The Undead as Us: Why Zombies Reflect Our Fear of Loss in a Digital Age
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The relentless popularity of zombie narratives in 2025—from blockbuster films like “28 Years Later” to streaming hits like “The Last of Us”—isn’t simply about a fascination with gore. It’s a reflection of a deeper societal anxiety: our inability to tolerate loss, whether of loved ones, past ideals, or even a sense of self in an increasingly ephemeral world.
The zombie, as a cultural symbol, is remarkably malleable. It can embody post-COVID fears of contagion, anxieties about immigration, or, as one observer noted, simply the draining tedium of modern existence. But beneath these specific interpretations lies a more fundamental truth: zombies are a dark mirror reflecting our own struggles with mortality, change, and the relentless march of time.
A Bacchanalia of the Undead
This year alone has seen a surge in zombie-themed content. “28 Years Later,” Danny Boyle’s sequel, exceeded box-office expectations, grossing over $140 million globally. Simultaneously, new seasons of “The Walking Dead: Dead City” and “The Last of Us” dominated television ratings, even featuring A-list stars like Pedro Pascal in the gruesome fray. The genre’s reach extends beyond prestige television, with Seth Rogen’s comedic take, featuring Johnny Knoxville and a zombie plague spread via “explosive diarrhea” in “Duhpocalypse,” demonstrating its mainstream appeal. Further enriching the landscape are international productions like the Korean romantic drama “Newtopia,” the dark comedy “Zombie Repellant,” and the New Zealand indie film “Forgive Us All.”
The Zombie as Societal Symptom
Zombies aren’t just monsters; they are messengers. They channel anxieties about the porous boundary between self and other, often unfolding against the backdrop of societal collapse. A common trope in zombie fiction—seen repeatedly in the “28 Days Later” franchise—involves a character forced to kill an infected loved one, forcing a brutal confrontation with their own evolving morality. This inherent lose-lose scenario can even evoke a strange sense of relief, a surrender to the oblivion of the horde. Zombiehood, in this context, offers an escape from responsibility, a cessation of choice.
In an era defined by globalization and populism, zombies become a potent metaphor for being overwhelmed—by political movements, historical forces, or simply the sheer weight of information. As one analyst suggested, the enduring appeal of zombie plots stems from their ability to illustrate the feeling of “day-to-day existence.” Dispatching a zombie, while not difficult, is endlessly repetitive, mirroring the draining cycle of tasks that define modern life—like endlessly replying to emails or, as the comparison often goes, scrolling through social media.
Scrolling and the Shuffling Tread of Death
The connection between zombies and scrolling is striking. Both involve an unhurried, inevitable progression—new posts appearing before our eyes, bodies inching forward as if driven by an unseen mechanism. The relentless march of content and the shuffling gait of the undead are disturbingly similar. There’s a perverse comfort in their inexhaustibility, a reassurance that, like the endless stream of online content, there will always be more zombies. In Colson Whitehead’s “Zone One,” a protagonist finds resilience in the monotonous task of clearing abandoned buildings, recognizing that “everything was so boring that this could not be the first time he’d experienced it.”
The Refusal to Let Go
But the current obsession with zombies signals something more specific: a societal inability to tolerate loss. The audience for these apocalyptic narratives exists in a world grappling with the refusal to acknowledge limitations—from questioning an aging President’s capacity to lead to the resurrection of deceased stars as holograms at sold-out concerts. The relentless pursuit of intellectual property in sequels and reboots, and the burgeoning field of “grief tech”—companies developing digital representations of the dead—all point to a deep-seated aversion to finality. As a recent report in The Times magazine highlighted, these “griefbots” offer an “ongoing, interactive discussion with the dead that prevents or delays a genuine reckoning with loss.”
This urge to memorialize is already pervasive online, with photographs saturating our digital lives. As Nathan Jurgenson argues in “The Social Photo,” the drive to “embalm” experience on platforms like Instagram “kills what it attempts to save out of a fear of losing it.” Susan Sontag’s observation that “all photographs are memento mori” rings particularly true, as the frozen image often exists in opposition to the living moment. The prospect of uploading consciousness to the cloud, as depicted in films like “Mountainhead,” or the extreme “anti-aging” measures pursued by entrepreneurs like Bryan Johnson, further illustrate this desperate attempt to circumvent mortality.
Aaaaughhhh and Gyyyyyuaaack: The Language of Loss
We are, it seems, bad at letting go. We recoil from sadness and seek refuge in counterfeits. In this environment, zombies illuminate the dangers of clinging to the past. One might interpret the guttural sounds of the undead—”Aaaaughhhh” and “Gyyyyyuaaack”—as primal expressions of this struggle: “There’s a difference between not dying and being alive,” and “Things can grow so corrupted or damaged that it’s better not to have them anymore.” Zombie stories, in this light, serve as a cautionary tale, warning against settling for “brainless facsimiles” and “shambling reanimated corpses” of what we once loved.
Zombies are not merely inferior substitutes for humans; they are destructive forces that critique reactionary violence. “28 Years Later” presents a chilling allegory for Brexit, depicting England succumbing to a “rage virus” that embodies a desperate desire to restore a lost past. The infected, in this reading, represent both those animated by a hunger for a bygone era and the deformed consequences of that project. The film showcases what people fear losing—a point underscored by Ben Tarnoff’s description of “reactionary infantilism,” exemplified by a refusal to accept responsibility. Zombies, ultimately, regress to a state of infantile hunger and unreasoning need.
The Elegiac Aura of the Undead
The zombie-baby parallel is particularly revealing. Both “28 Years Later” and “The Last of Us” center on coming-of-age narratives, suggesting that zombies represent a prolonged, unnatural extension of childhood—an attempt to recapture the “innocent egotism of infants.” This connection may explain the occasional tenderness shown towards the infected in Boyle’s film, casting the zombie plot as a “failed bildungsroman.” The film’s pathos and longing for safety suggest that zombies embody a relatable grief about transformation and loss. As Louise Glück wrote, we look at the world once, in childhood; the rest is zombies.
