Michael Jackson's Thriller

Michael Jackson's Thriller is a 14-minute feature-length movie and a music video for the song of the same name. It is often referred to as the greatest music video ever, Thriller proved to have a profound effect on popular culture, and was named "a watershed moment for the music industry" for its unprecedented merging of filmmaking and music.

Thriller was less a conventional music video and more a full-fledged short film, and a horror film homage, which is why I using it as inspiration for my own short film.

The plot begins in a 1950s setting with Michael and his girlfriend driving though a forest at night time and run out of gas, forcing them to walk home.

After Michael proposes to his girlfriend he states to her that he is 'different' from other guys, as shortly afterwards the full moon emerges and Michael begins convulsing in pain, and transforms into some kind of horrifying werewolf or were-cat.

As the transformed Michael lunges for his girlfriend the scene breaks away to a modern day theatre where Michael and his date are watching this film unfold. Michael's girlfriend is terrified and ends up leaving the cinema, with Michael catching her up outside and agrees to walk her home.

They then walk down a foggy street, and he teases her with the opening verses of "Thriller". They pass a graveyard, where corpses begin to rise from their graves as Vincent Price performs his rap. Michael and his date then find themselves surrounded by the zombies, and suddenly, Michael becomes a zombie himself. Michael and the undead perform an elaborate song and dance number together, followed by the chorus of "Thriller".

Frightened Michael's girlfriend runs to cover in an abandoned house followed by the swarm of zombies led by michael, reminiscing climaxes from traditional zombie films, like 'Night of the Living Dead'.

Again like these films, the zombies break through the boarded windows and doors with Michael's girlfriend corned. As the Zombie Michael slowly reaches for her throat, she lets out with a blood-curdling scream, only to awake and realize it was all a dream, with a human michael waking her up. As the two depart, Michael glances back at the camera, grinning and reveals his yellow cat-like eyes (accompanied by Vincent Price's one last haunting laugh).

Thriller is my one of my all time favourite music video and short film, so it therefore encourages and motivates me to feature my short film on zombies. Although this is not a unique and motivating theme as in most modern short films and art house movies, I will still try to present it unique way from conventional feature length films.