As legions await the April Fools’ street date for the book, “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,” and with two movie spin-offs – and, Natalie Portman? – ambling slowly but surely on the horizon, let us turn to the question of zombies, and why they are so very special to us.

Reanimated human corpses, as we know them in pop culture, reflect our deeply complicated psyche, philosophies, office life and even financial world. Born into our cultural conversation by George Romero as menacingly, even comically, slow and relentless monsters, they evolved to have superhuman speed and ability. Along the way, we have absorbed the subtle meanings of zombie identity and begun to understand why this particular form of monster is so lovable.

In Afro-Caribbean Vodou, the supposed origin of the pop culture zombie, they were helpless people controlled as laborers by a powerful sorcerer. As Paul Kruger rages this week against Bernanke’s denial of the existence of “zombie institutions” in the US, that definition strikes too close to home. In our current reality, AIG and countless institutions seem to be both the powerful sorcerers and brainwashed masses of a financial apocalypse.

Deep down, we know the truth- we’re all zombies at some point. The mockumentary “American Zombie” nails this affinity by interviewing the zombie next door. We learn about his daily struggles to get by and fit in, with little identity and no memory of the past. Following four high-functioning zombies as they live, date and work in the city of Los Angeles, zombies finally evolve once more – to become the sympathetic underdogs we know they can be.

American Zombie on iTunes: www.itunes.com/movies/americanzombie

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