(Getting at the Truths of Apocalypse Cinema)
The man coughing violently in a darkened theater, spewing unseen plague into the cool air. A rain of fiery meteors falling from a blood red sky. The ravenous zombie pounding at the bolted door. The finger hovering over the red button.
Just a handful of images from the gallery of apocalypse cinema, the collective term used to encompass films chronicling end of the world scenarios, with civilization in dire jeopardy from threats natural and man-made, extraterrestrial and supernatural, biological and mechanical.
Apocalypse cinema has always been, more often than not, profitable at the box office, as if movie-going audiences yearn to witness the destruction of society from one safe remove, as if we are all, every single one of us, willing—and eager—voyeurs to ruination.
David J. Skal, in his excellent book
The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, observes, "Cataclysmic junctures in history usually stir up strong images in the collective mind..." And cinema is one of the repositories of these images.
From the atomic monster films of the 50's—produced in the wake of the bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki—where irradiated creatures grew to gargantuan size and went on real estate rampages from the United States to Japan, through the Irwin Allen disaster movies of the 70's, through the peak of zombie cinema (the late 70's to early 80's), all the way up to pre-millennial films like
Armageddon and
Deep Impact, the threat of our society's destruction has been a staple of cinema for a long time now.
One would think though, that after the calendar hit January 1 2000, that the millennium fever that always strikes at that sort of pivotal transition, would pass, and we'd be free from visions of the screaming populace of ruined cities, at least for a while.
Apparently not so.
It's only 2004, and we've already seen a remake of George Romero's classic
Dawn of the Dead, and Roland Emmerich's latest CGI-popcorn offering,
The Day After Tomorrow, while last year gave us
The Core, Eli Roth's
Cabin Fever and the year before that, Danny Boyle's
28 Days Later.
Now, within the confines of apocalypse cinema, I will cop to a preference for the flesh-eating zombies overrun the world scenario (and its variations) as opposed to the global disaster scenario of
The Core and
The Day After Tomorrow.
While zombies walking the streets is a very visceral, in-your-face threat, the CGI-generated catastrophes of films like
Tomorrow seem a bit impersonal to me. (So much so that some movies of this persuasion feel compelled to pile sequence after sequence of "characterization" on our laps, till we're all but gnashing our teeth in aggravated boredom, waiting for the final ten minutes of eye-popping CGI devastation. See:
Deep Impact.)
Additionally, in movies like this, you seem to have to be a brainy scientist to stand a chance of survival. (Either that, or be Bruce Willis.) If you're a regular schmoe who doesn't know anything about meterology or geology or some other -ology, you may as well just lie down and wait for the tsunami/asteroid/red hot magma to put you out of your misery.
I prefer films that give sedentary writer guys like me a fair shake.
Thus, my three films of choice for this article:
Cabin Fever,
28 Days Later, and this year's remake of
Dawn of the Dead.
“You look a little peaked…”Though the effects of the flesh-eating virus in
Cabin Fever are, for the length of the film, confined to a contained area (a remote cabin and the surrounding woods), it’s the first title on our list since it captures societal breakdown on a microcosmic level, as the bonds that hold a group of friends together decay and fester, much like their infected flesh does.
Directed by David Lynch protégé Eli Roth,
Cabin Fever is a low-budget surprise, by turns funny and disturbing. It is also an interesting variation on the zombie film, where the infected should, by all rights, become objects of compassion and sympathy, but instead, become objects of revulsion, pariahs to their friends and lovers.
Part
The Evil Dead, part
Outbreak, part
28 Days Later,
Cabin Fever deals out the proceedings with dollops of very black humor, and very visceral, unnerving shots of tainted blood spraying and gouting every which way. (There are also a number of shudder-worthy sequences here that are hard to forget: the leg-shaving scene is probably tops on that list.)
But above and beyond the gut shock, is the ugly, brutal reality of how friends can turn on each other when it becomes every man for himself, how tenuous the bonds of society and community can be when faced with the cold, inhuman workings of a highly infectious disease.
In the end, it is the onscreen corrosion of these interpersonal dynamics that is the lasting impression of
Cabin Fever that remains alongside the blood and grue, an insightful and excellent metaphor for the disease of egocentrism, which is perhaps the greatest enemy of the societal body.
“Sorry about The Beach…”Almost as if in abject apology for the Leo-starrer (adapted from the Alex Garland novel and directed by Danny Boyle of
Trainspotting fame), director and writer teamed up again for
28 Days Later (directed by Boyle from a script written directly for the screen by Garland).
Another post-millennial variation on the zombie film,
28 Days Later begins with a prologue set in the Cambridge Primate Research Centre, where some animal activists unwittingly let loose a virus—called, appropriately enough, “Rage”—which causes the infected to go into a constant state of mindless, uncontrolled violence. Once infected by tainted blood or saliva, a person ceases being a person, and becomes nothing more than a wild, vicious beast; perhaps, the beast that lies in wait in all of us, free of the imposed restraints of ethics and morals and rational thought.
We then jump four weeks ahead—thus, the title—when Jim (Cillian Murphy) awakes in hospital (he was in an accident before the outbreak began), to find it empty and ransacked. (The scenes of Jim walking through a deserted London are far more haunting than Tom Cruise in an empty Times Square in
Vanilla Sky.)
Thus, we are not witness to the actual breakdown of society, but rather—like Jim—suddenly thrust into some horrible New World (Dis)Order, where there is apparently no government, no police, no army, and a church is no longer a sanctuary.
