Originally Posted by
JoeyB
Fast zombies are for losers (not Loser, losers). You may as well be chased by a pack of teenage ruffians, it's nothing special. It's pointless.
Slow zombies represent something very insidious. Creeping doom. Sure, you can outrun them, until you tire, they never will...you can outfight them, until their sheer numbers overwhelm you...and of course, the zombies moving slow gives you something worse than anything they might do to you...it gives you hope. And that hope may well betray you. Slow zombies also mean you have time to make preparations, but that only intensifies your fear...anticipation is torment. When you are fighting, you are not thinking, you are reacting; but when you are sitting and waiting as the creeping undead slowly swarm your makeshift shelter, that will eat you up inside.
But the best part of slow zombies...it magnifies the speed and puts on display the manic and panic of the living.
The slow horror of true zombies has even been lifted into films where the monsters are fast. Look at the wonderfully brilliant Dog Soldiers. They were basically holed up waiting for the zombie hordes. They were panicked, they were in a nightmare. Sure, when the werewolves came they came fast, but the makers of that film really took advantage of the down time to build the horror up.