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PART TWO: IDENTITIES, BORDERS, AND MEDIATIONS

It Came from the Water: The Rise of the Polish Vegan Zombie

Emma Oki

Abstract

Xawery Żuławski’s It Came from the Water (2022) offers a Polish contribution to global eco-zombie narratives by linking the rise of the undead to the pollution of the Baltic Sea. Through this local ecological lens, the movie reshapes traditional zombie tropes and introduces the vegan zombie, a figure embodying sustainable consumption. The article demonstrates how Żuławski transforms the undead into a source of cautious ecological hope, blending Poland’s environmental anxieties with international genre conventions to explore possibilities for sustainable human-nature engagement.

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1. Introduction

1“Zombies distract people from what is really important, like cheer, us, me,” complains Bucky, the Seabrook High School cheer captain in Disney’s Zombies (2018). Coming from a position of privilege, Bucky rejects forms of otherness and sees zombie integration as a destabilizing force. Clearly, the viewer is meant to question his priorities and recognize how the zombies, situated at the margins of the community, expose the distractions in Seabrook and beyond: spectacle, insularity, and self-interest. What initially appears to be a lighthearted story of zombie integration takes on a more pointed significance in Zombies 2 (2020), with the sequel revealing that the outbreak originated from a power plant accident fueled by energy drawn from a buried moonstone, a relic left on land taken from a displaced werewolf community. This backstory delivers a cautionary message about how contemporary crises can result from suppressed histories of cultural dispossession and, most importantly, the exploitation of resources.

2Disney’s comfortable vision of technology-managed human-zombie coexistence contrasts sharply with the environmental reckonings offered by explicit eco-zombie visual narratives, for example, HBO’s The Last of Us (2023–present), where the zombies serve as uncontainable symptoms of ecological collapse: as global temperatures rise, humans become vulnerable to a fungal infection that transforms them into zombies. Such eco-zombie texts position human-induced environmental degradation as the catalyst for zombie outbreaks, which transforms zombies from symbols of abstract social ills into more literal consequences of ecological destruction. As streaming platforms facilitate the global circulation of content, local creators can address region-specific environmental concerns and contribute to broader conversations about climate change and environmental crises in the eco-zombie subgenre. Xawery Żuławski’s It Came from the Water (2022) exemplifies this phenomenon, presenting zombies born from contaminated Baltic Sea waters as direct embodiments of environmental neglect.

3Tasked with creating a youth-oriented movie, Żuławski rejected vampires, figures he saw as drained of cultural vitality, and chose zombies for their ongoing resonance with audiences and moviemakers (Żuławski, “Xawery Żuławski o ‘Apokawixie’”). He revitalizes the genre through the figure of the vegan zombie, a plant-eating creature without the impulse to spread the zombie disease. This article argues that It Came from the Water transforms the eco-zombie subgenre by linking the zombie to principles of sustainability and reorienting it from apocalyptic despair toward cautious ecological hope. Drawing on conventions from American zombie cinema, Żuławski reworks them within a distinctly Polish context shaped by Baltic Sea contamination and post-communist environmental anxieties. Thus, the movie articulates a local expression of the “contemporary anxieties of an Anthropocentric generation,” while envisioning a younger generation more attuned to environmental concerns and responsibility (Fitzpatrick).

2. The Environmental Turn in Zombie Narratives

4George A. Romero’s remark that zombies may serve as a vehicle for critique, “If there’s something I’d like to criticize, I can bring the zombies out,” underscores the genre’s adaptability as a lens for exploring societal anxieties. Its capacity for reinvention has enabled the zombie’s continual evolution across decades, addressing fears ranging from Cold War paranoia and critiques of consumer culture to post-9/11 insecurities and issues brought to light by the COVID-19 pandemic. More recently, Tina Romero’s Queens of the Dead (2025) offers commentary on tensions within queer social circles: “the focus is less on America consuming itself, and more on the queer community turning on each other” (Hart).

