Review: Dead Inside: Do Not Enter

Chronicle Books, out now

Starting with a timeline that sets out how civilisation can fall apart incredibly quickly (inevitably itself very reminiscent of Stephen King’s The Stand, Survivors, Torchwood: Miracle Day or the backstory to The Walking Dead), this is a highly effective way of presenting a zombie apocalypse.

A backpack has been passed from person to person, and as the author of a note explaining the contents says, “reading this is like looking into the sun”. A child’s picture of his sick father is near a description of a house being burned with people obviously still alive within. One of the tear sheets you see on American streets that are usually advertising jobs now repurposed to count zombie kills. People desperately trying to rationalise to themselves why they can’t kill loved ones, or how they could go ahead and exterminate the living dead… A gun with kills marked on it.

In reality, it’s all part of the Lost Zombies project (www.lostzombies.com), a multi-media recreation of a world that has been devastated by a zombie infestation. With so many different zombie products on the market (they definitely seem to have taken over from vampires as the horror du jour), it’s hard for any particular one to make a mark – but, partly because we clearly are only ever getting part of the picture, this one has a resonance that many don’t.

Verdict: Zombie fans will enjoy this, and probably relish becoming part of the project.  8/10

Paul Simpson

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