You have to make a zombie movie with a twist
- Thread starter nuba km
- Start date
Recommended Videos
my plot line would start like any other zombie movie... there would be survivors holed up in some building somewhere, trying to hold off the zombie horde... as the final person is about to be devoured, the zombies would stop and say "dude. we never wanted to hurt you. we just wanted a hug."
My zombies would have impeccable manners and would ask survivors' permission before biting them.
The Zombies are all coming through a busted Time Machine from all different time periods.
Cowboy zombies, legionnare zombies, caveman zombies, futuristic lazer tpe zombies, 16th century english zombies.
They are all led by the Marty McFly zombie.
Cowboy zombies, legionnare zombies, caveman zombies, futuristic lazer tpe zombies, 16th century english zombies.
They are all led by the Marty McFly zombie.
Members of the cast are not decided by nor get killed off due to silly tropes, forced plot points or moral cookies enforced by the scriptwriter/director/producer. They survive just as well as normal people making pretty smart decisions are expected to, which is pretty much all the time. They are not limited to as many faces as you can recognize easily on a movie poster, so there can potentially be a hundred people eventually travelling together. Since normal people are familiar with the concept of zombies, people of the cast do not defer from calling infected people zombies.
No one in the production team may be crazy about zombies.
The zombies do not have more energy in them than when they died. They are not out to eat brains. Their weakest point is thus bacteria, decomposition, time and energy - so eventually they die out after a month or so. They do not necessarily attack living things on sight - instead different zombies have snapped to different routines and points in their psyche (depending on which brain functions deteriorate first). Some try to fruitfully open doors that are not there, some go around as if out shopping on a parking lot, some act as if in religious extacy, and some do try to attack you in believing you hit on their make-believe girlfriend. They are simply rotting, dying and disease-spreading people who are locked between various states of phsycological routines, fantasies and illnesses.
It is not impossible for someone to resist the contagion. The "zombie"-disease is not necessarily limited to humans.
The theme of the movie would rather be an exploration as to what extent the modern human is dependent on society, how the change stirs a wide range of emotions, how the cast makes choices on what parts of society to preserve (when we get to the library, which books are important to bring?) and how they eventually move on to build a new one - than an action/horror flick.
The film's production has little or no connection to hollywood.
No one in the production team may be crazy about zombies.
The zombies do not have more energy in them than when they died. They are not out to eat brains. Their weakest point is thus bacteria, decomposition, time and energy - so eventually they die out after a month or so. They do not necessarily attack living things on sight - instead different zombies have snapped to different routines and points in their psyche (depending on which brain functions deteriorate first). Some try to fruitfully open doors that are not there, some go around as if out shopping on a parking lot, some act as if in religious extacy, and some do try to attack you in believing you hit on their make-believe girlfriend. They are simply rotting, dying and disease-spreading people who are locked between various states of phsycological routines, fantasies and illnesses.
It is not impossible for someone to resist the contagion. The "zombie"-disease is not necessarily limited to humans.
The theme of the movie would rather be an exploration as to what extent the modern human is dependent on society, how the change stirs a wide range of emotions, how the cast makes choices on what parts of society to preserve (when we get to the library, which books are important to bring?) and how they eventually move on to build a new one - than an action/horror flick.
The film's production has little or no connection to hollywood.
the coming zombie apocalypses is can be defeted by a wishy washy mage who when he dies his body becomes a zombie and he can't use magic, he can fix himself after a week or so. Or do the whole Medievil bit a complete ditz of a Knight is revied with a bunch of zombies and he takes up the fight against them.
Well, a lot of the twists have already been done to death. This includes the entire "zombies are the good guys" thing since a lot of zombie movies are criticisms on society to begin with, with the protaganists being punished for their flaws, or society being punished due to rampant consumerism or whatever. There have also been a ton of movies addressing the issue of "zombie ethics". I think the problem is that a lot of genere fans aren't really genere fans and haven't seen all that many Zombie movies overall.
As far as a truely original twist goes, that's difficult due to the amount of focus the genere has gotten. Even things like Steven King's "Cell" have had equivilents already, the idea of brainwashing signals through TV, phones, or whatever else is not exactly new, nor is the entire hive mind/village of the damned thing.
Honestly, if I was going to do a zombie movie I'd probably take a "back to the basics" approach with it, and while it wouldn't be original, it would be a lot differant than most of what is currently out there. That is to say I'd give the Zombies a supernatural origin, and probably remove any kind of "easy out" possibility like head shots, by making it so there is no real way to stop one other than what amounts to total destruction or full body dismemberment and finding some way to contain the parts. Neither idea is unique, but it would have a somewhat differant vibe than the currenet "virus/headshot" trope that is through the entire industry right now.