5As Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet observes, “As a cultural metaphor, the zombie has signified a wide range of political and social meanings: slavery, occupation, exploited labor, consumerism, postmodernism, and conformity, among others” (143). While consumerism has dominated scholarly discourse surrounding zombies (Harper), particularly following Romero’s mall-wandering undead in Dawn of the Dead (1978), recent criticism has offered an alternative interpretative framework. Craig Finlay, for example, repositions the zombie as intrinsically linked to “unsustainable consumption of the natural environment”: “Zombies have no interest in sustainability and as such cannot function as a perfect stand-in for consumerism” (131; 137). From this perspective, the zombie’s symbolic meaning moves from consumer culture to environmental exploitation, reflecting what Finlay describes as “an ever[-]growing population propping itself up by subjugating more of the natural environment” (142).

6The contemporary eco-zombie makes this environmental connection explicit, shifting it from metaphorical subtext or peripheral concern to a central narrative focus, a shift that resonates beyond fiction. For instance, Caroline Fraser’s Murderland (2025), while not concerned with zombies, argues that extreme environmental toxicity, such as the lead pollution surrounding 1970s Tacoma, can produce “monstrous” subjects (Lynskey). This offers a real-world analogue to the eco-zombie’s logic that corrupt environments create monstrosity. As Sarah Juliet Lauro defines it, the eco-zombie is “an undead that results from some gross mistreatment of nature—usually by a corporation, or by someone seeking to make a profit, who thinks little of protecting the natural environment or the inhabitants of it” (“The Eco-Zombie” 62). She also identifies another variant: “a zombie that results from [more vague causes, such as] the effects of Global Warming” (Lauro, “The Eco-Zombie” 62). In either case, the eco-zombie functions as a figure allegorizing “our species’ inability to fundamentally control the environment” (Lehnen 132). While ecological themes appeared in European genre cinema as early as Umberto Lenzi’s Nightmare City (1980), where radioactive contamination leads to the zombie-like outbreak, 21st-century productions have taken on renewed urgency as climate change and environmental crises driven by human activity have become central cultural preoccupations. Examples include Severed (2005), which “incarnates anxieties regarding the abuses of the planet by capitalist industry” (Lauro, “The Eco-Zombie” 61); The Neighbor Zombie (2010), which sees “zombification as a punishment for the violence of the commercial meat industry and mass animal slaughter” in South Korea (Jolivette 125); and Gaia (2021), a South African ecohorror movie “clearly intended to provide a sweeping, mythic vision of the Anthropocene—of a species’ cosmic rise and fall” (Duncan 119).

7Lauro provocatively asks “whether all zombie stories aren’t … eco-zombie narratives[, as] … they are all concerned to some degree with humanity’s mistreatment of nature” (“The Eco-Zombie” 61). Her provocation invites us to see the zombie as a figure through which we glimpse the enduring tension between humanity and the natural world. The recent ecological turn in zombie media underscores its capacity to engage with environmental issues and unique position among big- and small-screen monsters. As Ian Olney writes, “Our wholesale embrace of zombies in the new millennium suggests that we see something of ourselves in them that we don’t see in other monsters” (11). Combined with the figure’s adaptability to contemporary fears, this has made the zombie an interesting vehicle for exploring Anthropocene anxieties about environmental devastation and unsustainable consumption.

8Contemporary eco-zombie narratives cast anthropogenic climate change as the catalyst for zombie outbreaks, transforming abstract ecological anxieties into tangible, flesh-and-blood terror and reminding the viewer that once the tipping point is crossed, the consequences are devastating. The Last of Us exemplifies this, inviting reflection on humanity’s relationship with the natural world. Its central character, Ellie, immune to the fungal contagion and representing what Fitzpatrick calls “the new generation of human[s] for the post-apocalyptic world as the planet re-sets,” embodies both hope and critique. Her immunity exposes “our own skewed ethos of pinning our hopes for a solution to our own global ecological crises on the next generation” (Fitzpatrick). The narrative may also suggest that sacrificing Ellie to produce a cure would offer only a temporary reprieve, postponing rather than preventing catastrophe, while a more lasting response depends on reimagining humanity’s relationship with the environment. Where The Last of Us situates ecological anxiety within an American landscape of collapse, Żuławski’s movie locates it in Poland.

