Spoilers aplenty so a big blood-soaked “KEEP OUT” sign, grasped by a blotchy hand reaching up from the soil, if you don’t want to know what happens, or how it ends… (If you just want to read my review it’s here.)
Zombies facing off with Millennials? As a woman of a certain age I’m still waiting for the zombie movie as menopause allegory: grey-faced, memory shot to pieces, angry at everyone while wandering aimlessly round shopping centres because we can’t remember what we came out for.
No one is literally following the dead in Follow The Dead, but then hardly anyone is literally dead. Zombies are actually undead and anyway everyone runs the other way when they see a zombie. The movie’s Millennials just feel dead. The murderous vigilantes are morally dead, but by the time they really are dead no one’s following them either. (I can perhaps see the rather ramshackle grave of Mrs Mooney’s zombie dog becoming, in the future, a place of pilgrimage — he was after all “Zomdog Zero” — but that’s maybe best left for a sequel.)
Still, I guess Follow The Allegorical Dead would mean missing out on the late night movie crowd, and would also be harder to fit on a poster.
Follow The Dead is about what it would take to raise Millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996) from their comfy couches, and it turns out it’s the raising of the dead. It’s also about what has kept them home on their sofas: fear, disillusionment, and a lack of prospects even if they do “play the game”, more than entitlement.
And I won’t lie, for a whole film about Millennials I was surprised there was not one mention of avocado toast. Or a daily Starbucks. Or not putting a full stop at the end of a tweet. Oh wait that last one is Generation Z. I mean Generation Z
There are three groups facing off in Follow The Dead (and yes sometimes your enemy’s enemy is your friend): zombies, Millennials, and murderous vigilantes.
The zombies arrive, first in ones and twos, attacking anyone they trip over; then in a wave from Dublin, clattering over the fields. News has already started to filter through via social media about crazed attacks but no one believes it at first — the immediacy and visuals of modern technology cancelled out by a jaded population’s experiences of fake news and doctored viral videos.
Always-online Millennials, hoist by their own technological and societal advances.
The vigilantes have also started popping up, from Offaly to Dublin, tapping into the fear and discontent of locals who see a world that consistently pulls the rug from under them. They stalk the towns in rubber zombie masks, kidnapping, forcing allegiance and murdering the local Gardai.
Both vigilantes and zombies are a distraction from each other. The Gardai are too concerned about the radio silence from their colleagues in Dublin. A town hall meeting to address the issue descends into chaos. Meanwhile disagreements around the veracity of reports of zombie attacks stop ordinary people from focusing on the dangers already in their midst.
Follow The Dead‘s specific family of Millennials, the Whelans, may not eat avocado toast (which is a shame as I read somewhere that if they gave that up for three weeks they could buy a house with the savings) but they are, well, lethargic. And a bit lazy. Dare I say <drumroll> dead inside.
Liv Whelan, waiting patiently for the internet to make her a star with minimal input from herself, even has followers: 44 in fact, rising to 1000 by the end of the movie after she’s actually started reporting on the unfolding apocalypse outside their front door. Another few End Times events and she’ll be able to put #ad after posts about the freebie nuclear hazmat suit she’s been sent.
No one is following her cousin Jay Whelan, except perhaps his brother Chi, and that’s only into the kitchen. Jay, lying around doing nothing, has been thinking mostly about Millennials lying around doing nothing, and considering he is one he’s pretty brutal. They are, he thinks, entitled and lazy, expecting everything for nothing. It takes a while for Jay and Chi to realise they’re not (that) lazy, but mostly frightened of stepping outside of their comfort zone after the death of their mother, of leaving a safe space that has become a prison.
Even Robbie, the oldest and most worldly (he’s even lived in Dublin!) lost ex-wife Kate after claiming he needed to come home to his family, when really it was just petulance at not being the centre of attention. Unfortunately by the time he realises this they’re all about to be attacked by a horde of zombies, but hooray for personal growth, anyway.
Everything comes to a head one night when the Whelans decide to check on their neighbour Mrs Mooney, whose dog has recently bitten her. Turned by her undead pet pooch, she’s soon pushing Jay out of an upstairs window and biting poor Chi before Kate beats her to death with a truncheon.
Robbie suggests they go to the mountains, taking with them the infected Chi. But before they can leave, the masked vigilantes arrive, bringing with them the dead body of Horgan, Kate’s colleague. The ringleader stabs Kate in the stomach but Horgan reanimates, attacking the vigilantes. Outside the zombies have turned up en masse, and Chi (sacrificing himself for the greater good) and the vigilantes (sacrificing themselves for the greater bad) throw themselves into the squelchy fray.
Desperate to get Kate to hospital, the others are instead forced to retreat inside the house, where Kate dies. While they wait for daybreak, Robbie admits to Liv he was glad Horgan was dead as he wouldn’t have had to fight for Kate’s affections. As the sun comes up and they prepare to leave, zombies find a way in and Robbie is bitten. He kills one with his didgeridoo, and Jay reluctantly agrees to kill Robbie before he turns.
And then, before Jay can do the deed, Chi walks in — unturned, unzombified, un-undead. For some reason he has not yet turned into a zombie. Outside, a zombie vigilante groans from under dead zombies; Robbie looks at its pathetic state, seeing it for what it really is, and stabs it in the eye.
Can they find salvation? Yes! If they can make it to a compound in Dublin that goes by that name, and is offering help over the radio; though personally I’d give it a wide berth. Hell is other people, after all. And anyway, driving away, they soon find their route along a country road blocked by a handful of the undead. Stopping the car, Robbie gets out and heads into battle… with a purpose. And a didgeridoo.
So by the close of the movie, Robbie, Chi, Jay and Liv are still alive, though both Robbie and Chi have been bitten. Strangely neither has turned into a zombie: a strange genetic quirk, or simply discovering that what’s out there isn’t as dangerous as they thought?
As for those vicious local vigilantes, stabbing and killing their way through their own town, I guess it turns out the biggest danger was always coming from inside the house…
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