I’ve had an idea that would have made a great movie but would in implementation probably have to start out as a comic book. Mainly because it involves children doing disturbing things.
The Idea is a cross between a Zombie movie and something akin to Children of Men, Basically at some point in the future a a contagion spreads that turns everyone under the age of 12 into a Zombie. The idea came to me after having a series of Zombie dreams last night, and I woke up with the name on my lips.
Generation Z.
It turns out that Generation Z is the term used for people born after 2001 [Wikipedia Link] so it seems appropriate that the comic should be set in 2013 (Note the relevance to tridekaphobiacs) Some vaugue connection to the Mayan belief that the world will end in 2012 could be worked in but I think it’s a tad cliche’d and by then I think that we’ll be sick to death of movies books and films who assert the end of the world will happen in 2012.
I’ve not got much more than my first scene mapped out in my head, it involves a childrens party and one of the kids who has always been a little wierd (Maybe was only invited becuase he was the only person in the class who left when all the invites are sent out so the parents of the kid who’s having a party invite him too) any way the kid starts biting the other kids, the kids get sent home the party ends, but the infection has begun. I imagine there will be a scene shortly thereafter where the birthday boy crawls into his mothers bed, daddy is away on a business trip and couldn’t make it to the party, and eats his mom.
The father will come home the next do to find the house a mess and his kid covered in gore, enter emotional scene of the father killing his own son, calling the cops, and getting put into prison for a double murder.
Shortly afterwards it will be noted that no children have been born for a while, lots of still births etc, another idea is that getting pregenant kills the mother as the zombie baby eats her from the inside, this is a bit Children of men or Aeon Flux or whatever other post apocalyptic film/comic/book that deals with us not being able to make any more people.
The Zombie baby in the womb idea would make using birth control an aweful lot more important. And if making babies kills you then you aren’t going to try, so even if there was a 1 in 1000 chance that the baby wasn’t going to be a zombie would you risk it?
I’ve got images in my head of packs of undead children running about the streets, terrorizign people (ala 28 days later zombies they become much faster and stronger and not slow corpses)
There are a few plot holes that need to be filled, mainly if the children can’t infect adults and adults don’t make new children for fear of dying then there are a finite number of zombies, however there are also a finite number of people…
One mechanism to get around this is possibly having the virus mutate midway through the plot so that adults turn into shambling zombies, the other slightly more disturbing idea would be for the older zombie children to mate, I don’t really like this idea very much… Having adults turned into child producing cocoons (Alien like) is another idea but not very viable unless the zombie children grow very quickly, which I assume is doable…
Main plotlines/themes will be something along the lines of:
- Getting the fuck away from the zombie children
- Trying to find a cure.
- The “Moral” dillema of killing children, when they are just sick.
- Trying to figure out a way to continue the human race.
I’d appreciate anyones toughts on this subject.