Mulberry Street: Zombie Movie Or Not?
Where do we draw the line on what is and what is not a zombie movie? We just can’t decide on our own, so every Monday we’ll post a new movie to be debated by, you, our readers and ask the question: Zombie Movie Or Not? Every Sunday we’ll post our findings and possibly strike that movie off our Zombie Movie List. The week should give you enough time to rent the movie if need be or you desire.
What every reader must keep in mind is that there are two basic types of zombie that every zombie movie based off of - the Voodoo Zombie and the Romero Zombie. The Voodoo Zombie, while not always raised by Voodoo necessarily, is basically a person, either undead or entranced, that is controlled by a person or entity for the purpose of completing tasks, often killing. Romero Zombies are basically mindless, flesh-eating undead whose bite will turn victims into zombies. Now, not all movies adhere to all of these rules, but if the basics are there, you got a zombie movie.
This weeks debate is over Mulberry Street (2006) Directed by Jim Mickle.
IS: They’re not technically zombies, but other than not being dead, they have all the same effects as zombies - they become infected when they’re bitten, they have a singular motivation for human flesh and there are mobs of them making it necessary to hole up and protect yourself from being bitten. Not technically a zombie movie, but zombie movie in spirit.
IS NOT: They’re rat people, not zombies, plain and simple. This is not a zombie movie, but another infection movie.
Now it’s up to you, reader. What do you think? Mulberry Street: Zombie Movie Or Not?
Though Mulberry Street was suprisingly entertaining….these were just infected people, not undead. NOT a Zombie film.
I think I would like to add something to this discussion, before it gets started for real: The dead girl in the cardboard box in the beginning of the movie has something to do with the outbreak, right? I, at least, thought that it was she who infected the war veteran guy. Or did she kill him and he re-animated? Because he sure was crawling up the stairs later in the movie.
I’m not completely sure about this, but some of the details would suggest the infected be dead, not just mutated. (Don’t ask me how something dead could mutate. Or how a living organism would mutate without reproducing, for that matter.)
So I would go undecided on this one. The movie does tie in with the “zombie movie genre”, as it is an outbreak survival horror movie, minus the actual ghouls that Romero made up. (They’re definitely not any kind of voodoo zombies either.) On the other hand, the creatures do seem to be more in the veil of were-wolves (or were-sheep for that matter). So I’ll just leave it to you the rest of you guys and your homemade definitions about zombie movies then.
I would like to include it as a zombie movie based on it’s similarities with the zombie movie genre. If you look at the most basic rules of zombie movie, except where the zombies are dead, but not where the infected are beyond living as humans, then Mulberry Street fits every rule.
I say there’s room for Mulberry Street on any zombie movie list.
yes, zombie movie.
Jef: I hear what you are saying, but is the question really whether the movie fits into the “zombie movie genre” as a whole, or whether it is a “zombie movie” (either a movie about ghouls or a movie about voodoo or some other sort of mind control)? I’d say, yeah, it’s definitely a part of the zombie movie genre, but whether they’re living dead or not is open for debate (se my comment above).
What I’m trying to gather from these debates are whether or not we should be reporting on these movies. I guess that should be defined better in later posts. Obviously, they are not zombies but, shouldn’t be included in future posts as a point of interest for fans of the zombie genre? I think it should be.
ALMOST EVERY ZOMBIE OUTBREAK MOVIE STARTS OUT WITH PEOPLE BEING BITTEN THEN DYING THEN REANIMATING . IF YOU REALLY THINK ABOUT IT WHATEVER IT IS THAT INFECTS THE PEOPLE POSSIBLY COULD BE CONTROLLING THEIR MINDS WHICH IN TURN CAUSES THEM TO GO INTO A ZOMBIELIKE STATE. SO ALONG THOSE LINES WE CAN INCLUDE AN OUTBREAK THAT MUTATES PEOPLE BY GETTING BIT FIRST THEN BECOMING HUMAN BLOODLUSTING FLESH CRAVING FIENDS EVEN THOUGH THEY HAVENT DIED YET. I BOUGHT THE DVD BEFORE I KNEW WHAT IT WAS REALLY ABOUT.IT SAID IT WAS A ZOMBIE FILM . I REALLY HAVE TO GO WITH YES ON THIS FILM.
If the only qualifier is “should it be on the site?” then every movie done so far in this series deserves to be included for the very reason that it shares some, if not much, with what the concept of “zombie movie” is or may be; removing coverage of any of those movies destroys the potential that specific film may have to reach viewers interested in “zombies”, even to expand the boundaries of what constitutes “zombies” as the viewer defines the genre in today’s film climate.
If you just want to use it instead as a forum for discerning detail-oriented fans to consider “what is a zombie movie?” then it is beneficial, and I would say Mulberry Street is not a zombie movie. It’s a rat-people movie.
Bearing that in mind, as a fan of the “zombie genre”, I like shots of cities in chaos as people (or in this case rat people) sneakily slurp at organs in alleyways, or rush a protagonist’s hiding spot in coordinated fashion. I also like plot scenarios in which a character has been “turned” into whatever supernatural threat and is killed by a former friend/comrade and the film-maker allows a bit of humanity to remain in the features of the turned character for a few seconds or moments before its demise (the end of this movie, rooftop scene really brilliant and very Bub-esque). So for those reasons, this movie should be considered by people also attuned to the “zombie aesthetic” which includes the themes of rampant mindless cannibalism spreading across the human species and the distinctive cinematographic look of zombie horror, best captured in the wide shots of swarming ghouls in “Night of the Living Dead” to close-ups of murderous fully rotten corpses as in Zombi 2.
So no on technical plot issues, but yes on the latter half of the movie’s visual aesthetic and *some* of the implemented scare tactics (burrowing through the walls is distinctly rat people, but people trapped with the creatures banging at the only conventional exit/entrance is very zombie).
Ok then, I will vote YES, it does fit within the zombie movie genre, regardless if the were-rats are undead or not.
Kelly King: Well, not really. I don’t think that ZRC should be reporting on any future releases or remakes or whatever of Robocop…
id say anything that involves humans being infected by a bite/scratch and becoming agressive (i.e trying to kill/eat/destroy) towards non-infected humans is a zombie movie at heart.
so i vote YES