George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead has defined the zombie film genre for over four decades and was a subversive critique of Vietnam-era American society. Over the years there have been numerous attempts to recapture that lightning in a bottle to varying degrees of success. Along the way there have been many imitations of that 1968 classic that completely miss the social commentary of the original. Ron Purtee accomplishes in four minutes what many full length feature films fail to do in two hours. Becoming Undead is an atmospheric piece, to be sure, but he boldly eschews any dialogue for a an unnerving soundtrack that slowly raises the tension, as well as the hairs on the back of the viewer’s neck. We literally watch as someone is becoming undead from, presumably, a zombie bite and are appalled as we, and he, know there is nothing he can do to prevent it from happening. There is even a brief attempt at suicide, but can he not bring himself to do it or is he already too far zombie-fied to pull the trigger? We’ll never know and neither will the hapless couple who are trying to evade a gang of the undead and arrive at the fresh zombie’s house.
It may be giving Purtee too much credit to read into his short film a commentary on how we are slowly losing our individualism in a ever more digital world, but I think it would be wrong not to see that here. It would also be misleading to say that there is anything groundbreaking as far as filmmaking in Purtee’s approach or camera work. The thing is, it doesn’t visually need to be anything unique. The editing, music, presentation and acting by Charlie Bussian are what make this a gem. It took Purtee zero money and four minutes to bring something new to the zombie genre, one wonders what he could do with a full budget feature film. Hopefully we will one day find out.
Watch Becoming Undead right now at the official website.