3. The Zombie as Environmental Reckoning: Local and Generational Perspectives in It Came from the Water

  • 1 In recent years, however, environmental issues have received much greater attention, with major pol (...)

9It Came from the Water emerges from specific Polish ecological and cultural contexts that shape its environmental critique. Central to the narrative is the Baltic Sea, which is facing severe ecological degradation due to industrial pollution, resulting in widespread dead zones and toxic algal blooms. This real-world environmental crisis grounds the movie’s zombie outbreak in a tangible regional reality, translating abstract ecological anxieties into immediate and localized threats. The movie reflects Poland’s complex relationship with environmental issues following the 1989 transition from communism. Although Poland has a long-standing commitment to environmental protection and the government actively engaged in shaping climate policy during the 1990s, these efforts were overshadowed by the country’s pressing social and economic transformations (Karaczun et al. 150). Thus, environmental issues received limited media attention (Szulecki).1 The rapid economic growth that accompanied democratization had an impact on the environment, mirroring a broader trend identified in development theory: in the early stages of economic expansion, societies tend to prioritize industrial growth, often neglecting ecological stewardship (Kaczmarczyk 209). This is embodied in the movie through the character of Kamil’s father, an entrepreneur whose ventures include a waste treatment company. As a member of Poland’s affluent class formed through the opportunities of post-communist market reforms, he symbolizes a generation of entrepreneurs that built and continue to expand their wealth at the expense of the environment. The character’s last words before transforming into a zombie, “My son, I will never die,” reflect his enduring greed and suggest a broader commentary on human reluctance to recognize and change destructive behaviors (It Came from the Water). By portraying this figure as directly responsible for the zombie outbreak, Żuławski provides a critical perspective on Poland’s developmental path, exposing the ecological consequences of unchecked capitalism. In doing so, It Came from the Water situates its environmental critique within both national and global frameworks of economic development and ecological neglect.

10The movie opens with a handheld, first-person recording in which Kamil and Aga introduce themselves, urge the viewer to start acting more responsibly toward the planet, and warn of the outbreak’s origin: the water. The use of the found-footage convention, a popular feature of horror since the 1990s (Sayad 43), immediately captures the viewer’s attention and establishes the movie’s concern with environmental neglect and its consequences. It is followed by a documentary-style montage combining real environmental imagery: melting Antarctic ice, global wildfires, logging in Poland’s Białowieża Forest, and the degradation of the Baltic Sea. Through the character of reporter Radomir Wit, the sequence blends fiction with reality and makes the apocalyptic scenario feel plausible, situating the zombie outbreak within a broader context of ecological collapse driven by the pursuit of profit. Together, these narrative devices ground the story in reality and build suspense, making the environmental themes more tangible and urgent. They are particularly fitting, as they bridge the gap between entertainment and activism, compelling the audience to not only witness but also reflect on the consequences of environmental degradation.

11After this framing, the main characters are introduced, depicted as already living a zombie-like, excessive existence, ever hungry for more, before literal zombies emerge. Kamil is shown surrounded by multiple screens, simultaneously watching the news, playing a video game, and video-calling friends, a visual metaphor for technological oversaturation and the social isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. “These are my buddies. My classmates. But I don’t know if I can really call them that because for a long time we’ve only met up online,” Kamil reflects, revealing a sense of disconnection and emotional detachment (It Came from the Water). The moment captures the compulsive consumption and emotional disconnection often associated with zombie narratives, suggesting that the movie’s environmental collapse merely externalizes societal decay already at work beneath the surface.

