Sophie Thatcher was casting her friends in homemade zombie movies long before Yellowjackets. In a recent red-carpet conversation, she recalled making a series called Propagation and explained her preference for zombies that can run: “When they’re slow, it’s like, oh, that’s weak. You could push them over.”
Thatcher also made zombie stories inside The Sims and edited them in iMovie. Her cast included an infected turtle named Snappy.
The childhood productions involved costumes and fake blood, with her twin, Ellie Thatcher, behind the camera. Sophie co-directed and acted, giving her friends their parts. She’s also described thrift-store costumes and ketchup on snow.
The filmmaking is a recurring part of how she describes her childhood.
In January 2025, Thatcher said she still had a birthday-party zombie movie on her Google Drive. She’d assigned her friends roles, dressed them up, covered them in fake blood and later screened the result. The title was Propagation, even though she “didn’t even know what the word meant.”
She’s named 28 Days Later and The Walking Dead among the things that scared her growing up. By June 2026, she was considering releasing the homemade films herself: “I’ve been doing this since day one.”
