That Ohio protest photo looked like a zombie movie. Zombie movie directors think so, too.

That Ohio protest photo looked like a zombie movie. Zombie movie directors think so, too.

By Maura Judkis
April 17, 2020 at 11:18 a.m. EDT

The insatiable flesh-hunger of zombies wasn’t exactly on photographer Joshua A. Bickel’s mind when he was covering an anti-social-distancing protest at the statehouse in Columbus, Ohio, on Monday. But it was all that was on the, well, braaaaaains of people who saw Bickel’s work on social media, where the photo went viral for its parallels to classic zombie films.

The Columbus Dispatch photographer’s image is frightening and compelling. Approximately 100 protesters who were urging Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine to end the state’s stay-at-home order and reopen businesses pressed up against the glass doors to the statehouse, chanting and banging windows.

One wears a Guy Fawkes mask. Two men wear Trump-branded baseball caps. Two women, the closest to the windows, shape their mouths into the same elongated howl as Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” American flags obscure some of the protesters in the back.

“I thought this was a screencap from a zombie movie,” tweeted one woman.

“Some strong ‘Shaun of the Dead’ energy in this photo from the protests in Ohio,” tweeted another man.

It looked awfully familiar to Michael Satrazemis, the director of photography for “The Walking Dead” and director of “Fear the Walking Dead,” two shows that seem a little scarier these days, since they’re about a zombie apocalypse that begins with an uncontrollable pathogen.

-snip-