12The zombie outbreak in It Came from the Water presents ecological consequences as immediate and visceral, and it demands fundamental responses to the environmental crisis. The movie also pairs the outbreak with COVID-19, which can be read as nature’s punishment or way of regaining balance: in the movie, the virus affects adults, depicted as responsible for the environment’s decline. By situating the narrative in the initial hours of the outbreak, the movie captures the raw chaos of ecological collapse before systems of control intervene. The first signs of infection appear in a seagull and Kamil’s half-sister’s dog, signaling that the natural world is responding to the Baltic Sea’s pollution. When humans are subsequently affected, the consequences fall first on two adult men that seek to exploit Kamil’s friends for profit, hinting at the movie’s moral logic that those who perpetuate social harm can expect some form of punishment.

13Notably, the film gives little screen time to its zombies, redirecting attention from spectacle to the conditions that produce the outbreak. It foregrounds the idea that ecological and social decay are already underway. When zombies finally surface, they do so in symbolically charged spaces: a nighttime beach, which echoes Kamil’s father’s clandestine toxic dumping, and the family’s opulent mansion. With blackened eyes and algal blooms spilling from their mouths, the infected embody the waters’ toxicity, and their sudden shift into fast, violent attackers underscores how neglected environmental damage can erupt into crisis. By limiting zombie action and emphasizing character and ecology, the movie frames the undead not as the central threat but as the inevitable manifestation of a broader environmental reckoning already unfolding around the characters.

4. The Vegan Zombie

14It Came from the Water makes its most significant contribution to zombie discourse through the figure of the vegan zombie, co-created by scriptwriter Krzysztof Bernaś (Żuławski, “Apokawixa”), which challenges core assumptions about the undead and introduces hope within horror through “positive transformation.” Since Romero’s movies, zombies have often been depicted as mindless beings driven by an insatiable hunger or the urge to spread infection. Their changing forms across decades reveal how the figure continually adapts to reflect social and historical anxieties. As Chase Pielak and Alexander H. Cohen observe, “we mask many of our real fears with Gothic bodies, which are most recently expressed as zombie faces” (7). Phillip McReynolds reads their evolution, from voodoo to slow and fast zombies, as culturally symptomatic: the voodoo zombie reflects the “alienated labor” of the colonized and enslaved; Romero’s slow zombie embodies anxieties about “asserting one’s individuality in a culture overrun by mass-produced consumer goods”; whereas the fast zombie expresses “the fear of contamination under deterritorialization” (157, 161). In this view, the zombie functions as a symbolic record of humanity’s entanglement with the colonial, industrial, and ecological systems, “a fictional trace of the human and posthuman forces that have brought about the Anthropocene” (McReynolds 150).

15In recent zombie narratives, some figures retain elements of their humanity, exemplifying the “sympathetic turn,” in which monsters are no longer mere agents of destruction but complex beings whose actions and emotions invite empathy (Singh). By portraying zombies as distinct individuals, separate from the mindless horde, a development that might be called an “individualistic turn,” these stories restore the zombies’ subjectivity while also reflecting a broader cultural emphasis on individualism. For example, Warm Bodies (2013) depicts zombies capable of love, which can even cure the zombie disease (Prorokova 155); iZombie (2015–2019) features a protagonist that leverages her zombie condition to assist the living (Fitzpatrick; Prorokova 152); Disney’s Zombie saga presents zombies whose impulses are regulated by z-bands, enabling them to “engage in intelligent conversation, develop a society, and operate in a docile, non-threatening manner,” bringing them “closer to humanity, and thus whiteness” (Cramer and Cruz). As Tatiana Prorokova observes, such zombies “possess humanity: … [they] can think, make decisions, have friends, and even fall in love” (152). However, even these more humanized zombies typically maintain their anthropophagistic tendencies when in their zombie state. In contrast, the vegan zombie sets itself apart through what it consumes, modeling a form of sustainable engagement in the genre.

