What makes a good 'zombie' story.
Someone asked me this awhile back when I was rambling on my zombie enjoyment. And I was talking about how a movie doesn't have to have zombies to be a 'zombie' movie.
So what makes THAT type of movie/story.
Here's my thoughts.
Someone asked me this awhile back when I was rambling on my zombie enjoyment. And I was talking about how a movie doesn't have to have zombies to be a 'zombie' movie.
So what makes THAT type of movie/story.
Here's my thoughts.
Comments
Shaun of the Dead is silly and meandering because it's suburban England, Last of Us is isolated and paranoid because it's rural poor USA.
Children of Men fits your 'no zombies zombie film'
Often the actual zombies in movies that DO have them are intended to be heavy handed metaphors anyways
Zombies in a mall? Just use a regular everyday mall full of shoppers, that was the original intent anyways. It’s often better when the metaphor is subtler anyway
World War Z the movie did an okay job of this..
TV shows should cover the apocalypse survival aspect..
It is of interest to the audience because of course. And to the characters in the story.
But it doesn't matter. At all. Oh sure it can matter to the moralization that the story is pushing. Uncaring universe space rock. Humans being shitty and evil environmentally
It matters for THAT but not for the zombie story aspect. Whether it's plausible or not, whether it's fully known or not...
doesn't matter.
What MATTERS is the sudden collapse of society, and the stark attempt to survive that sudden crisis
All aspects of that, that's the story. How everything changes and who people are in this new dynamic. What matters in this shift. Who people are when hungry, scared, desperate.
That's the meat of these tales.
Zombie stories should inherently be hopeless. Not that the characters don't have hope. They do.
It drives them towards the goals, usually trying to reach the place of safety.
But a good zombie zombie tale, doesn't have the happy ending.
And that's alright then!
No, it's okay. And more realistic. And again my faaaavorite probably.
But it's not ZOMBIE ZOMBIE.
It has them hit the amusement park to get swarmed.
It has a man survive only to be gunned down by the cops because he's a Black man.
The new balance between id, ego, & superego (outdated categories as they are for psych - still good for story).
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0365748/
But ultimately it's about us, the fragility of the society we've built & the resilience of what that society is built upon.
for god’s sake, someone please make a zombie siege movie that’s basically Home Alone. it’s right there for the taking
They're purely expositional or play secondary or even tertiary roles behind the very human storytelling of how people deal with loss, grief, trauma, etc.
ie:
The Last of Us.
Which I think is what you just said, only better.
1) zombie outbreak
2) some people (finding each other and) trying to reach place X (for various reasons)
3) some do not make it due attacks from zombies/other people
4) at the end all are dead OR back to 2)
Shaun of the Dead
Fido
One Cut of the Dead
(but World War Z would according to my previous statement also fit 😉)
I’d like to say it needs gore, splatter and tons of blood.
All the other stuff is just a vehicle for more fleshgrind
If we had a story from the borg perspective closer to the beginning, it could actually be zombie zombie.
Sure they found obvious ways to deal... but there was no escaping it, not really.
the reason is because figuring out how society would devolve from a day 1 zombie virus is very hard to write bc it’s often ridiculous. the military is already trained to kill smart, armored targets; killing a bunch of mindless flesh puppets would be too easy
These dudes!
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2521668/
Complete with the bleakness of the ending.