Contagion: The Curse of Prosperity... is an independent feature film project...
That uses the story of Virginia’s "lost colony of Roanoke" as the skeleton for the our town "Prosperity"
The story takes place in both Colonial times and modern day...in Colonial "Prosperity" the colonists first befriend a native tribe and then as greed takes over, force them off the land...as this happens a young medicine man curses the town, when it should reach a state of wealth its own dead will rise to consume everything...in the modern day story there is a much more logical and scientific explanation but the zombies that occur are an attempt to copycat "the Curse of Prosperity" legend.
The cinematography is going to be quite extensive...shot with multiple cameras, a wide range of lens filters, on both film and Digital, and in both B/W and Color...lots of hard shadows, and colored lighting...we're using Japanese animation and Comic Books as a Template for the framing of our shots, and camera movement....we will be piecing it together in the editing room with split screens etc...a lot like the cells in a comic book...the film itself is found somewhere between "hard-boiled film noir" and your classic monster picture with some updated concepts for the existence of "zombies". In essence we are going to attach visual styles used throughout the history of  horror movies to the scenes they best fit to create something of a cinematic review of the genre. 
Zombies are, essentially, uninteresting monsters. They're scary monsters, to be sure -- make-up effects that realistically simulate the ravages of post-mortem degeneration make them the most gruesome of creatures -- but they're not terribly interesting. They're simple, they're undifferentiated, they're a mob of shambling idiots without personality or charisma. And this is the strength of the zombie film. Because the monsters themselves aren't compelling as characters, the zombie film forces the writers and directors to put the emphasis on the really interesting stuff in any movie-- actual human characters and human interaction.
The film opens with the Victor Hugo quote "Adversity makes Men, and Prosperity makes Monsters" and in the end that best sums up the films theme. In zombie films, the zombies do also serve as metaphors -- often brilliant ones, about the unthinking violence of the mob, unquestioned conformism, the drudge-heavy routines of our everyday lives, and, famously, rampant consumerism (both literal and metaphorical).
But the focus isn't on zombies-as-metaphors-for-the-human-condition. In zombie pictures, the focus is actually on humans, humans dealing with stress and violence, and humans dealing with each other. The most interesting conflicts in zombie films tend not to come between human and zombie, but between human and human. This is true of the best horror films of course.
Now, most good monsters remain memorable because they serve as metaphors for the human condition -- vampires, sexual obsession and sexual danger; werewolves, the animalistic murderous rage that lurks within all of us; Frankenstein, a similar capacity for violence borne not of rage but of moral innocence or, perhaps, moral insanity. We trying  to somewhat incorporate  all of these into our story by attaching the right “monsters” to the characters whom they best fit.