The WriteMovies Horror Award 2019 is almost over! With just two days until the contest closes, your chance to submit – and to become the first ever winner of this brand new prize – is fading fast. We’re saying goodbye to it with one final article celebrating the genre: our insights into zombie films!
Horror covers a lot of different bases. Monsters, ghosts, aliens, demons, serial killers, the devil himself… There’s a whole array of things in the genre that can scare you to death.
Speaking of death though, if there’s one thing horror keeps coming back to, it’s the living dead. Traditional horror stories were based on the idea of people reanimated after having died, and coming back as more animalistic version of themselves or mind-numbed, slow-motion versions of themselves.
Part of the success of zombie films is because they thrive on one of the cornerstones of horror: our innate fear of strangers and of being made to conform to the way that other people are, losing our personalities and individuality in doing so.
One zombie on its own is often not that dangerous. Being mindless, the individual is pretty easy to out-think! But they overwhelm through sheer numbers, relentless. It doesn’t matter how many you take down, there are always more still to come.
And so it should be with the films they feature in; this is a genre that will never die (or if it does, it will come back again!). Modern versions of zombie stories in the 21st century have brought them up to date and re-energized them with new dynamic energy, through such examples as World War Z and the rage virus that powers 28 DAYS LATER .
Stories like these have dynamized the previously slow moving zombie world, making for new kinds of fear and modern storytelling experiences and energy levels to put into films.
No matter whether they’re slow or fast, though, there are still key elements to zombies. They always come in hordes – and they always want to make you just like them…
If you’ve got a zombie story for us – or any other horror script! – don’t forget to submit to the WriteMovies Horror Award by this Sunday, September 29th. Stand out from the crowd by becoming the first ever winner of this prize!