Zombies on my Mind, eh?
Oct. 28th, 2007 12:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6So, as mentioned last entry, watched Dawn of the Dead last night. Actually I watched a bit of the original Night of the Living Dead yesterday too, but was doing other things so didn't pay attention.
Anyway, as they occasionally do, my thoughts turned to zombies. In particular, Dawn of the Dead got me thinking about Shaun of the Dead (because of their similar sounding names), which is a british Zombie Movie, not just because it's set there but because it feels that it has sort of a completely different spirit to the American zombie films. The next logical (if that word can be used to describe my thought process) step to the thought, especially considering that Dawn was filmed in Canada, would be "What would a Canadian Zombie Film Be?"
So, just for some random, idle, Sunday fun, let's start to plot out the Great Canadian Zombie Film, tenatively titled "Eh? of the Dead!"
I think the first thing is that it has to be set in winter.
I can't, off hand, think of any zombie tales set in winter. I'm sure there are some, but I can't think of any. What does winter mean for zombies? Well, longtime readers might remember I did a Writer's Workshop project called Hibernation Cycle, in which a lovecraftian horror has decimated the world, but the few survivors believe that the dead of winter might have put it to sleep, giving them a chance to go out and get supplies and kill it.
When I was originally plotting out that story, I was considering the apocalypse to be from zombies, rather than a multidimensional tentaclebeast. That is, that in the coldest, deadest winter, zombies _freeze_.
I think that would form one of the core parts of the movie. It doesn't happen at all cold temperatures, but the cold slows zombies down, and if it gets cold enough, they are incapacitated. Now, winter in Canada can fluctuate quite a bit from really cold, to only mildly cold. So when the zombies start to rise, it's mildly cold, but at parts in the movie, it gets down to HOLY FRICKIN COLD, and the zombies freeze, giving the survivors the opportunity to go out among them and try to clear the decks a little. Of course, it leads to a bit of a false sense of security, because a) the freezing isn't permanent, and as soon as they warm up again they start moving, and b) it only affects zombies who are outdoors. Break into a store to get supplies, and you'll find unfrozen zombies that happened to be there.
Now, zombie hibernation would seem like a perfect time to escape, but of course, that's not so easy when you're in a big city and, along with the cold comes snow. At least, in this plot, it does. The irony is that when the zombies are out, it'd be easy enough to get around, but when the big snowstorm and ultracold temperatures come in, they can go out, but they can no longer escape the city.
Besides their hibernation, what else about zombies do we need to tweak to make this a Canadian film? Should they be runners? Shamblers? What do they 'represent', in symbolic terms? Well, we could go with the whole "Zombies represent the overbearing threat on Canadian culture by outside forces (particularly America) who threaten to overwhelm and assimilate it, which should be defended despite the fact that we're not entirely sure what our culture is" idea. In which case, Zombies should definitely be slow - always out there, but you can persuade yourself that you could live with them or get by them, rather than the monsters that come running at you full speed.
Maybe the zombies would also consume resources... instead of just eating human flesh, when that's not available, they'd eat other food too. So there's the looming, distant threat of the zombies consuming the resources the humans need to survive. (This also might work to the whole cultural theme, at least at first, - the humans, like the zombies, live a somewhat pointless existence, consuming resources and not really making plans, so what really sets them apart?)
Now the cast. Since Canada's ideally about diversity, I think obviously we should go with a multicultural cast. It might be a little silly, but we could possibly take this to the absurd degree with the survivors managing to tame one of the zombies. Might be hard to play seriously, unless you're going completely for laughs (in which case, he'd be tamed with beer, which turns out to make zombies relatively complacent and reduces their flesh eating urge for a time - then one of the elements of horror becomes running out of beer).
One of the cast members has to be a hockey player, with a stick being used as a weapon, and perhaps ice skating being used to get around while zombies are slow but not stopped. (There should also be a curling moment)
I think like Dawn of the Dead, they'd need to be somewhere that they've got a certain level of security and safety, but it's a false safety, not only because they can't hold out there forever, but because zombies can get in without everybody being careful. Also, although they band together in the immediate disaster, as time goes on they have differing ideas on what to do, and perhaps even eventually split up to pursue their own goals. Not sure where though, because a mall's been done, and other places might not have enough resources. Of course, the whole zombie-deep freeze thing may make it easier to do supply runs and so the home base wouldn't necessarily need to have a whole lot of its own... just a TimmyHo outlet. I'd almost consider a hospital, just to play against type... one would think ground zero for a zombie invasion would be a hospital. But it might be a bit _too_ unbelievable that they didn't overrun it. Unless of course the early zombie infections couldn't get in due to long wait times. ;)
(Canadians on my flist encouraged to participate and contribute their own ideas, or really anybody who wants to)
Anyway, as they occasionally do, my thoughts turned to zombies. In particular, Dawn of the Dead got me thinking about Shaun of the Dead (because of their similar sounding names), which is a british Zombie Movie, not just because it's set there but because it feels that it has sort of a completely different spirit to the American zombie films. The next logical (if that word can be used to describe my thought process) step to the thought, especially considering that Dawn was filmed in Canada, would be "What would a Canadian Zombie Film Be?"
