28 Years Later
Right now, this is going to be a disorganized dump. I might make it more cohesive later.
28 Years Later is a movie.
Sunrise on skulls. Birth upon death.
Baby born from the infected. Birth upon death.
Two mothers die and turn the page for their children. Birth upon death.
Fire to purify the dead. Fires as souls dancing. Fire like in natural forest fires to bring about new life. Death. Birth. Rebirth.
You give your all only to get exactly what you didn’t want: a lesson
I love how the celebration does the complete opposite to its aim. Instead of encouraging Spike, it demoralized him. In a way, it did encourage him. But in like, a different way than expected. Encouraged out of a sense of urgency, not completely in self efficacy. Out of need, not complete faith. He’s professed his failures. He’s aware, not blind.
Tragic maturity forced on a kid in a zombie apocalypse not because of the zombie apocalypse, not really. It’s a different illness and his family falling apart.
Coming of age ceremony accidentally so effective he doesn’t wanna come back home LOLLL
“Everyone here is lying” I love that. Lies are the tranquilizer. The mainland is messy, but maybe it’s less of a haven that’s only a haven because of the deceit that tapes over everything. Truth is messy and emotions are messy. Mix the two and there is no utopia. It’s the rejection of dirt, of impurity, of infection. But the mainland is where there’s both the uninfected and infected. It’s messy. And maybe it’s more real.
What kind of utopia is it if you’re huddled living paycheck to paycheck with supplies, only celebrating in a frenzy when you have reprieve? You can’t breathe in this truth unless you drown yourself in lies. In alcohol. Like the dad. Like how the old guy likes to lie too. Though at least he mentioned the doctor at all. The walls. The gate. Protection out of harsh lessons learned but it’s not just mom dying. All of them were.
Trying to pretend to be okay in this fortress doubled as a cage. They stagnate in that closed-off world. Like flies in a jar. Repeating again and again and again. Spike leaves that gas station full of gas. He ignites the fire and wanders to the true unknown. Only there can growth be found.
The mom being another agent of lies (or the lack of truth): not telling her son about the truth of her illness. It only drove him to be more lost and confused. In the mainland death is at every corner and Spike will almost every day die. But unlike the utopia he is learning something new about the world, learning about other ways of living, about other ways of defeating or rather working around infected or obstacles. Every day is a question of survival, but there is growth.
This movie isn’t only a zombie movie. It’s not about only literal death. It’s about what it means to be alive and not just breathing. Very apt considering it’s a zombie movie, breathing but not alive LOL. The ones in the utopia are only another kind of zombies.
“Don’t take too long showering” “only take new gear when you need it supplies are low”
This way of life is hard to keep up with unless you convince yourself it’s the only way of life. As soon as there’s a sign of another way of life out there, either you dismiss it as crazy or you go insane realizing the hell you put yourself through to pretend it’s heaven
Spike planting the seed of change in the utopia: the uninfected child of the infected. It will throw them into chaos: disagreement. They are faced with nuance, not their black and white way of living. They have to face truth, they have to be candid, and they have to navigate it either together or against each other. They are forced to.
That child bearing his mother’s name: the one that started it all. Her illness catalyzes her family falling apart. It’s what pushes Spike into the unknown in desperation. She repaid her sin of silence by that sin doubling as a virtue of her son learning true life (death) lessons and growth. She brings that change on her child. And he brings that change back home to the utopia full circle. That change that Isla HERSELF HELPED DELIVER IN THE LITERAL SENSE.
His father brought him out for a mock test. Spike instead of feeling achievement feels the weight of LIES UPON THE TOWN ONCE AGAIN. His father is fully entrenched in the culture of this town surviving solely out of lies. It suffocates them all. The women busy themselves in tense silence preparing for the two’s return knowing it’s a tossup.
Life is about risk. Comfort zone is death.
Horror as in facing fear and not cowering from it
Let’s think about respiration! Converting the intake of glucose and oxygen into energy and water. It’s a cycle too. Something must be LET IN and LET OUT. You could say the utopia makes a mockery of this with their supply runs behind their cell membrane. But the cell is dying. There isn’t enough oxygen.
Because really they never let anything in. They let things out, and only those same things back in. They cant breathe. They hold their breaths until a moment of reprieve. Just like the tides. Really true “respiration” of life for them would be letting ideas in and out
By others
There’s also other posts I forgot to save that I might add here later.