The weather used in the scene, thick rain and lightening are typical kinds weather used in horror films, these are used in a way that means the audiences vision is impaired and them not being able to see everything can cause tension within the audience, e.g. when the infected are in the manor house there is flashes of lightening as they run through the building this stops the audience from seeing everything going on, the director has purposely done this to play with the audiences fear of he unknown. Also this poor visibility could also have been used to show the characters 1st person view of the film.
The main character Jim is shown in a thin form when he is at the road block, he has been portrayed in this way to relate him to the infected, the director has been influenced in his shape by ‘nosferatu’, who had a tall thin body although Jim moves a lot faster than ‘nosferatu’ which is probably because modern audiences require the villains to be faster moving to further increase the fear of the film, as with this difference it will be harder to escape.
During this scene a infected is at the window and a flash of lightening illuminates his face, this lighting effect has been done so that the centre of his face is the brightest this makes him almost blend into the surrounding, this makes it seem that the infected could disappear very easily and fuels peoples worries about what is in the dark or what they cannot see, this is often explored in the horror genre. The lighting effect also makes the infected’s face look a brighter tone of red and seem even more bloody and gruesome.
I will now start to look at narrative in this scene and begin to discuss how this creates meaning and audience response.
I will start of by examining Toderov’s narrative theory, this scene can be argued to be one of two things, it may be an attempt to repair the disruption i.e. Jim releases the chained up infected person so that he may try to escape with the other people to safety and therefore they may attempt to return to ‘normality’. Or this may be a new disruption for the soldiers as they had a base that was safe and they had a standard a standard pattern to their day but by releasing the infected there ‘normality’ had been disturbed.
This film is unconventional in the way that according to Vladimir Propp’s theory of characterisation no character can easly be defined as having only one function but it can be argued that they are two or more possible other possible character functions. E.g. Jim who is thought to be the hero could actually be a false hero instead, Jim is the hero in the way that he is attempting to save himself and the other characters the ‘princess’ but to do this be brutally kills other characters of the film, so this makes him a false hero. Also Selena is the ‘princess’ as she is the prize for Jim if he completes his task but she is not an ordinary princess as unlike usual horror films where the princess is seen as a week person who needs saving.
This film also can be put into Claude Levis Strauss’ theory of binary oppositions. During this scene there is an obvious binary opposition between Jim and the officer, Jim is the good and the officer is the evil. Although this can be argued that this is not always true as Jim is not always good, killing people and with the officer it can be disputed that he is not actually evil, by allowing his men to rape the women he is allowing the human race to continue.
So these theories are not always true as some films like ‘28 days later’ break them in points, this means that the audience is not quit as sure as what will happen and is left guessing more, this will make the film more scary as the audience are left not knowing what could happen.
Narrative space is used will in this scene, Selena and the other girl are sitting in a rectangular shaped room which looks like it does not have many doors this makes it seem like there is know where for the characters to run to and they have no escape.
This film draws influences from many earlier horror films, it uses many dark shadows which the viewer cannot see what is in them, this technique comes from ‘Frankenstein’, where the director used dark spaces to cover things from the viewers. Also the shape of the infected comes from the German expressionist film ‘nosferatu’ where the monster is a tall thin person, like the infected. The way the infected move is a more advanced version of how the zombies moved in night of the living dead, although the zombies went slower than the infected in ‘28 days…’ they still have the same hobbling motion.
So in conclusion I have found that narrative and genre interrelate to create fear in the audience and to create meaning.
