We tend to hear the most about Jesus around Christmas and Easter. I suppose that makes sense. Still, this graphic makes a compelling case for the relevance of Jesus to Halloween too. Oops! I meant JesusWeen. Sorry about that.
And while I'm on the subject of Halloween and monsters, I think some independent horror directors should make a few films involving Zombie Jesus. There are so many great depictions of scary Christians in horror films, but I'd like to see Jesus as a villain in some horror flicks too. He'd return from the dead sometime toward the end of April and roam the countryside feasting on the brains of anyone dumb enough to believe in him. It just seems like such an obvious idea for scaring audiences. I wonder if filmmakers are just worried about the backlash they'd face from Christians.
There would also be ways of making compelling films about Zombie Jesus that would go well beyond mere mockery. I'm surprised there aren't at least some psychological horror flicks or thrillers that depict someone showing up in the modern world and claiming to be Jesus. The person would soon be committed to a psychiatric hospital, and the filmmakers could invite their audience to wrestle with the disturbing possibility that the "real Jesus" had already returned but nobody believed him, etc.
And of course, what I'd really like to see more of would be horror films where the skeptics turned out to be correct. The real evil was never supernatural but was always just humans preying on the gullible. The returned Jesus in these films would turn out to be a fraud, and audiences would leave the film reflecting on how much of what they had been believing without question might simply be false. That would be fun!
Of course, I don't hold up much hope of seeing any of this on the big screen. Perhaps horror audiences will eventually tire of seeing things they have already seen countless times and filmmakers will be willing to consider radical new directions. A few good Zombie Jesus films would be different enough to get the attention of the audience.