I'd probably base the origins of this off of something like the stories about Michael Jackson to be honest. The guy apparently bathed in blood and had 42 cows sacrificed to try and curse some people. It sounds crazy until you consider that there were a lot of fairly reliable reporters and news organizations standing behind the truth of the events:
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,428698,00.html
http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/Music/03/04/leisure.jackson.reut/index.html
It's this kind of thing that has me disturbed that he has such a fan base again after his death.
But then again with the stuff they were pulling out of/finding in his mansion during the child molestation investigations (before he settled, more or less admitting guilt) I've kind of thought Michael Jackson would make a good inspiration for horror novels, because honestly the guy's lifestyle would probably make "Neverland Ranch" the equivilent of Richard Matheson's "Hell House" or Edward Lee's "Flesh Gothic" now that he's gone.
At any rate, on the subject of Zombies, given Michael's involvement in popularizing them with "Thriller" I think it would be amusingly ironic if his occult obsessions wound up leading to some kind of supernatural zombie armageddon after his death due to things he set in motion. Of course for a movie you probably wouldn't actually use him, but an analogy would probably work, especially when people realized how close to reality it was.
Michael sort of reminded me of a modern Gilles De Rais honestly, except no bodies were ever uncovered.
As far as a truely original twist goes, that's difficult due to the amount of focus the genere has gotten. Even things like Steven King's "Cell" have had equivilents already, the idea of brainwashing signals through TV, phones, or whatever else is not exactly new, nor is the entire hive mind/village of the damned thing.
Honestly, if I was going to do a zombie movie I'd probably take a "back to the basics" approach with it, and while it wouldn't be original, it would be a lot differant than most of what is currently out there. That is to say I'd give the Zombies a supernatural origin, and probably remove any kind of "easy out" possibility like head shots, by making it so there is no real way to stop one other than what amounts to total destruction or full body dismemberment and finding some way to contain the parts. Neither idea is unique, but it would have a somewhat differant vibe than the currenet "virus/headshot" trope that is through the entire industry right now.
I'd probably base the origins of this off of something like the stories about Michael Jackson to be honest. The guy apparently bathed in blood and had 42 cows sacrificed to try and curse some people. It sounds crazy until you consider that there were a lot of fairly reliable reporters and news organizations standing behind the truth of the events:
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,428698,00.html
http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/Music/03/04/leisure.jackson.reut/index.html
It's this kind of thing that has me disturbed that he has such a fan base again after his death.
But then again with the stuff they were pulling out of/finding in his mansion during the child molestation investigations (before he settled, more or less admitting guilt) I've kind of thought Michael Jackson would make a good inspiration for horror novels, because honestly the guy's lifestyle would probably make "Neverland Ranch" the equivilent of Richard Matheson's "Hell House" or Edward Lee's "Flesh Gothic" now that he's gone.
At any rate, on the subject of Zombies, given Michael's involvement in popularizing them with "Thriller" I think it would be amusingly ironic if his occult obsessions wound up leading to some kind of supernatural zombie armageddon after his death due to things he set in motion. Of course for a movie you probably wouldn't actually use him, but an analogy would probably work, especially when people realized how close to reality it was.
Michael sort of reminded me of a modern Gilles De Rais honestly, except no bodies were ever uncovered.
It's really just a VERY bad case of the flu, and people get better after a couple of weeks, so long as they're kept isolated and/or restrained so they don't start eating each other/everyone else.
This can be played with in at least a couple of ways for massive psych horror funs
1. this is only discovered after great waves of "zombies" have been slaughtered by the "good guys" who then have to deal with committing all that unneccessary murder, including their families and friends etc. Even though it wasn't really their fault.
(To make it worse - the zombies aren't actually even all that dangerous, being more shambling Shaun-of-the-Dead types that are easily avoided and don't really spread the infection that quick... but the protagonists have seen far too many horror films and freak out about it, and world+wife follow suit)
1a - the infection spreads by airborne means anyway, as per most colds and the like
2. This fact is discovered by a group of zombies who recover and piece together what's happened after the ensuing apocalypse, where they have actually slaughtered a large proportion of the human population.
I'm wondering whether I maybe should have kept those to myself, but that's possibly the best spark of creativity I've had in months if not years, and haven't the talent to write a novel/screenplay/whatever to go with. Take it and run with it.
