My dreams about zombies are not nightmares. They are more like episodes on The Walking Dead. 90% focused on the survivors, how they are reacting (to the situation and to the others), and plans for survival, and 10% actually fighting off zombies.
As you might imagine, I have zombie dreams on a pretty regular basis. In my dreams I am always fighting valiantly and constantly without ever tiring. I am never taken down. I am never weakened. I am never bitten. I almost always relying on the same weapons (handguns and crowbars), and I am always in charge. Fearless leader is not the role I normally take in my everyday life. I don’t always know what I’m doing, hence why I’m not about to announce my position and encourage others to follow in my unsteady footprints. But I know people. I know zombies. And I know survival. I always have a group of survivors that I’m instructing on what to do, and they are always completely cooperative and accepting of any and all of my plans (highly unlikely, but hey, it’s my dream!).
The other night, however, was a completely different story. I had my very first zombie dream where I wasn’t in control. In fact, I remember quite vividly feeling nervous and completely helpless as the other survivors covered my ass! The leader of the group had sort of taken me under his wing and was showing me the ropes from how to recognize the zombies to how to properly hold and fire a gun. I spent my afternoons in open fields training and practicing my aiming. And, as a group of survivors, we spent our evenings hunting and killing zombies. (Although not once did I actually fire my weapon because it was too dark and I was afraid I would accidentally shoot a survivor). One day I was practicing my aiming in the field, and I failed to notice a zombie stumbling towards me. I tried to shoot it with the gun in my left hand first and the bullets are jammed or it was out of bullets. I raised the gun in my right hand and, after several moments of hesitation and with an unsteady hand, I finally pulled the trigger, but like the other gun it too didn’t have any ammo or was jammed. I frantically pulled the trigger over and over as the zombie was getting closer. Only little puffs of air came out the end of it. I quickly tossed the guns aside and turned to run away, but by now the zombie was practically on top of me. Grabbing at the arms and hair he pulled me down and was over me, and just about to bite into the exposed skin of my shoulder, when out of no where a lion showed up and bit off the zombie’s head. (Don’t you just love dreams!)
I woke up and felt nothing but confusion about this dream. Trying to decode how I went from being the ultimate survivor and protector that I was in my previous dreams to this pitiful damsel in distress. The dream dictionary explains that to dream that you are being attacked by zombies, indicates that you are feeling overwhelmed by forces beyond your control. That you are under tremendous stress in your waking life. Alternatively, the dream represents your fears of being helpless and overpowered. But, I figure, I just really like zombies. Most books I read and movies I watch are about them, and I can relate any given situation to zombies and/or survival in one way or another. Ultimately I think it was about my ability to let go of the control and letting someone else take care of me for a change. And I think that however much we feel that we don’t need the help of others, it’s important to remember that more hands make for lighter work. And sometimes it’s just nice to know that someone’s got your back.
Now imagine waking up from whatever sort of zombie dream you might be having and finding yourself hungry for human flesh. That is exactly what happened in 1996′s Living A Zombie Dream. It’s a story of sibling rivalry at it’s finest. The main character finds his brother trying to move in on his girlfriend and gets bloody, bloody revenge. Other than that there’s no real plot. We’re not even sure how that main character becomes a zombie, other than waking up from a zombie dream and hungry for flesh. The movie is filmed with a camcorder and a couple thousand dollars (picture getting together with a couple of your friends and making a movie.) Except I bet that you and your friends could do a better job! What you can hear of the dialogue is crap. And in general, the lack of plot, horrible lighting and poor dialogue make for a hard to follow and all around pretty painful hour and a half to sit through. It’s probably a good thing that this movie is not that well known. It was on the “watch now” feature on Netflix for a little while, but now you’ll have to have them send it to your doorstep. Or if you’ve really got a hankering for a horrible zombie/B-movie Horror, you can purchase the DVD for around $8 on Amazon. As for me, this one is best kept in the dark corner from which it came, and I’ll stick to my own zombie dreams!
-SIRIUSZOMBIE
