Dead, Infected and Possessed: Zombie in Contemporary Spanish Cinema
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.37536/preh.2013.1.1.617Keywords:
Zombie, spanish cinema, horror film, Amando de Ossorio, Jaume Balagueró, RecAbstract
The zombie has experienced a recent boom in popular Spanish contemporary culture in literature, comics and films. This article analyses recent titles of the subgenre in Spanish cinematography through its complex relationship with its own past tradition and foreign zombie movies. What this dual scanning appears to reveal is a consistent thematic link between Spanish zombies of the 1960s-1970s and the Spanish zombie today, a connection that focuses mainly on the role of religion in the subgenus. Thus, movies of late-Francoism like Amando de Ossorio's Knights Templar tetralogy share with the Rec series the representation of religious objects as a numinous influence that "creates" and controls the zombies. The ironic distance that the Paco Plaza and Jaume Balagueró series keeps with this same object is significant. However, the zombie archetype has experienced an evolution in Spanish cinematography; an evolution which has resulted in the following paradox: Rec is the Spanish zombie product that most emphatically assimilates the innovations of the character in the 21st century, and at the same time, the most local and most international.
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