Why Does It Have to be Zombies?

I must confess that I didn't get vampires and now I am having the same problem with zombies. Everything is about zombies these days - movies, tv shows, even ads. Why? What is it about the walking dead that apparently so intrigues a sizable portion of our population? 


Certainly a lot of people just like a good scare and since zombies are the monster du jour, then zombies it is. 


I wonder, though, if a certain number of people are sensing their own inner condition from these movies and are at once fascinated and repulsed by what they see. Without Christ, we are indeed the walking dead. Physically we are are alive, but inside we are deader than a doornail and go through live "eating" other people without much thought to what this is doing to others - it's all about us.


C.S. Lewis provides some support for this view when he said that he was sure that in this life we meet no "ordinary" people. He stated  that:


"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare."  The Weight of Glory


Are people transfixed by zombies because they are somehow recognizing their inner nightmare - that they really are what they are seeing on the screen? Perhaps I am reading too much into the zombie craze and it is all just in fun. Perhaps, but I don't get the joke.