When you hear the word "zombie," a few images usually come to mind: the slow, shambling hordes of George A. Romero, the sprinting infected of 28 Days Later , or the comedic relief in Shaun of the Dead . You rarely think of pathos. You rarely think of a legal trial. And you certainly don’t think of weeping.
It’s a living person who refuses to understand. paranorman zombies
And the zombies? They are the executioners. When you hear the word "zombie," a few
When the zombies finally break through the town barricade, the living react with pitchforks and fire—the exact same weapons used to kill Aggie. History is a loop. Norman has to literally stand between the two mobs (the living and the dead) and scream the truth: "She’s just a little girl!" You rarely think of a legal trial
Think about the imagery. The zombies are falling apart. Their skin sloughs off. Their bones break. This physical decay is a metaphor for moral decay. These men and women committed an atrocity (murdering a child), and their punishment is to never rest, never heal, and to wear their sin on their rotting sleeves for eternity. Stop-motion animation is a brutal art form. For the zombie sequences, the animators at Laika did something brilliant. They didn't animate them as mindless monsters. Watch closely. When Norman finally leads them to the "witch," they don't snarl. They stop. They kneel.
Judge Hopkins and his mob aren't attacking the living because they are evil. They are trapped in a purgatorial loop, forced to re-enact their worst sin every year. They are cursed to chase Norman because they must find the witch to apologize. They are carrying the weight of their guilt in their rotting flesh.