EDIT:
:scrolls up to see what other people have written:
Well, crap. Maybe it wasn't that great a spark after all. Sorry Kayzan et al
This can be played with in at least a couple of ways for massive psych horror funs
1. this is only discovered after great waves of "zombies" have been slaughtered by the "good guys" who then have to deal with committing all that unneccessary murder, including their families and friends etc. Even though it wasn't really their fault.
(To make it worse - the zombies aren't actually even all that dangerous, being more shambling Shaun-of-the-Dead types that are easily avoided and don't really spread the infection that quick... but the protagonists have seen far too many horror films and freak out about it, and world+wife follow suit)
1a - the infection spreads by airborne means anyway, as per most colds and the like
2. This fact is discovered by a group of zombies who recover and piece together what's happened after the ensuing apocalypse, where they have actually slaughtered a large proportion of the human population.
I'm wondering whether I maybe should have kept those to myself, but that's possibly the best spark of creativity I've had in months if not years, and haven't the talent to write a novel/screenplay/whatever to go with. Take it and run with it.
EDIT:
:scrolls up to see what other people have written:
Well, crap. Maybe it wasn't that great a spark after all. Sorry Kayzan et al
Zombie apocalypse set in the past e.g. Middle Ages Europe, the Roman Empire, the Renaisance, Japan in a time period when they still had samurais and ninjas. Solves the problem of a modern military quite well.
Zombie apocalypse through the perspective of a young child, so we don't see most of the adult conversation but we know something is happening.
Heroes cornered by zombies until...they break out in a Broadway-style musical number OR Michael Jackson's 'Thriller', inlcuding all the dance moves.
Zombie apocalypse through the perspective of a young child, so we don't see most of the adult conversation but we know something is happening.
Heroes cornered by zombies until...they break out in a Broadway-style musical number OR Michael Jackson's 'Thriller', inlcuding all the dance moves.
The virus only affects one demographic (gender, age group, race, etc).
Alternately, the virus everything BUT one demographic.
Alternately, the virus everything BUT one demographic.
How about a typical zombie movie except the only cure for the infection is a human bite.Merkavar said:
baddude1337 said:
Mine exists somewhere between these two. With an added twist which appears that no one else has thought of.Nalesnik said:
My Zombies are the original voodoo types. They don't shamble, decompose, try to eat you, or even spread a virus. However, they do not have original thought, feel no pain, and they follow the orders of their sequestrationinst without question. They may have superhuman strength though.
The story is set in the nearish future, with a similar style of society; however with a much higher population. The prisons are overflowing, violent crime is on the rise, and due to a public international referendum, Capital Punishment has been outlawed in the International Court of Human Rights, set up by the UN.
However, a maverick anthropologist working in Haiti with one of the last 'witchdoctors' discovers a scientific basis behind the voodoo curse of Zombiefication. He (or she) takes this finding to an Anthropology Conference, and it is suggested that it might take up the burden of prisoners who are now permanently on (or off, depending on your view-point) death-row.
A trial run is set up, amid human rights protesting the ethics of the study, and it is found to be a huge success. The Zombies maintain intelligence, but no creativity, and can function almost as humans (they aren't robotic as the protesters imagined them to be.) The process just seems to pacify them so that they can be allowed to work in the real society. Their memories are intact, but not their personalities, so to speak.
The zombies are given work in menial tasks, and are far cheaper and mobile than even relatively sophisticated AI. Their devotion to their 'purpose' (Master's command) as the zombies themselves put it, plus their inability to feel pain and their strength, ironically makes them ideal policemen.
So the movie is setting itself up to be an examination on what it means to be human, and the rights of humans. As it stands, I think it could be an interesting movie.
However, we can add an interesting twist at the end of Act 2. The zombification is not permanent. After while, say a year or so, the zombies start to return to being human, or at least, thinking like one. But remember, they were all death-row inmates, who are now outside, and are regaining their minds. The zombification could even be increasing their aggression. Lets say that they keep their analgesia and their strength, making them now formidable foes. Although never issued firearms, they have the intelligence and strength to use whatever is available to exact their revenge on the society that trapped their minds.
TL;DR: Voodoo Zombies are used to alleviate an overcrowded prison system, which eventually backfires, starting deadly urban warfare between ordinary people and crazed, superhuman psychopaths.
Ah ha! It's from one of The Simpsons halloween episodes, the Harry Potter one is'nt it? If so hypothetical cookie if you please good sir/madam. =)knight of some random number said: