The zombie shifted from corpse to controlled living body without free will

Evidence

However, as more zombie films were produced, the notion of what a zombie “is” changed dramatically. By the mid-1970s, the zombie had transformed into a creature that could be un-dead, but was, importantly, characterized by his or her behavior—creatures controlled by a master with no “capability to think or act for themselves.” One subgenre that deserves attention here is films featuring body snatchers—living humans who are infected or brainwashed, taken over by an outside force that makes them killers. These movies focus on “the depiction of our paranoia and the fear of other bodies,” and in the post-9/11 milieu, these other bodies are Muslim. The 2007 film The Invasion was marketed as a remake of the original The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978). It clearly falls under the subgenre of the “post-9/11 zombie invasion film,” featuring a host of external threats including “infectious disease, biological warfare, euthanasia, terrorism.” — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 718

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the modern post-9/11 zombie as a living person stripped of autonomy by an outside force — precisely the analytical category the reader needs for the Muslim-as-neo-dead figure.
• QUESTION: The transition from undead corpse to brainwashed living ‘body snatcher’ is the key conceptual hinge — worth tracing exactly how the Muslim terror suspect maps onto the master-controlled zombie as distinct from the Haitian corpse-zombie.