16The character of Tola, the second-generation vegan whose consumption principles endure even after infection, embodies this narrative innovation. When she transforms, she eats plants, becoming what Żuławski terms a “positive zombie” and even protects the living (Żuławski, “Apokawixa”). This challenges Finlay’s assertion that “zombies have no interest in sustainability” (137) by presenting a zombie figure whose consumption patterns are aligned with sustainable practices. As Finlay notes, “It is not the extinction of humans in zombie films that terrifies; it is the extinction of the zombies” (142). A vegan zombie horde, by contrast, would likely avoid extinction, which reconfigures the traditional stakes of the genre. In this sense, Żuławski reimagines the zombie as a metaphor for ethical consumption, sustainability, and ecological renewal within a damaged world. Through the character of Tola, he also portrays humans as the true “monsters” in an era of ecological crisis. Even when confronted with the consequences of environmental degradation, people continue to prioritize convenience and self-interest over ecological responsibility. The appearance of zombies functions as an omen, signaling the repercussions of human negligence and prompting a reconsideration of our relationship with the natural world.

17Tola’s eco-ethical zombification arises from the same environmental contamination that creates conventional zombies, yet her pre-existing ethical framework shapes her behavior post-infection. This suggests that, even in the face of severe ecological crises, individual ethical choices matter, offering a form of cautious hope that positive change remains possible. Her plant-based diet as a zombie literalizes what Fitzpatrick identifies as the eco-zombie’s potential to challenge “our ambivalence towards ecological issues” by presenting alternative relationships between consumption, nature, and survival. This tension between ethics and survival comes alive on screen: the image of zombie Tola crouching close to the ground and eating grass directly from it stands in contrast to the aggression of the flesh-eating zombies, showing her ethical choices through her movements and presence. In another scene, she is sitting on the beach next to tall grass, the music quietly playing in the background. Through such imagery, Żuławski visualizes the emergence of the sustainable undead, a reimagined zombie whose survival does not rely on predation but on coexistence with the natural world.

18The vegan zombie is accompanied by two more environmentally conscious figures: Aga and Blitz. The former, Tola’s classmate, is inspired by global climate strikes and actively participates in protests. Blitz, by contrast, is an eco-hermit living in the forests near the Baltic Sea. When he rescues Tola and her friend, his protective role expands the movie’s vision of ecological engagement. Sharing musical and ethical affinities with Tola, Blitz represents an alternative mode of environmental response: deliberate withdrawal from unsustainable consumer culture, while Aga and Tola model reform from within. Notably, when Tola transforms into a zombie, her first instinct is to protect Blitz from infection. Together, these characters outline complementary paths toward ecological awareness: one rooted in isolation and the other in active engagement and ethical consumption.

19In the climactic beach confrontation, Tola stands with the human survivors against the undead horde, visually enacting the possibility of cooperation between humans and vegan zombies. This alliance transcends the traditional human/zombie divide and gestures toward a new kind of post-apocalyptic community, one defined by ecological consciousness. In this way, It Came from the Water transforms the zombie from a symbol of unchecked consumption of natural resources into a figure of ethical possibility, inviting audiences to reconsider what it means to live sustainably in the Anthropocene. Interestingly, unlike in many eco-zombie narratives, the cure for zombification is surprisingly simple: what one of the characters describes as “a strong antihistamine,” effectively an epinephrine shot. Unfortunately for the young survivors and local community, they have limited access to the shots, and the authorities have yet to respond to the threat.

5. Transnational Genre Circulation and Cultural Specificity

20It Came from the Water demonstrates how local film industries can meaningfully participate in global genre conversations, while maintaining cultural specificity. The movie draws explicitly from American zombie productions (Żuławski, “Apokawixa nadchodzi”), including The Walking Dead (2010–2022), World War Z (2013), Black Summer, and Army of the Dead (2021), all cited by its director in interviews (Żuławski, “Xawery Żuławski o ‘Apokawixie’”). Polish critics have noted additional connections to From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) and Zombieland (2009), situating the work within diverse genre lineages spanning multiple decades (“Apokawixa”). However, the movie transforms these influences through distinctly Polish perspectives and concerns. The zombie outbreak originates from the polluted waters of the Baltic Sea, where toxic algal blooms have turned deadly, grounding the apocalypse in a recognizable local environmental issue. At the same time, the movie’s depiction of young adults isolated during a pandemic feels familiar and relatable to audiences around the world. This combination gives the movie a unique appeal as a cultural export: by showing global environmental issues through a distinctly Polish lens, it helps international viewers connect with these problems in a way that is both accessible and grounded in real-life social realities. Also, the critique of profit-driven environmental destruction may resonate beyond Poland’s post-communist transition, speaking to global patterns of corporate environmental negligence.

