I should have realized that once I started playing Left 4 Dead that it was a foregone conclusion that I would select my zombie script to write for Script Frenzy. I debated my ninja script, my panda script and my horror-noir script (and for a moment I even debated my "illegal cross-country road race" script). But, in the end, the fact that I already had a lot of idea on post-its covering one side of my bookcase (and the fact L4D is so intense) caused it to win out. Quite frankly I was beginning to wonder if I would ever write it.
Now comes the fundamental question all modern zombie writers have to answer: Fast or slow zombies?
My initial inclination is to make them slow - in my mind it just makes sense. These people are dead. There muscles and brains are no longer receiving nutrients. The inflection is what is keeping them alive. But, on that same note, there's no rule saying that the infection couldn't be supercharging everything. And, fast zombies are in many ways scarier than slow zombies.
What I am debating doing is making most of them slow and just a handful fast. The problem is how do I explain it? I mean my protagonists are college kids, not biomedical engineers, so any explanation must be readily apparent to them. Do I even have to explain it? The problem is that I don't want my screenplay to come off like a video game, where you have a lot grunts to kill and then bosses.
Let me know if you have any ideas.
I think a lot of new "zombie" movies have gotten away from that by not featuring traditional zombies. The best example of this is 28 Days Later, and now the Crazies. They're both zombie-esque films, though not 100% undead.
ReplyDeleteIn the dawn of the dead remake, they wanted to have "fresher"zombies run faster, and as they decayed, they'd be slower. It became a logistical problem.
I'm in the camp that they should be slow, it just makes sense, physiologically. However, zombies on whole don't make sense, so it doesn't really matter. But it's that slow consistency that's always looming. You can run for miles, out run them and stop when you're tired, but if you don't keep moving, they're going to catch up with you eventually.
Tthe running vs. shambling argument just becomes a matter of taste and what will help you tell your story better. The story is about the people trying to survive and how they cope with an undead rising.