So, just for some random, idle, Sunday fun, let's start to plot out the Great Canadian Zombie Film, tenatively titled "Eh? of the Dead!"
I think the first thing is that it has to be set in winter.
I can't, off hand, think of any zombie tales set in winter. I'm sure there are some, but I can't think of any. What does winter mean for zombies? Well, longtime readers might remember I did a Writer's Workshop project called Hibernation Cycle, in which a lovecraftian horror has decimated the world, but the few survivors believe that the dead of winter might have put it to sleep, giving them a chance to go out and get supplies and kill it.
When I was originally plotting out that story, I was considering the apocalypse to be from zombies, rather than a multidimensional tentaclebeast. That is, that in the coldest, deadest winter, zombies _freeze_.
I think that would form one of the core parts of the movie. It doesn't happen at all cold temperatures, but the cold slows zombies down, and if it gets cold enough, they are incapacitated. Now, winter in Canada can fluctuate quite a bit from really cold, to only mildly cold. So when the zombies start to rise, it's mildly cold, but at parts in the movie, it gets down to HOLY FRICKIN COLD, and the zombies freeze, giving the survivors the opportunity to go out among them and try to clear the decks a little. Of course, it leads to a bit of a false sense of security, because a) the freezing isn't permanent, and as soon as they warm up again they start moving, and b) it only affects zombies who are outdoors. Break into a store to get supplies, and you'll find unfrozen zombies that happened to be there.
Now, zombie hibernation would seem like a perfect time to escape, but of course, that's not so easy when you're in a big city and, along with the cold comes snow. At least, in this plot, it does. The irony is that when the zombies are out, it'd be easy enough to get around, but when the big snowstorm and ultracold temperatures come in, they can go out, but they can no longer escape the city.
Besides their hibernation, what else about zombies do we need to tweak to make this a Canadian film? Should they be runners? Shamblers? What do they 'represent', in symbolic terms? Well, we could go with the whole "Zombies represent the overbearing threat on Canadian culture by outside forces (particularly America) who threaten to overwhelm and assimilate it, which should be defended despite the fact that we're not entirely sure what our culture is" idea. In which case, Zombies should definitely be slow - always out there, but you can persuade yourself that you could live with them or get by them, rather than the monsters that come running at you full speed.
Maybe the zombies would also consume resources... instead of just eating human flesh, when that's not available, they'd eat other food too. So there's the looming, distant threat of the zombies consuming the resources the humans need to survive. (This also might work to the whole cultural theme, at least at first, - the humans, like the zombies, live a somewhat pointless existence, consuming resources and not really making plans, so what really sets them apart?)
Now the cast. Since Canada's ideally about diversity, I think obviously we should go with a multicultural cast. It might be a little silly, but we could possibly take this to the absurd degree with the survivors managing to tame one of the zombies. Might be hard to play seriously, unless you're going completely for laughs (in which case, he'd be tamed with beer, which turns out to make zombies relatively complacent and reduces their flesh eating urge for a time - then one of the elements of horror becomes running out of beer).
One of the cast members has to be a hockey player, with a stick being used as a weapon, and perhaps ice skating being used to get around while zombies are slow but not stopped. (There should also be a curling moment)
I think like Dawn of the Dead, they'd need to be somewhere that they've got a certain level of security and safety, but it's a false safety, not only because they can't hold out there forever, but because zombies can get in without everybody being careful. Also, although they band together in the immediate disaster, as time goes on they have differing ideas on what to do, and perhaps even eventually split up to pursue their own goals. Not sure where though, because a mall's been done, and other places might not have enough resources. Of course, the whole zombie-deep freeze thing may make it easier to do supply runs and so the home base wouldn't necessarily need to have a whole lot of its own... just a TimmyHo outlet. I'd almost consider a hospital, just to play against type... one would think ground zero for a zombie invasion would be a hospital. But it might be a bit _too_ unbelievable that they didn't overrun it. Unless of course the early zombie infections couldn't get in due to long wait times. ;)
(Canadians on my flist encouraged to participate and contribute their own ideas, or really anybody who wants to)