So who do we turn to when all structures fail? We turn to one another.
Garland manages to avoid the clichés of this sort of film, where strangers are thrust upon one another in a bid to survive. He manages to write
people; flawed, yes, but not necessarily good, not necessarily evil. (Some though, perhaps just horny and misguided.) It is a minor triumph of the film that we are not asked to endure the whiny self-important complainer whom the audience is just
waiting to get offed in the next reel.
Reprisals and turn-arounds however, are sudden and brutal, and that mood is helped tremendously by the occasionally rapidfire, staccato editing of Chris Gill, working with excellent footage shot by Anthony Dod Mantle.
Generally a rather nihilistic film,
28 Days Later seems to say that in the face of such calamity, the tendency will be for little pockets of madness to bloom, merely echoing the insane society that’s just been eradicated. Garland seems to say that, in the end, man is his own worst enemy. (At least with the infected, there is no pretense of culture and civilization, while indulging in one’s basest desires.)
Which is not to say the film is all doom and gloom. There are surprisingly somber and melancholy notes struck in this dirge: Jim’s discovery of his parents’ fates; choral music playing during the taxi ride through the devastated and deserted city.
There is a strain of hope, however fleeting and ephemeral, that runs throughout the film, carrying us along with it, doing its best to raise us above the detritus and leavings of a society perhaps better off dead.
Dead AgainFrom the precious few moments of Ana’s (Sarah Polley) last night of normalcy, to her escape from a suburbia rapidly descending into chaos, to the quick-cut opening title montage set to Johnny Cash’s Revelations-tinged “The Man Comes Around” (with the credit letters scattering like blood in a high wind), it is immediately established that this is a slicker version of the original 1979
Dawn of the Dead.
What is also instantly obvious is that director Zack Snyder and his team seem to have taken a page from the rushing, rabid hordes of
28 Days Later; gone are the shambling, lethargic zombies of the original
Dead trilogy. What we have here are strangely energetic and limber zombies, as if fresh from an aerobics class taught by an undead—though still horribly hyper—Richard Simmons.
What we also have here, in light of this article, is a curious paradox: What is possibly the most visceral and graphic of the three films we’re taking a look at, is also the most entertaining. “Entertaining” in that it pretty much sticks to audience expectations of what this sort of movie is supposed to deliver. (And yes, here we
are asked to endure the whiny self-important complainer who we’re just
waiting to get offed in the next reel. There is also the macho alpha male whom we at first hate, then find ourselves rooting for by film’s end.)
As with George Romero’s original vision, the exact reason for the zombie epidemic is left unstated (though the religious/supernatural reason is given a boost here by a televangelist who utters one of the best taglines in cinema history: “When there is no more room in Hell, the Dead will walk the earth”), and the mall setting—of which much has been said in the past by the more critically-minded of us gorehounds—is also left intact.
And although we do catch glimpses of societal breakdown, what we are more privy to here is the attempted
rebuilding of society. Crossroads Mall becomes the stage for this new community, the idea of mall-as-Heaven, where everything you might possibly want can be found, an air-conditioned Paradise isolated from the Hell of Zombieville outside.
But what eventually comes to the fore is the fact that this is merely just another state of living death, mall-as-Limbo. (Though the indictment against mall culture is still present, it is perhaps not as overt as in the original.)
Again, as to be expected, the Paradise-turned-Limbo comes to an end, and the survivors are forced to flee once more, in the hopes of finding a more permanent surcease from the insatiable dead.
The 1979 original is considered a classic of horror cinema, described by David J. Skal as a “razor-edged social satire” and “an indelible image of consumerism gone mad.” Given that Snyder’s remake doesn’t add anything significant to the equation—and in some instances, actually mutes the anti-mall culture statement—it could very well be leveled with the accusation of being “unnecessary, but well-made,” as was the 1990 remake of
Night of the Living Dead.
Quite possibly. But at least it’s well-made.
And there
is a cameo by special make-up effects guru Tom Savini (who directed the 1990
Night). And can anyone honestly say they’ve seen the brilliant Sarah Polley in a role like this before, kicking zombie butt?! I think not!
Last words
So at the end of it all, why
are we fascinated by these films of death and destruction? Is it only here that we can secretly and comfortably acknowledge our own mortality, accepting the presence of the ever-hovering shadow on the doors of our own existence? Is it that we wish to witness societal breakdown, wondering how we would react in that situation, whether it would bring out the best, or worst, in us? Or is it because we delight in seeing others' misery? (Better them than us...)
Perhaps the answer lies in the term itself. The word "apocalypse," after all, contrary to popular belief, does not mean the end of the world. It comes from the Greek,
apokalypsis, literally, "uncovering" or "revelation." (A synonym for "apocalypse" is "disclosure.") Perhaps we are fascinated by these films because we see
truths in them, about ourselves, and the nature of our existence.
Or do we just bloody like being scared out of our wits?
Maybe it's a combination of
all of these reasons, and quite possibly, even more, unknown to anyone except God and our private, most secret selves.
Parting shot: Due to the graphic nature of these films, those easily repulsed, or with weak stomachs and hearts, should probably not even consider watching them. You have been warned.
(
Cabin Fever,
28 Days Later, and
Dawn of the Dead OS’s courtesy of impawards.com.)
(The above is a slightly altered version of an article previously published in 2004.)
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