Nowadays, Peter Jackson is best known for creating large-scale epic stories covering multiple character arcs and delivering jaw-dropping set-pieces. Some of the best examples of this can be found in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies. But before audiences were made accustomed to his grand style, Jackson had another interest: gross-out horror. In this genre, he tackled a subject that shows like The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead have yet to commit to fully.
Braindead, aka Dead Alive, was released in 1992 and is a New Zealand horror film about a man who tries his best to hide a zombie outbreak in the basement of his mansion. However, as more bodies pile up, hiding them seems like more and more of a pipe dream. What results is a total ambush of the undead, leading to utterly disgusting gore effects that push special effects to the limit in terms of creativity and functionality. A great example of this can be seen in the film's most iconic zombie, Baby Selwyn.
Baby Selwyn is a zombified toddler conceived and birthed by two zombies locked in the main character, Lionel Cosgrove's basement. After being born, Lionel tries his best to keep up appearances that everything is normal. However, Selwyn is as naughty as he is hungry, and he begins to terrorize a small park of pedestrians in a hilarious slapstick sequence. He later becomes a thorn in the side of Braindead's heroes as they try to eliminate the baby and the other zombie threats.
While a zombie baby has been shown in films like Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead, none have had as much malicious intent as Selwyn. That being said, zombified babies are a topic that most audiences don't visit due to the nature of the subject. As a result, franchises like The Walking Dead have yet to show how apocalyptic situations like zombies affect infants.
Certain episodes of The Walking Dead have teased these situations with images of a bloody crib or the iconic child walker that Rick shoots in the head in the first episode. However, it isn't until Season 7 of Fear the Walking Dead that the topic is handled more directly. In the episode "Six Hours," Morgan encounters Bea, a deformed survivor suffering from radiation sickness after nuclear bombs are dropped on Texas. As the episode progresses, Morgan learns that Bea and her husband once had a daughter named Emma. Sadly, she was smothered due to her cries of pain from the radiation calling over the zombies. While she died, she returned as a groaning walker concealed in a brown bag. Morgan is forced to shoot the bag in a poignant scene, killing Emma.
While Emma is never shown in the episode, the implication of her transformation is enough to unsettle anyone. In that regard, it's also interesting that a franchise like The Walking Dead has never dared to tackle such intense subject matter. Braindead's Baby Selwyn serves as a great example of how to handle a zombie baby comedically. But using the same topic in these shows could offer a more definitive glimpse into how twisted the world can be when all bets are off.