21Streaming platforms have opened up unprecedented opportunities for local moviemakers to participate in transnational genre conversations. It Came from the Water exemplifies this potential by drawing on established conventions and reworking them through the lens of local ecological anxieties and culture. Its central innovation, the figure of the vegan zombie, has the potential to transcend its regional origins, speaking to universal environmental concerns such as industrial pollution, sustainable consumption, and humanity’s evolving relationship with nature. By portraying the vegan zombie as aligned with ecological balance, the movie invites international audiences to reconsider familiar genre tropes through an environmentally conscious perspective.

6. Conclusion

22As streaming platforms enable international circulation of regional productions, creators worldwide have unprecedented opportunities to contribute to transnational genre conversations. By adapting American zombie tropes to address specifically Polish ecological anxieties, particularly Baltic Sea contamination and post-communist environmental exploitation, Żuławski’s movie cultivates a form of cultural expression that speaks to both regional experience and global concerns. The movie transforms the zombie from a metaphor for unsustainable consumption of natural resources into a symbol of environmental reckoning that encompasses both ecological destruction and possibilities for sustainable transformation. Through Tola’s plant-eating and her alliance with human survivors, it offers hope within horror, a vision of coexistence. This concept moves the genre toward conservation and suggests promising possibilities for horror cinema that addresses Anthropocene anxieties.

23The movie’s strength as a cultural product lies in this balance between the local and the universal. Its critique of profit-driven environmental harm resonates far beyond Poland’s context, speaking to global patterns of ecological negligence. At the same time, its portrayal of technologically isolated youth captures generational anxieties that cross national boundaries, while remaining rooted in Polish social realities. Future research might explore how other national cinemas adapt zombie conventions to address local environmental concerns, examine audience reception of genre elements like the vegan zombie across different cultural contexts, or investigate how streaming platforms influence the global circulation and local adaptation of horror narratives.

24The zombie remains an appealing figure because of its “semiotic fecundity—its ability to bear a variety of cultural concerns, from environmental anxieties to political critiques” (Lauro, “Introduction”). In light of global youth climate movements beginning in 2018, it is unsurprising that Żuławski placed environmental crisis at the center of It Came from the Water, alongside related concerns such as isolation and reliance on digital technology. Also, given that zombies can be understood as monsters reflecting humanity’s own monstrosity, rooted in our unsustainable relationship with the natural world, it is only fitting to employ them in narratives that foreground ecological imbalance. Żuławski’s use of the zombie also reflects a strategic engagement with a figure that resonates with younger audiences, who are more familiar with and more receptive to contemporary zombie narratives than older viewers. Ultimately, the movie positions humans as the real monsters, yet it also preserves a measure of hope: survival remains possible if we adopt sustainable practices, and the cure is simple, at least until the next apocalypse.

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Notes

1 In recent years, however, environmental issues have received much greater attention, with major pollution events such as the Warta and Oder poisonings in 2015 and 2022 receiving extensive media coverage.

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References

Electronic reference

Emma Oki, It Came from the Water: The Rise of the Polish Vegan ZombieEuropean journal of American studies [Online], 20-3 | 2025, Online since 01 December 2025, connection on 24 January 2026. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ejas/25019; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/15dmh

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About the author

Emma Oki

Emma Oki earned her PhD in Cultural Studies from SWPS University, where she is an assistant professor in the Department of English Studies. Her research focuses on Asian American graphic literature, with particular attention to themes of belonging, identity, and memory, as well as the cultural work of humor in Asian American comics. In addition to comics studies, she is also interested in climate fiction, especially the representation of minority characters in contemporary eco-narratives.

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