Tuesday, December 23, 2008

The Zombie Diaries-BBC


The introduction to the film shows a platoon of the British army clearing a small collection of farmhouses, with them are two scientists who take a tissue sample from a deceased civilian who appears to have reanimated, then shot. Then the titles roll.

The film's first chapter, "The Outbreak," begins in the city of London, emphasizing both the dismissive and paranoid reactions of the population to an unspecified disease outbreak that is gradually making its way to Britain. The film then moves to footage of a documentary crew's travel to the countryside, where, in the process of filming material related to the virus, the characters encounter the zombie outbreak firsthand. The story of these four individuals is revisited in the second half of the movie.

The second chapter, "The Scavengers," takes place one month later. Two men (one of whom is American) and one woman travel around in small car armed only with a rifle, in search of food and radio parts.

The final chapter, "The Survivors," tells the story of a larger group of uninfected people who have set up camp on a farm. They divide their time doing reconnaissance of surrounding areas, holding off the endless stream of incoming zombies, and bickering amongst themselves. In the opening scene of the chapter, the audience watches as "the survivors" calmly execute the approaching infected. By the conclusion, however (by which time viewers have been jolted back in time to the first nights of the documentary crew at the beginning of the film), the word "survivors" becomes a distinctly ironic title, as all but potentially two (one seen surviving, the other missing) of the characters dying.

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