28 Weeks Later

The intro to the film is 3 minutes long and introduces 7 characters to the story. 4 male and 3 female - 2 elderly, 2 in their 30’s, 1 in their 20’s and 2 children. The scene starts off in a dark house, with candles lit everywhere, this helps to create an un-nerving mise-en-scene that communicates to us the audience that for some reason (to find out at a later date) electricity in the house along with other typical items in a standard home are missing. This straight away suggests that this is a horror film because its dark with only littler light. These features in the film already help to create an intensely weird and worrying atmosphere that is perfect for any horror film. The characters are eating around a table talking about the zombies. This suggests that they are comfortable talking and that they have been there a long time. What also suggests this is the fact they have photos of friends and family set up on a shelf and wall. They must have barricaded themselves inside this building and have been there for a long time. Their clothes are dirty with holes in suggesting that they have only one pair of clothes or hardly have any to wear which also suggests they have been there for a long time. The food they are eating at the table isn’t anything special, it just looks like pasta with a basic sauce so that means they obviously don’t have much food. Maybe they’re saving the better food for later or maybe they don’t have any at all. So just to some up so far they’re clothes are in bad condition, its really dark, bad food and they’re all friends or family.

The camera is either kept still to show everyone or it’s hand-held, by doing this we feel as if were in the film and the same danger as the characters are in. Many close ups are used to help further emphasis the idea of being in the film. They really want you to feel as if you are a character in the film sitting down at the table eating dinner with them. 

Suddenly there are loud knocks at the door with young boy shouting for help. The tension now builds up from the music slowly getting louder, shall they risk blowing their cover to the zombies by letting the boy in or shall they leave him. The music really gets the audience going because they’re not sure what’s going to be behind the door so they’re getting really scared. As the music builds up, the cut-rate gets quicker which adds to the tension. As soon as the boy is let in the house the cut-rate slows back down which relieves the tension.

The boy starts to talk about how zombies were chasing him while the girl goes over to one of the walls in the house, she removes a cloth that was blocking a hole. She looks through the hole. The music builds up and the boy says there were loads of zombies. As he says that the camera is close up to him. While this is happening there is a build up of music again getting louder. This suggests that something bad is going to happen. Suddenly a zombie appears in front of the hole and its arm goes through the wall. This is extremely well done as the directors use of music and camera angle have successfully tricked the audience into falsely believing certain shall happen only for the opposite to happen, therefore when the predictable happens we as an audience are completely shocked by it

There are multiple things that I feel I can take away from studying this film. To begin the time of day and colours are something to be seriously considered when filming as they help extend the tension and mood in a scene. A mix of hand-held and still camera work to make it seem professional but also put you into the film. Close up shots also help put you in the film and to make it seem more serious. And finally the use of music to for instance build the tension can be extremely effective to get the effect I hope to achieve.