When a zombie outbreak incites a racist massacre in her small Southern town, a pregnant teen must fight the undead – and her own family – to reunite with the child’s black father.
slsmithLogliner
When a zombie outbreak incites a racist massacre in her small Southern town, a pregnant teen must fight the undead – and her own family – to reunite with the child’s black father.
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This logline exploits for seemingly gratuitous effect the flammable state of race relations in the United States and perpetuates stereotypes about the South.
For this logline to work you would have to set it in the past. Maybe right after the civil war.
This logline mixes, in a most peculiar way, genre and subject matter – I’m not sure it’s working.
It feels heavily contrived when forcing a commentary about bigotry into a Zombie flick. The reason is that a Zombie outbreak is a big problem, whether a comedy or drama, it presents the MC with clear challenges and stakes. In addition, a racist massacre is a big problem as well – which of these two ‘big problems’ becomes the primary one that the MC deals with?
The combination of them both dilutes the importance of them individually.? If the story focuses on the Zombies, you’re saying the racist massacre isn’t that important. If you focus the story on the racist massacre, the Zombies seem less dangerous.
Lastly, how does a Zombie outbreak cause a racist massacre? Even if the outbreak happens in a town populated by mostly KKK members, they would presumably point their guns at the undead coming for them before anyone else.
It works for me. The Walking Dead hasn’t been about Zombies for years.
You could drop the Location if you want to tighten it.
Using a Zombie movie as a metaphor for current racial tensions in the US and or other countries for that matter is fine, heck could even work for anything such as race, religion, gender, and/or sexuality. So, I don’t have an issue with the mix.
I guess for me, the protagonist isn’t right. If it is black people being hunted, then I think the father should be the protagonist trying to reunite with the wife, by mentioning his colour and the racial tensions that will exist in your story then I see more roadblocks and conflict from this logline for him.
I don’t think you are quite there yet, but I do think you have a clever idea in mixing a genre such as Zombie with real world problems. It will need just as much cleverness to handle it in a way that isn’t offensive to people of either race etc. Yes, with the messages and themes you will no doubt hint and discuss people may get uneasy, but that’s fine. Not crossing that line into offensiveness so your message doesn’t get lost is the trick.
Hope that helps.
Having also lived in the South, I agree with Richiev. The concept/setting for the story is outdated, so yesteryear.
Not that race relations aren’t still complicated. ?They are. ?Sometime less complicated, sometimes more, but always complicated. And not just in South, but everywhere in the United States.
Maybe the concept could work if it is conceived as a metaphor, an allegory. ?But there’s no way of knowing from the logline. I would have to read the script. ?But if it’s being conceived as an exercise in pure, unallegorical mayhem, horror for its own sake ?it’s going to step on so many political, social and ethnic landmines on the way to making a movie ?out of the script– how many production companies would be willing to incur the risks?
fwiw
I think people on this thread are getting caught up in the theme or ‘meaning’ of the concept, and forgetting about the bare necessities of a story.
You can’t write from a theme, but you can have a theme naturally grow out of a story. Point is, you first need to figure out what the story is going to be, then see what the theme is and enhance it.
Is this a story about a character doing battle with the undead in a Zombie apocalypse?
Or,
Is this a story of a MC fighting racism?