I feel like zombie settings could do more to make slow zombies scarier in quiet, creeping ways. Zombies facing away from people. Walking backwards. Only moving if they're not seen. Holding a survivor but not hurting them. Motionless but their eyes follow you. Soundless horde.
Encountering fast zombies: Physical challenge
Encountering slow zombies: Psychological terror
Ohh okay okay okay I like this.
If zombies are a representation of the breakdown of society, the traditional zombie is a more noticeable, violent, immediate collapse of society.
The slow, quiet, still zombie is more about the societal collapse we don't see until it's too late, one that doesn't happen suddenly and drastically but one that happens without a fuss. The violence doesn't become the focus of the tension, the violence is the release of it.
Zombies sitting at tables, doing nothing for days, just staring silently while you search for food. Zombies walking endlessly through the same trails they did in real life. Zombies sitting at the bus stop, waiting for the bus to move. It never will. Zombies that are not mindless drones, they're beings whose sanity is lingering in darkened secluded places of their self, ready to burst forth in unsuspected ways. Humane in absolute cryptid ways and inhumane in the most human way possible.
