym, like all ninjas.

He turned slowly, and reached out towards me, groaning like the last escaping air of a corpse.

Sword across his chest, I forced him back across the floor and over (figuratively) the safety rail, but not before he'd swiped at my chest. I turned and ran, and ran, and ran, pumping a rifle I had no idea if worked, and swinging a sword at anything that moved. I got slashed at on the ribs, but momentum and a goal ahead of me kept me going...  An arm that I thought was going to swing just under me as I leapt suddenly shot up. With my armour gone, and nothing but momentum carrying me on bones that may have shattered, not thinking about the weapons, just managing the pain, and knowing, KNOWING the safe room was around the next corner... I ran.

Straight into practically every zombie in the field.

So, once more, the last remaining member of our team was Matt Barnes- who makes a habit of this sort of thing.

Testimony from Matt Barnes

I hung around in the safe room for a bit as it became apparent that not only was I now unarmed, but there were a quite terrifying number of "ambulant cadavers" outside each entrance. In the end all the survivors got together to make one final daring break for freedom (or "suicide run" as it might more accurately be termed). Most of us actually got quite a long way towards the other side of the mall before being brutally torn down by an assortment of zombies, White Knights, and one inexplicable mad woman with a shotgun.

The last I saw of Matt he was lying in a shop window, wounded, but not dead.

So I ate him.

Pictured: Not invincible.

Thanks to Alina Sandu and www.blackpapersky.co.uk's Anthony White for letting me use their pics and video footage for this blog.