Zombie Eye for the Living Guy

by | Oct 2, 2012 | Reviews | 0 comments

Yeah this is a one note joke that’s completely summed up in the title. Is that a bad thing? No, not if you know what you’re getting in to when you have over your cash for this. So in an effort to inform would be buyers of this odd little book, allow me to take a look at this Zombie Eye for you.

By and large this is an art book and little else. You can tell that from the start because the only person listed on the cover is the photographer Alexander Colby. You actually have to search for the name of the person who put words on paper for this. In fact the writer of this book (J. M. Hewitt) actually gets third billing, right after the guy who did the zombie makeup effects on the models that Mr. Colby was photographing. That should tell you all you need to know about the quality of writing you can expect to find here. The people who put this book together didn’t seem to care a whole lot about the actual words in this book, so why should you?

So with that said, I’d bet you must think that the zombie photos must be extra amazing in here, right? I mean, since they’re expected to carry this $13 book all by themselves. Well no, no they’re not all that amazing at all. To be sure, some are not that bad, but you can see the same kind of ‘zombies’ from any of the more talented flesh eater fans in any of a hundred zombie walks all over the world. Some of the photographs look pretty cool, others look pretty rushed, and still some are pointlessly lame, such as a guy standing against a blank background with a little bit of gray makeup smeared onto his face. Oh how scary!

When it all comes down to it, I don’t know who this book was written – sorry – photographed for. Sure it has some semi-cool bits that diehard deadheads may get a chuckle out of. Perhaps my favorite chapter was the one with zombie themed recipes in it. Some of them sounded like fun, if hot really all that tasty. But the rest of this book is just pointless. An example of this is a chapter telling you how to walk like a zombie. Really? There needs to be a chapter telling people how to shuffle? As for the photographs, the look far more amateurish than professional to me. By that I don’t mean that they look bad, but they look like something you could do with a couple of friends, a cheap Halloween makeup kit, and an afternoon to kill. They’re certainly not on par with the gory gags you see in zombie movies, not even the ultra-low budget ones.

So can I recommend this one? Only to the super corpse-loving completionist who must have all things zombie. For everyone one else, give this one a pass.

About Brian Sammons