28 weeks Later

28 Weeks Later Intro Analysis

To help us understand what makes a horror film a horror film, we decided to analyse the intros to several horror films each. This will help us with our own horror film intro about zombies. This film in particular is a great film to refer to because it’s your typical zombie film. A biological virus escapes and turns everyone into zombies who gets bitten by one.

The targeted audience of this film is for 18 years and older, due to the violence and blood. It wouldn’t suit anyone younger. This is the age that people really start to like that gore, blood and jumpy films and this film fits perfectly.

The genre is clearly horror because of the jumpy scenes, blood and obviously the zombies. 28 Weeks later was released in 2007 and it’s the sequel to 28 Days Later after being a big success. The film consists of chase scenes, gun scenes and hiding scenes. It was directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo who also directed Intacto. Intacto was a thriller so Juan had some experience with making thrilling films, which he could put into 28 Weeks Later.

The intro to the film is 3 minutes long and introduces 7 characters to the story. 4 male and 3 female - 2 elderly, 2 in their 30’s, 1 in their 20’s and 2 children. The scene starts off in a dark house, with candles lit to set the mood. This straight away suggests that this is a horror film because its dark with only littler light. This creates a scary atmosphere. The characters are eating around a table talking about the zombies. This suggests that they are comfortable talking and that they have been there a long time. What also suggests this is the fact they have photos of friends and family set up on a shelf and wall. They must have barricaded themselves inside this building and have been there for a long time. Their clothes are dirty with holes in suggesting that they have only one pair of clothes or hardly have any to wear which also suggests they have been there for a long time. The food they are eating at the table isn’t anything special, it just looks like pasta with a basic sauce so that means they obviously don’t have much food. Maybe they’re saving the better food for later or maybe they don’t have any at all. So just to some up so far they’re clothes are in bad condition, its really dark, bad food and they’re all friends or family.

The camera is either kept nice and still to show everyone or it’s hand-held, suggesting that they can’t keep the camera very still. The shots are mostly close up to really put you right into the film. They really want you to feel as if you are a character in the film sitting down at the table eating dinner with them. They want you to feel comfortable enough to listen to them talking.

Suddenly there are loud knocks at the door with young boy shouting for help. The tension now builds up from the music slowly getting louder, shall they risk blowing their cover to the zombies by letting the boy in or shall they leave him. The music really gets the audience going because they’re not sure what’s going to be behind the door so they’re getting really scared. As the music builds up, the cut-rate gets quicker which adds to the tension. As soon as the boy is let in the house the cut-rate slows back down which relieves the tension.

The boy starts to talk about how zombies were chasing him while the girl goes over to one of the walls in the house, she removes a cloth that was blocking a hole. She looks through the hole. The music builds up and the boy says there were loads of zombies. As he says that the camera is close up to him. While this is happening there is a build up of music again getting louder. This suggests that something bad is going to happen. Suddenly a zombie appears in front of the hole and its arm goes through the wall. This really makes the audience jump because the music builds up and you don’t know when something is going to happen or so even if something is going to happen, because nothing jumpy happened before.

So what makes a horror film from 28 Weeks Later? I would say little light to make it dark and gloomy. A mix of hand-held and still camera work to make it seem professional but also put you into the film. Close up shots help put you in the film and to make it seem more serious. And finally the build up music build the tension up to get the audience scared.