Transformative thaumaturgy actually only needs to take the target out with an attack, rules-wise; nothign else. I tend to dislike that because it would make no difference to complexity wether you turn someone into a gerbil and whether you turn them to a Loup-Garou. So when I do a transformative spell as evocation, I have the spell do a standard attack at whatever number of shifts I think it should have and that attack takes the target out (or not). And then I strap on a minimum-shift tranformative effect to satisfy the RAW - against an already taken-out target, minimum shifts succeed anyway.
As for making it zonewide, transformation/disruption is an attack. Improvements to attacks apply rules-wise. Flavor-wise, we have seen disruptions taking out people in the same zone with the intended target, just as we've seen area curses, even curses cast over entire species.
Living Dead prevents recovery - if it isn't by supernatural means. Luckily for vampires, Blood-Drinker is a supernatural power... and it erases mild consequences outright. So once a consequence has been degraded to mild by the spell, the vampire only has to go drink blood in order to complete the healing. So you can say that such a healing spell is very convenient if you want to heal some heavily damaged minion.