Zombies are actors too

As I was proofreading my writer's review of Resident Evil, which I saw myself on Sunday night, I noticed something interesting that I think speaks to human nature -- or at least, to critic nature.

Namely, an actor playing a zombie is apparently not credited for their performance.

And normally, you wouldn't think they would be. Individual zombies are generally disposable in zombie movies. (Resident Evil may or may not be considered a zombie video game series. I'm sure both suggestions would be considered controversial, depending on the context.)

But some zombies have big roles, and I would say that's true of the zombie credited as "Pedestrian" on IMDB, played by Andrea Miltner.

I know Andrea Miltner is her name because I checked it myself, not because my writer included it in his review. Again, no shade on him. 

The notable contradiction is that he did include the name of the guy who plays the police officer who stops our protagonist while he is trying to ferry Pedestrian to the hospital, having hit her with his car and found her in a gnarled position in the woods, too far away from the car to have been thrown there. (The footsteps leading off into the snowy woods are also a dead giveaway.) 

That actor is Johnno Wilson, by the way. And he definitely has less screen time than Miltner has.

Now you might say that Johnno Wilson is just a better known actor than Andrea Miltner, and when you include a name in parenthesis during a review, you're usually trying to let the reader know they may have seen this person before, in addition to crediting a working professional for their work. But while Wilson does have small roles in films you've heard of, like King Richard and Bride Hard, Miltner was in both The Crow and Nosferatu, two very prominent films from just two years ago.

No, I think it's just that we consider a zombie to be a triumph of makeup or digital effects, but not a triumph of performance. The character is sub-human, but that doesn't mean it's not played by an actual human with a lot of ability to scare and discomfit us.

Which Miltner certainly does here. She has to make a lot of choices in her affect as she goes through various states of confusion, agitation and catatonia. She's in the movie for 15 minutes all told, maybe even 20, and her collaborations with the director, to freak us out as much as possible, are not insignificant. 

Here's just one:

When I noted the absence in his text, I thought of looking up the actress' name and adding it. I did look up the name, obviously, but didn't end up adding it. Apparently I opted to write this post instead as a way of crediting her. 

But I do want it to go on the record that zombie acting can be some of our most demanding and some of our least recognized. Yes, most movies only require an actor to shuffle and look vacant, and murmur "Brains ..." every once in a while. That's the stereotypical, degraded version of zombie acting.

But just think about movies where characters you actually know become zombies. I hope this isn't a spoiler -- well it is, but I hope you don't care -- but just think about the end scenes we get with Robert Carlyle as a zombie in 28 Weeks Later. I've only seen that movie once so I can't remember if Carlyle's craft is brilliant or anything. But I do remember being taken by the zombified Carlyle, and I'm able to remember it because it was actually a known actor behind all that zombie makeup.

You know what? I just went back to the published review and added Miltner's name.

And feel better about that.