Re: Suggest a movie!
Edit: Damn, I really need to write faster. Oh well, here are my thoughts anyway.
In, totally. Posting that got me thinking too. I actually had a much more basic idea that involved a killer who uses flesh eating insects to help eliminate the evidence of his crimes, but that's as far as I had gotten.
I would love to ground these buggers in some sort of plausible scientific basis. In terms of evolution, what could an insect develop in the wild to keep itself from getting eaten, and ensure the survival of it's young, which could be taken advantage of by human nature.
Typically an insect will develop some sort of toxic defense, either in it's own chemistry or in the form of a bite or sting, to dissuade predators from attacking and eating them. Ok, let's turn that on it's head, and solve the procreation puzzle at the same time. What if it is the sting of the female (which delivers the eggs into the host) that has a sedative / euphoric side effect. Get stung by a female and you get a nice high, and after a while the eggs just break down in the host if they're not fertilized. Male stings on the other hand are painful, and if you've already been stung by a female, that's when you're in trouble.
I like the idea that the bugs slowly drive you crazy as they eat your brain; I'd be nice to have a set of symptoms that lead up to that: headache, blurred vision, hearing things. Heck you could go full on and say they're smelling things, or suddenly develop a taste for rotting wood or something. Basically anything that hangs a lantern on how far along a given infected person is. If it were me writing this thing, I'd have my protagonist infected in act 3, trying to defeat the infection, while trying to defeat the antagonist. I even like the idea that the protagonist defeats the antagonist but the only way to defeat the infection is to sacrifice themselves.
