Chapter 6 - Writing, Audio-work, and General Conclusion
The film is honestly, genuinely, pretty good.
The writing, especially. These scenes are extra nice. The dialogue sounds as it should be: conversationalistic, yet still you get the sense that it's all acting. After all, it's a zombie flick. Zombies don't exist in real life. It's the realistic dialogue and acting that really sell this idea of "what if the apocalypse happened," or "it did happen," and that's what makes it such an unnerving film.
The scenes are also pretty good. The film's dialogue sets the story really well, and it's the scene work - the cinematography, the camera-work, the visuals - that's what makes it have the impact that it does. The tone of this film is liminal. It's eerie, creepy, and uncomfortable. The Resident Evil film series does this, too, where they try to set the world in an apocalyptic setting. But it's exaggerated. Not necessarily nightmare-fuel or nightmare-inducing. Because it's an adaptation of a videogame.
With this film, on the other hand, it takes a more broad approach to it. More realistic. It gives you a sense of Jim's perspective, where you get his sense of how what's wrong with the world he's currently in right now isn't the zombies necessarily, or the fact that dead people are coming back to life, they're walking, they're hungry, and they're fucked up. It's the fact that there aren't a lot of people at all. And that these zombies aren't necessarily zombies, they're people. And they're angry, and they're fast.
If you look at his point-of-view, you get the sense that not only is London liminal, eerie, dead, and abandoned. But that it wasn't by choice. Once again, if you look at the Resident Evil film series, you get the sense that these cities and locations weren't abandoned by choice, yes, but at the same time, most of the stuff that happened was the fault of one company - the Umbrella corporation - who developed the infection and its cure, tested it on fake cities with mostly empty buildings, clones and cloning technology, and even recreations of weather events such as fall, snow, rain, sun, spring, and wind, but got so cocky with how much they were making, that not only had one of them thought that they could take the money all by himself - thereby, starting the pandemic intentionally, and framing the virus escaping as an "incident" - and that employee failed, as he didn't survive, but the higher-ups of the Umbrella corporation spent a good amount of money for cryo-chambers to help preserve themselves and - therefore - survive the "viral purge" proposed by Dr. Alexander R. Isaacs, which failed, as those cryo-chambers - and the higher-ups within it - were destroyed, alongside Dr. Isaacs. Thereby not surviving the flood in their twisted Noah's Ark. It's not realistic. I mean, it doesn't have to be. I like the Resident Evil film franchise, but not for its realism. It's like the defining peak of a-realism, or unrealism.
With 28 Days Later, however, you get the sense that it isn't planned. It isn't developed by some big corporation. And it isn't tested on some fake simulation of reality, or irreality. Quite literally, society has collapsed. What was once thought of as conceptual or theoretical, it - about as close as it gets - actually happened.
Nothing is planned. Nothing is the fault of some big corporations. Simply a misunderstanding between a local animal clinic and young activists. Society has, seriously, collapsed.
And it's not reflected - again - in the zombies on the street. It's reflected in the lack of zombies and people at all. What Jim sees in the streets isn't a London that was ransacked and that held riots. It's abandoned. It's alone, it's liminal. Which gives it kind of an ethereal, eerie feeling. It's not the feeling of "how alone you are" that's what is unnerving. It's the fact that it's so alone, what happens if you're actually not alone? What could be there that which was once thought as isn't there?
Jim's point-of-view could not have been an accident. Without it, the impact of the film would have been diminished and not-so-great. In it, we see a world which is set in a zombie apocalypse that is disturbing not because of how alone it is, but how it's so alone that what's scary is finding out that you aren't alone. London is abandoned, yet too abandoned. The streets are dirty, yet too dirty. There are too many crashed cars - which details panic and just how fast these zombies could be and how fast people could turn into these things - but not that many exploded cars, which - again - showcases how fast society fucking had evaporated.
Then finally, the audio-work. It utilizes sound quite well, and the music. The iconic "In a House, In a Heartbeat" theme of this whole franchise sets the tone quite well. Of there being hopelessness but also hope. Of there being an indicator of how fast things could go wrong. It's a theme trying to convey what anxiety feels like.
The sound effects are decent, nothing special. It's what it is supposed to be.
The music, oh the music. The tracks were nicely decided upon and carefully picked. The Ave Maria piece is quite indicative of what I'm talking about. It sounds like one of the stages of grief, which is denial. Denial that it's all a dream, I'm still in a coma, and in this taxi, I'll wake up in my coma bed back to reality. It's very dreamy, you know? That's probably the right word, dreamy.
Then the piece which played when Jim realized that his parents had died. It sounded like I was in a church. Quite fitting, because these were two parents of his who committed suicide just to be with Jim, in the hopes that he died in his coma, and that he "shouldn't wake up." It would have been a fitting theme for their funerals, but they couldn't have funerals, because all the priests had either died or turned. Instead, this bed is their coffin to eternity.
Overall, it is a masterful display of writing and acting prowess, while keeping a general comical charm and keeping it realistic. It's a seriously dark film, but it's not dark in the political or even the ethical sense. It's dark in the existential sense.
If being a human is boiled down to their most basic emotions and feelings like hunger, thirst, or lust, then nothing has changed in this film. Therefore, being human is much more than these basic emotions and feelings. And it is a message subliminally stated in the film. And that's not the only thing this film is good at. It's a whole array of other things.
It's a good zombie flick, and I'd give it a high rating. Trust me.
I hope you have enjoyed this review of 28 Days Later, I certainly found it fun to write this. And for more content, be sure to check out my Facebook, Wattpad, and Twitter - that's @BSideSamSeder - and be sure to stay tuned for more content in the future.
Thank you so much for reading, leave a like - I'd appreciate it - to support art like this, and I'll see you next time.
Read you later!
END.
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