Or how about those people practising for the three year trip to Mars in a mockup spaceship.
After a while the direction staff stop communicating with them, they figure its part of the experiment or maybe a test, so carry on until the locks automatically open to indicate that the “mission” is over and then they find that the outside world… !
Oh NO, the HORROR !
Yep, I’m pretty sure Robert Kirkman (Walking Dead creator/writer) addressed it that way in one of the lengthy letters columns at the end of one of the comic books. I’m not going to go searching through my copies for it, but that is my memory of it.
It’s harder to empathize with someone who has voluntarily cut himself off from human society long enough for this to occur. Not impossible, just harder.
A few other ideas:
A submarine crew resurfacing after being disconnected. Or any boat, really, on a reasonably long trip that gets its communications knocked out.
Someone camping or hiking for a week or more somewhere remote.
Somewhere where a storm takes out power and roads.
I once had an idea for a zombie film set in Quebec involving a group of Cegep students who were just coming back from a week-long field trip at a remote Huron reserveration. I got this idea on my way home from a HS field to Quebec that incolved a day visit to a Huron reservation.
Yeah, but society collapsed alot sooner in the Dawn remake than in either 28 Days Later or The Walking Dead, basically overnight (at least in Milwaukee). Anna never encountered anyone who had more than a few hours worth of experiance dealing with zombies.
Bottom line is so they don’t have to explain how the entire world went under BEFORE someone figured out that you kill zombies by shooting them in the head.
Because in the real world that problem would be resolved within an hour.
Shoot the Zombies!
They’re not going down!
Oh wait, the ones shot in the head don’t get up!
Shoot them all in the head!
Hospitals are a good shorthand for “clinical isolation” so it gives plausibility to why they were not infected whilst it all kicked off off-camera.
Ooh, good idea.
That’s vaguely, vaguely, vaguely similar to the Nevel Shute novel “On the Beach”. (I believe the submarine crew begins their journey already knowing the world has ended.)
It makes me think of coma fantasies or possibly Owl’s Creek Bridge style plots, in fact in The Walking Dead comic I do believe this might be the ending(personal feeling).
I do understand the part about letting the audience empathize. I meant the question more along the lines of how shijinn phrased it – why not use another plot device that accomplishes the same result? The possible homages are cool, though. I’m a sucker for this kind of stuff and it’d be great to see more alternative openers in the future.
PS I didn’t know Walking Dead was a comic. Just finished Season 1 and would love to get the books.
It was used in another Apocalyptic (literally) film- the low-budget but rather decent Christian production TRIBULATION- Police officer Gary Busey investigates crimes connected to an occult secret society. When he gets too close, they arrange a accident that puts him into a coma. Several years later, he awakens into a world absent of his Christian loved ones (the Rapture) & with the AntiChrist in charge.
Here’s the waking-in-a-hospital scene from the film version of Day of the Triffids (1962).
In addition to what others have said, it’s also a good way to set tone; an empty hospital is creepy because hospitals are never empty. There’s always a significant number of people there, nights, weekends, holidays, whatever. In fact, a hospital would be especially busy during a time of crisis.
A completely deserted (though obviously not old and decrepit enough to no longer be in use) hospital is unsettling because it’s so alien. Something has obviously gone seriously wrong across a wide swath of society fro that to happen.
I’d buy a ticket to this.
Zombieland riffs on this by having the main character be a World of Warcraft-style shut-in.
Well, that’s a flashback, though.
Which brings us to another way to open a zombie movie. Begin the movie with the zombie apocalypse already in full swing, drop in on our protagonist as they deal with the undead in a by-now-customary way, then use flashbacks to tell the story of how they got there.
The Last Man on Earth uses the same technique.