Zombie Cliche Lookout: New Horrors
One of the biggest problems with monsters (not specifically zombies), at least from the perspective of the storyteller, is overexposure. The more you see a monster, the more used to it you become. It doesn’t matter how horrifying that monster is, eventually, it will just become part of life. People have an incredible capacity to adapt to damn near everything, from changes in their environment to horrifying undead monsters that feast on the living.
This is true in two ways. First, it’s definitely true when it comes to the audience of a story, be that a novel, a film, a comic, a game. Take your pick. The point is, we can’t be scared by the same thing over and over again. Michael Myers started off terrifying, and ended up being a joke. The same is true of Jason, and all his friends. The second way it’s true is for the people who are trying to survive in those stories. Take The Walking Dead, for instance. They keep having to bring on new communities to show just how deadly the zombies are, because Rick and company have become too adept at surviving.
So how do we keep things scary? By changing the script. Adding features. Introducing new monsters, or new features to existing monsters.
About this Episode:
I had fun with this one. I wanted to make the zombies make some sort of noise, but since they didn’t have lungs, and the vocal chords were likely very damaged, I tried to go for something that was kind of like grunting.
Discussion Question: Handling Comfort
What do you guys like to see writers do when a monster has been so well established that it’s just not as scary anymore?
Good to see you back from Thanksgiving, Dave! 😀 Ad for what I’d like to see a writer do, is to change things up a bit. Maybe the monster should be changing, too. Zombies could do this in ways I’ve elaborated on in past comments, to a certain extent, namely, just how far could a zombie change anyway? My answer to my question would be “to whatever new depths the writer wants to take the zombie”, as that is both realistic and it means the writer is at least interested in showing readers new and terrifying zombie behaviors.
Yeah, this discussion question definitely hews closely to a few of those we’ve had in the past. I just love stealing, even if it’s from myself.
By the way, Dave, don’t forget to check and fix the typos from Episode 657! 😀
Oh yeah, thanks for the reminder!
Viruses mutate. Wouldn’t it be terrifying if it began to spread to at least some other mammals? As silly as it sounds, I think zombie squirrels capable of spreading the disease to humans might be one of the worst (worse than dogs) but maybe on par with cats. How about zombie birds, still capable of flying?
Such a thing probably wouldn’t work for BotD, but might well work for TWD…
I read a book years ago where the zombie plague spread to birds. That was pretty much a checkmate move. People couldn’t go outside because the birds, which could still fly, would attack them immediately.
Alfred Hitchcock did it better. 😛
Hah, can’t argue with that.
I have always liked it when initial assumptions are proved wrong.
Everyone knows your supposed to set the rules early and stick with them. But there is nothing saying those rules were correctly interpreted by the characters. TWD did a minor on this when they realized everyone turned into a zed.
Many times this is done in sequels to change things up but long stories can do it to. Remember the rules but out in Scream 3 for a trilogy
Right you are; and I loved the way TWD handled it too. It wasn’t something new, it was just new to the characters. Their ignorance about how things work make these things novelties, when they’ve really been happening like that since the beginning.
The thing about this discussion question is that in the vast majority of zombie stories it’s actually the other surviving humans that are the real threat. The zombies end up being the environmental stress that makes human interaction difficult because of the strain on resources. Of course, zombies are always a threat in and of themselves, but since in most stories they turn out to be the lesser evil, I don’t think that the zombies becoming less scary is a serious issue for most zombie worlds.
You see new types of zombies in established storylines from time to time (I’m thinking of the Blasters in Z Nation, or the radiated zombies in Day By Day Armageddon – come to think of it, they’re pretty much the same thing) and that can shake things up. I suppose it depends on the aim of the writer.
“The zombies end up being the environmental stress that makes human interaction difficult because of the strain on resources”
Good lord is that a damn fine way of phrasing that. You hit the nail on the head.
Did anyone play Left 4 Dead or the sequel? I found those games to be most entertaining, and the spookiest part was the “special” zombies. The Witch sobbing and crying when not being able to see her and that raging scream when you spook her, the growl of the Hunter and not knowing when they might pounce, and who can forget the guttural roar of the tank while it throws cars and other massive stuff at you!
Not saying TWD or BotD should go down this particular path, but it highlights what could be done with zombies to make them scarier. I guess they do this in the Resident evil series as well.
Nice to see you back Dave, I’m looking forward to your review of TWD this week, it was a cracker.
I definitely played Left 4 Dead and it’s sequel. Both were really fun games. The special zombies worked well there, they made the gameplay more dynamic and made a lot of situations scarier. I loved the level where you get caught in the flood with all the witches.
That said, I think a lot of why they worked so well is the medium they were in. Video games demand balance in ways that more traditional narratives (stories, films, etc.) do not. I think you could certainly make a movie with special zombies work, but I think it would be a lot harder than a video game.
Definitely looking forward to TWD tonight!
I think that there are only 2 choices for a writers when his “starting material” is getting short of breath : 1/ make it evolve. 2/Try something else.
My guess is that the starting material of a story, such as zombies, is just a background. It’s just a tool for the real material of any story : interaction between characters.
So about today’s question, I’ll say that when you start a story on the long run, you already know that you’ll have to make serious evolutions through it.
“My guess is that the starting material of a story, such as zombies, is just a background. It’s just a tool for the real material of any story : interaction between characters.”
Nailed it, absolutely nailed it.
If your viewer has become desensitized to your grizzly big bad monster I say play it up. Give the monsters a bit of personality to make them each different.
Have your human space marines travel the darkened hallways of an abandoned ship until they stumble across a xenomorph that chazes the light of their flash lights like a cat.
Or have your adventurers over hear a couple of lizard men guards complain about how their wives made one of them go on a diet or how the new hatchlings keep them up at night.
Something to make the reader want to see more of them by humanizing them a little which is admittedly hard to do with a zombie unless you show the person they were before they died and still continue to follow that one zombie until it finally runs into its previous human friends…multiple times…
That or make it so destroying the brain doesnt kill them as effectivly as movies usually show it to be.