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Hi all.
After talking about ideas for movies with a friend and fellow local film maker, I told him about a zombie movie I have had an idea for, and he just loves the idea. I haven't had a chance to really write out how I wanted it to go until now, so please, put this under your microscopes people, and pick away at it. I'm pitching it and I REALLY need useful feedback, especially on the ending.
Also, I need a title for this thing. I'm not the best at creating titles so I need help.
So here goes:
I'd like to make a zombie movie, this taking place from the zombie's point of view as she goes through the seven stages of grief before zombification. Act one will pertain to our protagonist gradually losing everything, including her life, only to discover the freedom that accepting her fate will give her.
To better explain her loss, let me explain what she had to lose to begin with. Our protagonist, who I would like to name Leah Karaluch (Leah meaning weary and Karaluch meaning cockroach in Polish. I like the idea of calling her a cockroach because they are tenacious little bugs and hard as hell to kill) is a recent college grad who is working as a field reporter's go-fer (or some other job out in the field, you can think of something different if you like) at a news station. She got the job after busting her butt doing an internship at the news station, and during that time met and started dating a young guy in (insert department here, ie: marketing, billing, accounting, mail room, you get the idea.) She lives in a crappy, run down apartment and is swimming in debt. She has to take the bus to work since she can't afford a car.
As the first few scenes play out, Leah is having concerns about her relationship with her boyfriend. (I'm thinking Kevin is a good name for this guy. Every office seems to need a Kevin.) He seems distant and disinterested in her lately. No time to argue though, as she and the hot, sexy looking news reporter (Sarah maybe? Sara means princess.) are assigned to go to a local hospital do to a news story on a strange new disease that has been putting people in quarantine.
After taking a break, Leah sees Sara's phone has a text from Kevin, and it's flirty, sexy, and proof of Kevin's disloyalty. After pretending to be Sara in text to see if maybe Kevin dialed the wrong number, Sara sees Leah with her phone and gets angry, telling her to keep her hands off her stuff. Leah replies with a similar answer and a cat fight breaks out. The resulting fight ends Leah's job at the news station and her relationship with Kevin.
Going home to her apartment, she gets into a colorful discussion with her landlord, Mr. Lakos (Lakos meaning dweller in Hungarian) about how her rent is late and that he is going to have her thrown out of her place. Leah, who has been coughing ever since she finished the news segment, goes upstairs to unwind and finds a pest (roach, mouse, whatever we can find) in her apartment and flips out. Mr. Lakos is not impressed with her crazy tantrum and throws her out.
The next morning, Leah is found on a park bench where she has tried to sleep the night, and her coloring looks terrible. After being found by a police officer named Officer Truaillithe (truaillithe meaning corrupt in Gaelic) for loitering, she is arrested after Leah complains and starts putting up a fight. While in the cop car, she begins coughing up blood.
The police officer, after giving her a hard time, takes her to the local hospital, stating that when she's better she belongs to the law. While there, she is taken to the quarantine room she was just doing the news package at the day before.
While there, she is getting worse. No matter what medication the hazard suited nurses give her, she is not getting better. Others around her talk in various tones, each going through one of the seven stages of grief for themselves. Leah herself is experiencing these stages, terrified of what might happen should she recover or not.
In case you are not familiar with these stages, they are as follows:
1. Shock or Disbelief
2. Denial
3. Bargaining
4. Guilt
5. Anger
6. Depression
7. Acceptance and Hope
In the second act, the final stage of grief, that being Acceptance and Hope, will really come into play as Leah accepts death as her fate after battling the disease for a few weeks. After her death, the nurses put her in a body bag and begin to wheel her corpse away. Just as they are about to put her into the morgue for further study before sending her to her final resting place, the body bag lurches forward, falling off the gurney. They are shocked to see a pale eyed Leah tearing through the body bag, her voice giving off a raspy, terrified wail at being claustrophobic.
Thinking it a miracle, one of the doctors, Dr. Arzt, (arzt meaning doctor in German) begins examining her to see if she has begun to build up immunity to this strange disease in hopes of creating a vaccination. With Nobel Peace Prize on his selfish mind, the self centered doctor volunteers to examine Leah. While talking to Leah, she tells him that she is starting to feel better, and for the first time in weeks she actually has an apatite. Upon examining Leah, he is surprised to see that she does not have a heart beat. During the examination, Leah stares pale eyed and hungrily at the doctor's wrists exposed by his rolled up sleeves. As the doctor brings to her a tongue depressor and asks her to say "ahhh," he becomes Leah's first kill.
Leah doesn't understand what came over her, but she does know that it felt good to see that condescending jerk of a doctor go down hard. And he tasted good. Really good.
Feeling a surge of power along with muscle strength she couldn't have dreamed possible, Leah ventures forth to clean the doctor's blood off. Shortly after she leaves the examining room, a nurse screams at the sight of the dead doctor. The screams attract the attention of Officer Truaillithe, the police officer who just happened to have brought Leah to the hospital to begin with, who sees the blood all over the front of Leah and begins to give chase.
Officer Truaillithe chases her out of the hospital and across the street to the park where he found her in the first place. Leah, feeling strangely hungry again, sees the overweight pig of a police officer lumbering toward her, breathing hard as he calls for back up. Seeing those love handles bouncing ever so temptingly like dough in a bread machine, Leah stops to gaze gray eyed and hungry at the lumbering meal coming at her with a night stick.
