Transnational Zombie Cinema, 2010 to 2020

Transnational Zombie Cinema, 2010 to 2020: Readings in a Mutating Tradition examines selected films produced outside the United States in the second decade of the millennial zombie renaissance, following the global effects of the Great Recession. These readings analyze how the films adapt the zombie myth to localized anxieties pertaining to neoliberal capitalism; globalization; gender and sexuality; national identity, history, and trauma; and self-definition within and without culture and social institutions. In tracing these variations, John R. Ziegler investigates not only better-known films such as South Korea’s Train to Busan (2016) and Cuba’s Juan of the Dead (2011) but also lesser-known examples such as Malaysia’s KL24: Zombies (2017), Italy’s The End? (2017), and India’s Rise of the Zombie (2010). These films, Ziegler argues, demonstrate the continued significance of the zombie as a flexible, powerful tool for thinking about contemporary concerns across the globe and suggest that the zombie myth still has plenty of undead life in it as it continues to mutate and circulate in transnational cinema.