28 days later

Over the Christmas break we were told to analysis a video we watch in class. I wasn’t in for this lesson, because I felt in ill during the first 5 minutes of the lesson and decide to go home. Though I did ask one of my classmates, to inform me on what happened in the lesson and told me that we had to write about Alfred Hitchcock and do an analysis of a film that they watch in class. My classmate told me that one of the films that they watch was 28 days later which to my benefit had already seen in my own time so I was able to write about it as I will be doing now.

28 days later begins with an incident with chimpanzees with a virus which infects to a few humans, which is the start of the pandemic then the screen goes blank, words come across the screen saying 28 days later…, which we see man getting up from a hospital bed. We as the audience already have an idea of what may have happened to London outside of the hospital because then man wakes up and the hospital is very quiet which gets us as the audience pondering as to what is going on, due to the fact that we witnessed the scene with the infected chimps. We automatically know now that something has gone very wrong when he leaves the room and goes out into the hallway where there is no sound of people of any sort, hospital clothing scattered around on the floor, to further build suspense all the phones in the hospital do not seem to be working as the man checks each phone for a connection, cans of soft drinks are scattered across the floor as the vending machine is smashed right in. This connotates to the audience that something must have gone terribly wrong for the phones not to be working and vending machines smashed right in. We as the audience feel that something has definitely gone wrong from the first scene which the character within the film was not able to witness and unaware of. In which the law of Alfred Hitchcock that if the audience knows more than the character then that is the way to create suspense. To further support the audience idea of that the city must have been infected, there is a long shot of the themes river and we can see the iconic wheel in the distance, with no people at all, this shows that he really is all alone in the city. We constantly see iconic places of London one after another to emphasise his aloneness. A very slow non-digetic sound plays in the background as he walks through the city and gradually intensifies, the beats become fast, as he begins to realise what has happened while reading missing people notes on the statue in Piccadilly Circus.