Taking a swing at Leah, Officer Truaillithe is surprised to see she was able to catch it perfectly, and even more surprised to see the mad, hungry look in her eyes as she rips the night stick from his hands with strength she never knew she had. A swift blow to the abundant gut brings the cop down hard, but Leah isn't done with him yet. She wants to hand cuff this pig to a park bench so that when people find his dead body, it'll be in the same place he found her. Once cuffed, Leah takes liberty of his generous flesh until she's had her fill. Taking the night stick, she smiles with bloodied lips before running off from the sound of sirens as Officer Truaillithe bleeds to death.
After taking out the jerk doctor and outrunning the cops after killing the one who put her through hell, Leah is beginning to feel a rush of freedom she has never in her life felt. For the first time ever, she is in control of her life, or in this case after life. And she is out to seek revenge.
Act three opens with Sara doing a news report from the safety of the studio on the recent surge of what people are calling the Zombie Apocalypse. (Could insert crazy footage of bible thumping wackos, end of world party goers, and so on.) After the news cast has concluded, we see her and Kevin having a very serious discussion about what is happening. They walk out together to Sara's car when they are ambushed by a small group of zombies, one of them being Leah. They recognize Leah and find it really odd that she seems to be instructing other zombies to tip the car over. Escaping with their lives and the car intact, Sara speeds off.
Giving chase, Leah is not fast enough to catch the car. While stopping to catch her breath and rethink her plans, Leah and her gang of zombies are nearly hit by a falling potted plant. She hears a familiar, shrill voice from above threatening to throw another plant if "you damn kids don't clear out." It's Leah's landlord, Mr. Lakos, tending to her old apartment complex. She's surprised she missed it!
The gang quickly storms the complex, some taking the time to break into windows to have a snack on the residents who haven't done a very good job of boarding up their windows, much to Leah's annoyance. She has a goal in mind, and she doesn't want to be kept waiting.
After breaking down Mr. Lakos's heavily fortified door, Leah is surprised to see Mr. Lakos is packing heat. He shoots another one of the zombies in the head, taking him down. Ducking to avoid the next shot, Mr. Lakos shoots a religious idol or shrine of some sort (I'm thinking of making him Hindi or something, not sure what.) While low, Leah goes for the ankles, bringing the landlord down and making him drop his gun. Defenseless, Mr. Lakos's screams are muffled by Leah shoving a wad of "past due" slips in his mouth as he bleeds to death.
In the next scene, Sara and Kevin are in Sara's posh apartment, watching the news. Kevin is quite shaken as he huddles with a couch pillow while Sara is on the phone with her boss complaining about how security wasn't around while they got ambushed, not caring that security had been attacked earlier in the day. Hanging up her phone in disgust, Sara switches off the television which freaks out Kevin. They get into an argument over their situation, which ends in them holding each other in fear and apology. The tender moment is interrupted by an ominous knock at the door.
Peeping through the look hole, Sara lets out a scream as the door is forced open. Kevin forgot to lock the door, which swings open to reveal a revenge intended Leah. Knowing that it was Sara's beauty and charm that stole Kevin away, Leah jumps on top of Sara, beating her face into the hard wood floor until it's mutilated to her liking before taking a good hard bite out of her head of perfect hair. Rather than being a hero, Kevin grabs a blunt object and Sara's keys so that he can escape in Sara's car.
A week later, Kevin notices that the staff at the news station has significantly shrunk. So much so that people in other departments have had to double as news crew. Nervously, Kevin tries to read the terrifying news off of a teleprompter, his lack of experience showing. He is almost done with the news read, apologizing repeatedly for his blunders when he hears a noise that scares him. He then hears someone off camera screaming as a chorus of low grumbles emanates around the building. He's surrounded.
As the camera cuts, Kevin makes a run for it, locking himself in his old (insert department here) office and hiding himself in the supply closet. He tries to muffle his fears as he hears the door crashing down, followed by a raspy but familiar voice. Leah knows he's in there. She can smell his cheap cologne. It's only a matter of time before he is cowering before her in front of cleaning supplies, begging for his life. While Leah finds him pathetic like the others she has killed, she can't help feeling an almost sympathetic pity for the man she once loved. Still feeling a sense of loyalty in spite of it all, she closes the supply closet and walks away.
Running to the bathroom after a sudden feeling of sickness, Leah finally gets a good look at herself in the mirror. She is surprised at the wreck of a former person she sees staring back at her with blank, gray eyes. She begins to wonder what she has become as the words Kevin said to her sink in. Was she really at one time a good person?
In the mean time, Kevin peeks out of the closet to see that Leah is gone and the room is clear of zombies. Grabbing a mop, Kevin slowly ventures out of the closet to see if the zombies have left. He looks out the office door, seeing that one hallway is clear. Upon looking in the opposite direction, he sees that he is not alone. After being grabbed in the throat, he sees the mutilated Sara staring back at him, ready to kill.
Leah sees Sara ripping out Kevin's heart as she leaves the bathroom, a bit shocked by what she sees. After feeling a recent sense of remorse, to see the act done anyway by someone who she herself killed feels odd. After Kevin drops dead, Sara walks up to Leah and hands her the heart she ripped out of Kevin's chest, saying "I think this belongs to you." After accepting the organ, Leah drops it to the floor, saying "I don't need it anymore, and neither do you."
As the two women walk away, the abandoned heart begins to slowly start beating again as we see the two women walking away from it. Or we can use the heart beat sound effect with some music and get a similar effect. Whatever works better.
Soooooooo... feedback?
IEditYourWorld
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