Hey there. My friends and I started developing this idea for a zombie flick that isn't actually about zombies.
See, there's this disease that mutates and destroys blood cells on the way to the brain. Within 23 seconds (that's how long it takes for blood to circulate through the body, right?), the disease reaches its destination. Once it's there, it takes up to 48 hours to over the entire brain, and once THAT happens, the victim isn't there anymore at all - he's just a body that the disease uses to spread itself further. The whites of his eyes get all bloody looking and blood-oozing sores start popping up all over.
During the two-ish days before the host completely loses it, he loses his appetite completely and beyond that, he starts acting kinda funny. The great thing here is that other than the lose of appetite, a victim will react differently depending on which part of the brain becomes infected first. The longer the disease is in a part of the brain, the more severe the case gets, and as it spreads, the victim loses even more of his grip, but there aren't any definite signs that someone's infected until as much as two days later.
Anyway, once they totally lose control, they revert to a pretty primal state, and they think (actually, I guess they don't think at all. More like the disease "thinks" about) nothing but spreading the infection and tearing shit up. What I mean by "a pretty primal state" is that if an infected guy see someone who isn't infected (not sure about how they can tell if someone's infected or not yet... but who says everything needs to be explained?), he'll charge at them and bite, punch, claw and kick until they're dead or they get away.
In this story we're working on, there are a few characters (low budget horror flick gurus, to be precise) who are excited about the epidemic, convinced that it's a zombie problem, and that they know exactly what to do to survive, which will actually end up getting the characters very far. Unfortunately, zombism spreads through getting bitten, right? Here's the thing about the disease: ANY contact with infected blood, whether internal or external, will spread the disease. If you get tainted blood on you, it seeps into the skin, gets in the bloodstream and it's all over.
Oh, right, a few more things:
An infected will only last about a week - what with no food or water - but obviously, nobody's going to know that.
An infected doesn't get any special powers or increased strength or anything - you can kill them any way you can kill a human. They don't feel pain (or just ignore it), which may make it seem like they're super strong, but they aren't.
This will be a funny move. I?m not talking straight-up comedy here, but? Not as serious as 28 Days Later, but not as funny as Shaun of the Dead. You dig?
Oh, and the characters may never learn much about how the disease works. Eventually, they'll figure out that it spreads through any contact with blood, but not necessarily any of the specifics I?ve outlined here.
So, as far as the disease goes and how people react to it, how?s it sound? Is there anything that just doesn't work? Suggestions? Ideas? Questions? I?d like to get a bunch of questions, ?cause then? well, I?ll be forced to come up with answers, yeah? So what do you think?
Just plain Nirmongle, no frills...
To me it sounds kind of like a prequel to '28 Days Later' :). I kind of like the 'zombie-movie nerd' angle though.
One thing I would say is that according to one horror festival director on the web 'everyone is making zombie movies right now' and apparently they're turning down roughly 98% of them. Not a problem if you're just making it for fun, but it may be a problem if you want to get it seen later.
Heh heh. Yeah, I heard that one already in another forum. Someone asked, "How's it different to 28 days later?"
Here's what my response was:
Well first off, the story isn't about the disease taking over the world. It's about the characters' psychological development during extreme times. The whole disease epidemic is more setting material than plot. It's not going to be a horror movie. Hell, it probably won't even be scary. The story's more along the lines of "What happens to these people when the world falls apart around them?" than it is "Zombies! Shoot them! Blood and gore!"
Second, one of the huge differences is the ease with which the infection spreads. Another big one is that someone who's infected is going to descend into madness for a while before they actually snap, and lots of the fun will be realizing along with the characters that even the seemingly normal people (i.e. your friends who are helping you fight off the monsters) could very well be your biggest threat. Oh, the paranoia.
And third, what does it matter? It's not like this thing's gonna make it big. It's not even gonna make it medium. Comparatively speaking, I doubt if it even makes it small. I'm just trying to get something made. And I'm not trying to shake up the world of outbreak-ish movies with something completely original. How many movies out there are about zombies? A freakin' lot.
I was writing a script that all my friends really got into, but it started going in a direction I didn't like, so I stopped working on it. Then I actually finished a script - 96 pages, I think - that was one of those day-in-the-life, full of witty dialogue, "don't need much cash to make" movies. But when we came up with the idea for this one, we decided it'd be a hell of a lot more fun to make. And isn't that what it's all about?
So you see, I'm not asking for thoughts on the movie, really. I just want to figure out this disease and how it functions, and see if it works.
But thanks for not being a jerk like SOME people have been: "Sorry, I got as far as 'zombie flick'." ?:(?
Just plain Nirmongle, no frills...
