Not everyone who knows me, knows that I like horror films, but I do! In fact, I’m a particular fan of zombie films. I’m such a fan, I even made a feature length one with fellow zombie-loving physicists a few years ago at CERN! Our film is called Decay, and it’s named because decay is a word that is appropriate for both the zombie world and the particle physics one (when heavier particles change into lighter ones we say that they decay). It also conjures up images of nuclear decay and a lot of zombie films used radiation as their undead trigger. We were the first ones (as far as we know) to suggest that the dead could rise because of Higgs bosons created at the LHC at CERN! To learn a little more, I’ve added the trailer below.
We have to be clear that the film has never been endorsed by CERN, since it does have some questionable senior characters. But, they also didn’t shut us down, which was great! Since being released for free online less than two years ago, we’ve had almost four million views on youtube! It just goes to show how much people love (a) zombie films and (b) CERN, especially when it’s the two together!
So where’s the science in all of this you might ask? Well, there isn’t any. At least, we made it all up! We wanted to make fun of all those films with pseudo-science in them so we filled ours to the brim with bio-entanglement physics!
I’ve added some screenshots from my moments of stardom in the film (two), although I was actually on-screen a lot more often than you might think, or at least on the set making something happen. As well as pensive physicist and later rampaging zombie, known affectionately as ‘Bitey‘, I also played a computer and a spray of blood.
When I wasn’t in front of the camera, I was on set doing something else. We were all amateurs on the film, so there was a lot to do and learn. One of my many hats on set was assistant director and one scene I was able to have a lot of control over was the ‘horde scene’ near the end of the film (which incidentally was my favourite one!). It was this scene where I had to ask roughly 50 physicists, all of whom had volunteered as zombie extras for us for the day, if any of them knew if they had a latex allergy!
The film got a lot of fantastic media coverage from all over the world! My favourite article title was: “Why a Zombie Movie Made by Physicists is the Best Kind of Science PR” in Slate. Occasionally someone will tell me about the film (unaware that I was involved) and it makes me really happy that people enjoyed it and are still talking about it!
I had a fantastic time making the film (in between the 13 hours sitting in a dark damp tunnel covered in red-coloured maple syrup that is!). I also think it’s awesome that I have an IMDb page and that we worked out we each have a defined Erdős–Bacon number of approximately 11!
If you want to watch the whole film, I’ve embedded it below! You can also leave me a comment to let me know what you think! (with a kind reminder that it’s a low budget horror movie made by amateurs! 😉 )
Oh, to prove that we actually had a lot of fun making the film here are some out-takes:
And the edited version of our Q&A session at the International and UK premiere of Decay in Manchester.
Clara Nellist 