28 Days Later

You know what my favorite kind of movie is? Virus movies. I think this fascination for viruses started when I first watched the movie Outbreak when I was a kid. The idea that something as small as virus can spread around so fast and give us such a hard time dealing with it fascinates me a lot, especially since it isn’t just a movie story. Take the influenza outbreak we have going on right now, it’s spreading so fast we can’t even keep up with the numbers anymore.

After watching Outbreak there have not been a lot of movies that dealt with the contagious virus idea. At least non that I felt were decent. Then in 2008, game developer Valve released the game Left 4 Dead, which revolves around a highly contagious Rabies infection that turns people into mindless killers. The story is told during the course of the game in the form of wall writings by other non-infected who try to make their way to safety as well as other details integrated in the maps that tell you what happened. Ever since the game came out I have been loving Left 4 Dead. Each time I play through a location I notice new things and a new part of the story gets revealed. Then I found out about the movie this game was partially based on.

28 Days Later

Apparently there has been an awesome movie in existence since 2002 which I had no clue about. 28 Days Later tells the story of the incredibly dangerous Rage Virus. Originally meant as an experiment in primates, the virus is unleashed onto the United Kingdom when animal activists try to set the animals free. From there the virus spreads incredibly fast and within two weeks the government starts a nationwide evacuation. The UK is left abandoned, now home to thousands of infected and just a handful of survivors. 28 days after the initial infection we meet Jim, who wakes up in a hospital after having been in a coma for over a month.

Besides having a story I really like, this movie has other qualities I can respect. For instance the shots of a completely deserted downtown London are creepy to look at to say the least. Especially because there were no sets used for a large part of those shots. They actually sealed off parts of downtown London for 20 minutes at a time to shoot the footage.

Also the music in this movie is extremely good and well placed throughout the movie. It really sets the mood in a lot situations, particularly the mansion scene near the end of the movie. I love it when image and audio come together like that and the director of this movie, Danny Boyle, did an outstanding job on it. I have just found another favorite director.

28 Weeks Later

Obviously I’m not the only one who thought this movie was great, otherwise it would not have spawned one of the best movie sequels I have seen in a long time. Normally a sequel sucks compared to the original, this sequel is probably even better than the original! I will not give away too much of the story for those who still want to go and watch it, but you’ll be pleased to know that the awesome London scenes are still there, the awesome music is still there and the amount of gore in this movie has been increased quite a bit from the original. I loved it and hated it at the same time, haha. The only grudge I had against this movie was the ending, which was kept open and incredibly sucked. When they were making this movie they did not even know if there would be another sequel, so making it that open ended really pissed me off.

28 Months Later

Luckily Boyle is not done with the 28 movies yet. A third movie is said to be in development and is likely to hit the theaters in 2011. What it will be about is unknown up to this point, but Boyle has stated that it will try to move the story forward from where the second left off. If Boyle stays up to his standards then we can expect a movie which is even better than the second one, which should be great.

Trailers

Words can not really describe the mood these movies are set in though, watch the trailers below if you really want to experience what these movies are about.

Robin

The Importance of Back-story

In my opinion a back-story or lack of one can completely make or break a story, be it a movie, game, book or other form of media. Especially if a story is set in fictional or partially fictional universe a lack of back-story can completely shatter something which had the potential to be very good.

The reason I’m bringing this up is because I just had my 12-year-old niece over for two days and she just loves horror movies. She thought it would be a great idea to have a movie night consisting only of horror movies. And I HATE horror movies. I’m not scared of horror movies, I genuinely hate them because the quality of the story in such movies is almost always puke worthy.

If it’s a story about a serial killer there is always a group of young kids who get slaughtered and by the end of the movie we still have no idea who the killer is or, even more important, why he became a serial killer to begin with. There is no real story to begin with, there is no hidden plot, it’s just a group of people who keep getting killed in hilarious ways without any real motive and the movie is over once they are a) all dead, or b) if one manages to survive in which case you can bet your ass there will be a sequel.

