On the creation of Night Zero’s unique zombie creatures, the ‘scratchers’

Continuing last week’s discussion on zombies and Night Zero, I’d like to explore how we moved from “zombies” to “scratchers”, how that’s different, and what it means for the survivors of our apocalypse.

A classic quirk of classic zombie films is that the characters never actually utter the word “zombie” in the course of the film, but the term is universally understood by the audience and the production team. For Night Zero, the word “zombie” carried with it a number of connotations that we wanted to separate ourselves from, which challenged us to stop referring to our infected as zombies and start calling them something new… scratchers.

For what is a zombie? A zombie is mindless, senseless, devoid of any and all cognitive function. Until recently, a zombie was slow, sluggish, and dead. A zombie is a threat much in the way an avalanche is– it’s not coming after you specifically, and doesn’t care what you do, but if you don’t get out of the way, things will end badly for you.

The first step to transform the zombie, as I mentioned briefly last week, is to shift from a living-dead style to an infection style. This change allows the creatures to retain the agility and dynamic of their former selves, presenting a much more dangerous threat at the cost of a (slightly) less pervasive one.

The second step towards the scratchers is to shift some of the brain-vacancy to a pack mind, adding intelligence and logic to a previously dumb-as-nails threat. What better way to balance the speed and agility of the infected than to give them hunting packs, ambush tactics, and the ability to learn and remember. Suddenly, the apocalyptic threat becomes less like toxic cattle and more like velociraptors.

Purists will then argue that the creatures in Night Zero are not zombies at all, and to a certain extent that’s true, and that’s exactly what we’re going for. When you think of the threat faced by the survivors, don’t think of the shopping mall from Dawn of the Dead. Think of the Reavers from the Firefly series (and film Serenity).

And much like Joss Whedon’s approach with Reavers in the Firefly series, the scratchers of Night Zero are not the focal point of the story, nor even a large percentage of it. They are the mechanism that sets the story in place, and they are the constant threat banging on the walls of the tenuous remnants of society. They are always there, yet rarely seen.

But when they are seen, count on it getting ugly.

See you next week!