As a self-proclaimed horror movie fanatic with a particular soft spot for zombie flicks, I absolutely spent all of spring break holed up in my room watching them by the dozen on Netflix. From Train to Busan to The Rezort to What We Become, I made my way down the list of Netflix's best zombie films, but I stopped when I saw they'd put out a new one that was raking in 5 star reviews. Les Affames, released under the English title The Ravenous, was a slow-burning, suspenseful zombie movie reminiscent of classic Romero films (which in the age of running, spitting, screaming, 28 Days Later-style zombies is in itself pretty unique and creepy).
The thing that creeped me out most about the zombies in this film was that I couldn't tell they were zombies unless I looked closely. They're not rotting, guts-spilling out, gross monsters. They just look like people who stand a little too still and don't blink frequently enough, until they're shrieking and running right at you. Half of the tension in the movie came from moments where I was sitting there, staring at my screen, eyes wide, thinking, oh shit, is that person dead or not? The creepy and quiet way they just seem to stand around and watch things, too, will have the hairs on the back of your neck standing on end. Even when they look like regular, living people, something about "les affames" just isn't right, and it'll keep you on edge throughout the whole film.
Without a doubt though, the creepiest thing about this movie was shockingly mundane: a pile of junk in the middle of a field.
You see, the zombies in Les Affames are different not only in that they look like regular people, they mimic some of the behaviors of living people in highly unsettling, just-'off'-enough ways. The same way we living humans tend to just kind of collect junk we don't need is replicated by the zombies, who pick up and carry random items (chairs, toys, shoes, car parts) with them wherever they go, and then gather in large groups in the middle of empty fields, stack all of the stuff into huge towers of junk, and just stand there, staring at the pile for days, without moving.
REALLY FRICKING WEIRD.
The film's creators intended for it to be a commentary on consumerism - the zombies are holding onto junk they've bought and worshipping it in some sort of ritual - but on a purely cinematic level, I can tell you nothing in this film had me so creeped out as that pile of frigging chairs at the end. It showed zombies - monsters that are supposed to be brainless, shambling, and far from human - that were mimicking humans just closely enough for you to wonder if they remember being alive. Zombies that were just smart enough to subvert the typical hive-mind trope and appear intelligent, albeit in a bizarre way. One of the main characters, a man named Bonin, expresses his concern at finding the first junk tower by saying, "I've never seen anything like that before," and as a zombie movie junkie, I can't say I have either. And that's what made this film so freaky and edge-of-your-seat to watch.
In an era where zombie films have been hyped up, soaked in fake, corn-starch blood and loaded with CGI, it was nice to see creepy done simple. Don't get me wrong, I love my excessive gore and big-budget outbreak films. But with sprawling epics like World War Z dominating the big screen in recent years, a return to classic, chilling, "there's something off about this" horror is just what the zombie genre needs to keep it fresh.