If the story features monsters it’s even more stupid. Often you get the same type of scenario but instead of a serial killer the group gets to deal with unnatural monsters of all kinds. What these monsters are, how they came to be, where they came from or why they are attacking the group remains unknown for ever, they are just in the movie to make it scary and not to support some sort of  interesting plot line. Again the movie ends when either everyone is dead or if the last person makes it out alive.

This brings me to the movie my niece brought over; The Decent. When we started watching I was pretty skeptical about the story since the description on the cover didn’t leave much room for interpretation. Group of women in a cave, scary monsters, the end. I was surprised however when the story started to climb to an okay level at some point when there was still no sign of the monsters 45 minutes into the movie and small signs of back-story and subplot started showing up. But it soon dropped back to the ’stupid’ category as soon as the first monster showed its face.

Spoilers!
The monsters in this case were blind cave dwelling creatures who hunted based on sound, much like bats. When one of the women finds an old piece of cave exploring equipment, while the cave is supposed to be new and unexplored, the suggesting is made that the creatures are actually evolved humans, evolved from the explorers who set foot in the cave over 100 years ago.

When that theory is first told in the movie you are left with a lot of questions. Why didn’t the explorers starve to death? How can something evolve in just 100 years time? With any other movie you’d laugh at the theory itself, but because up to this point the movie had a pretty solid story, you tend to think that you’re going to get an answer to those questions as the story progresses. But from the moment the monsters show up the movie drops down to a classic ‘hunt down and kill’ scenario. No back-story of any kind is given about the creatures from this point on. The creatures simply serve as the means to killing the victims and nothing more while there was plenty of potential to tell more about these creatures and the explorers who came before.
End of Spoilers

Like with any low grade horror movie, though, this movie also gets a sequel which will be released (or has been released) this year. It will offer the original writer and director of the movie a chance to fix his early mistake, though from what I’ve read so far I doubt the second part will be any better than the first part. Most importantly, I think the writer created an impossible scenario to create an explanation for which is something you should at all time avoid. If you’re going to create something, at least make the back-story something that could have happened in that particular universe.

I will be watching the sequel, I want to find out if the writer is going to make any effort into explaining the things he left untold in the first part. But like I said, I suspect it’s going to suck just as much.

Robin

City 17 Madness

The universe created by game developer Valve is a very detailed and interesting one. The story of Gordon Freeman in the Half-Life games is truly one of the most epic and emotional pieces of storytelling ever done in video games.

It’s not surprising many people have gone out to write fan fiction about Half-Life. Many great writers out there have come up with endless ideas for the Half-Life universe. If you’re into the Half-Life series I’d like to point you to the Half-Life section of FanFiction.net.

So why would I mention this on my media blog? Because Half-Life fanfiction has since spread to much more then just writing. Youtube has a number Half-Life related videos, but I’d like to focus on two in particular that really stand out.

Escape From City 17

This particular video was made by The Purchase Brothers and has become insanely popular with over two million views in less then two months. The short film, which is supposed to be the first of three, is set during the events in Half-Life 2: Episode 2. With the city in chaos and the Citadel about the go sky high, the film follows a group of rebels trying to get out of the city.

The editing and special effects in this film are great and the acting, while not of Hollywood standards of course, is not to shabby either. Escape From City 17 is a good example of the things you can do with a green screen and some powerful editing software.

What’s in the Box?

This short-film was made by a Dutch duo. The film is set in a Half-Life 2 like environment. While the direct connection to Half-Life 2 is not made, there are a few things that point in the direction such as a gunship and Combine looking soldiers.

An air of mystery surrounds this film, as it is accompanied by a website that can only be opened with a code of sorts. Many people on Youtube have been trying to break the code and if you want to have a run at it go to whatsinthebox.nl. According to hints on the website something is going to happen regarding the box in November. Whether this is a sequel of sorts is unknown at this point.

So what kind of fan fiction do you prefer? Do you like written or visual fan fiction?

Robin

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