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An amateur boxer; A professional soldier turned indestructible zombie; A fast-driving heister; A combat pilot on another world; A taco truck driver with a heart of gold; A Smurf; Michelle Rodriguez, American actress, has played them all. As Leticia ‘Letty’ Ortiz, Rodriguez' most famous role offers both a sensitive portrayal of a tenacious woman living out a tough existence who exhibits as much courage, strength, moral standing and fibre as her male counterparts, whilst also revealing a softer, emotional side and one that focuses on family and ideals of accepting Motherhood. This is what makes Rodriguez such a fascinating contradiction. Whilst much praise is heaped on other actresses for their roles in action films, this chapter will offer, through both an overview of her action-hero career and in-depth look at Rodriguez's work in the Fast and Furious films, an insight into the importance of this actress to the growing canon of action hero(ine) characters and film stars.

Up until the turn of the millennium, there had been very little positive representation of women and women in action characters in the action film genre. Two notable exceptions were Ellen Ripley in the Alien movies and Sarah Connor in the Terminator franchise. Whilst this has certainly changed over the last 20 years, one action/horror/science fiction heroine remains neglected: Project Alice in the six Resident Evil films. Portrayed by Milla Jovovich, and loosely based on the platform game character, Project Alice is strong, driven, motivated and tough. This chapter will, through detailed analysis of character, her physical presence through the clothing she wears, psychogeographical aspects, her use of weapons and narrative arc, clearly demonstrate the importance of Project Alice to the horror genre.

The contemporary zombie genre is known for exploring what the end will look like, with its widespread infection, chaos and violence – all images that resonate in a post-9/11 America. These zombie narratives also speak to a present-day America with their emphasis on diminishing individuality and agency. Unlike early Haitian incarnations of the zombie figure, the modern zombie terrifies because no singular agent possesses the victim’s mind. In contrast, the light-hearted CW television show, iZombie (2015–) rethinks the zombie paradigm. Not only does it envision how zombies would manifest in everyday life, without the requisite apocalypse, but it also subverts the antiquated gender politics common to the genre by providing viewers with a female zombie protagonist, Olivia Moore (Rose McIver) who is not only highly functional, but also female and with plenty of agency. Moore, through whose eyes the show is told, absorbs personality traits and memories belonging to the brains she eats, from frat boy to alcoholic, stripper to housewife. This device creates such a cornucopia of roles for McIver to explore that it brings to mind the work of American photographer Cindy Sherman, providing a rare multi-dimensional woman on TV. iZombie also takes the contemporary zombie text’s reliance on the trop of infection one step further. This chapter not only examines iZombie’s unusual female point of view, but also its portrayal of ‘zombie-ness’ as a chronic contagious illness with many similarities to HIV.

Since Bram Stoker’s tale of Count Dracula struck a chord with a sensation-hungry public, vampires have remained a popular part of horror in cinema. Since the turn of the millennium, vampires have now become a mainstay of horror TV. Programmes like True Blood (2008–2014) and The Vampire Diaries (2009–2017) have propelled the vampire into the home.

This chapter will investigate the problematic, but often sympathetic relationship between vampires and humans in The Vampire Diaries.

Cultural perceptions of the zombie have shifted dramatically in the twenty-first century. No longer only associated with anxiety and fear, zombie fiction often appeals to pleasure. One source of pleasure comes from ludification, the process whereby game-like principals and gameful elements shape non-game activities. Increasingly, print fiction borrows from games and uses ludic elements to shape narratives. As such, it has become embedded in convergence culture, a dynamic media ecology where top down processes compete with bottom up processes. This chapter argues that ludified zombie fiction brings this media ecology into sharp relief, revealing ways that gamification and ludification are just as apt to reinforce capitalist processes of commodification and neo-liberal ideologies of power as they are to dismantle them. Through a close reading of three contemporary zombie fictions, this chapter exposes tensions and contradictions in ludification. The dead body of the zombie, the nihilistic landscape of the post-zombie apocalypse and the futility of human endeavour in the face of walking death are all elements of genre that undercut the gamified pursuit of external utility-oriented goals. The chapter explores these knotty ethical and ideological problems, not only considering the zombie apocalypse as a gameful space for rethinking social organisation, but also recognising it as a platform for the promotion of neo-liberal ideologies that perpetuate existing power inequalities through coercive disciplinary regimes.