Black Smoke and Red Dust

THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (2019)

Eleanor Tomlinson and Rafe Spall run from a Martian war machine in a promotional image. For this version, the familiar steampunk design for the alien "boilers on stilts" are replaced with a more organic, insectoid look.

PETER Harness' three-part BBC adaptation of H.G. Wells' seminal invasion novel is not only the first British television stab at the story, but one that follows a female lead. Even before the Martians arrive, Amy (Eleanor Tomlinson) and partner George (Rafe Spall) have problems. In quite the Edwardian scandal, George has left his wife/cousin for the younger Amy, which has caused friction with his politician brother Frederick (Rupert Graves). Denied a divorce, Amy announces she is expecting George's baby. It seems their only friends are sprightly astronomer Ogilvy (Robert Carlyle) and maid Mary (Freya Allan), although the latter is killed under a pile of rubble during the first wave of attacks. 

Wells' narrator hero is described as a "professed and recognised writer on philosophical themes," yet here George is a Woking journalist and superficial wet fish, branded a coward by his ex-wife and failing to help a dying soldier. The flash forward/back structure of the leading players separation denies any workable screen time for Amy and George, which is probably for the best, as when they do share scenes Tomlinson and Spall's chemistry is insipid (Spall seems under varying levels of sedation). Thankfully this is Amy's tale, providing much needed ballast in what is more than just an angle on our current fixation with political correctness; unlike most female evaluations of major franchises, the character is intelligent and driven in complex, emotional situations.

Over 120 years after its first serialisation, the influence of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds remains; this is because of the heady contexts, which include colonialism, natural selection and religion. Pictured is Frank R. Paul's cover for Amazing Stories, August 1927.

The main allegory of Wells' novel - decaying imperialism - is illustrated by Amy having been raised in the British Raj, and the jingoistic comments of the military and politicians. "It seems that something has arrived in England" announces Chamberlain (Nicholas Le Prevost), a battle cry that today can be viewed as xenophobia. Initially planned to screen over the 2018 festive season, it would have been particularly hard for the masses to swallow such a slow, doom-laden miniseries; the death and devastation is shrouded in war machine black smoke and wasteland red hues, highlighting another interpretation of the narrative: climate change. In fact The War of the Worlds has always portrayed a foreboding and prophetic end of days template: Orson Welles' radio broadcast occurred during the escalation of Nazi Germany, George Pal's 1953 film was released at the start of the Cold War, and Steven Spielberg, following his 2005 big screen take, said that "after 9/11 [the book] began to make more sense to me."

Blighted Blighty

CHILDREN OF MEN (2006)

28 WEEKS LATER (2007)

The Americans make London their 51st state, and prove
as dangerous a threat as the ‘infected,’ in 28 WEEKS LATER.

IRONICALLY, Danny Boyle’s 28 DAYS LATER – an energetic blend of THREADS and George A. Romero’s THE CRAZIES – actually lead the so-called zombie renaissance even though it’s monsters were living, shrieking, blood-vomiting ‘infected.’ It can be argued that Boyle’s masterwork spawned the wave of undead viscera that shows no sign of abating. From the social breakdown of Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, to the political quagmire of Joe Dante’s MASTERS OF HORROR: HOMECOMING, the standard zombie diet has consisted of two delicacies: human meat – preferably intestines – and subtext; you are what you eat, and if you happen to eat people, there is anthropological gristle to chew.

Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s 28 WEEKS LATER has an American-led NATO force resettling British civilians on an Isle of Dogs safe haven – a metaphor for Baghdad’s Green Zone - after the ‘infected’ from the first film have starved to death. This War on Terror, like its real counterpart, is similarly self-destructive in its bullying authority figures, demoralised combat divisions and fractured family units, a stillborn Iraqesque commentary that sees the Americans smugly declare the war against infection over. But when the situation quickly reaches Code Red they fittingly shoot at will, firebombing city blocks and releasing biological weapons. Here, fear of the ‘infected’ is a horror clearly working closely to the terror of protocol.

This UK preview poster for Fresnadillo’s sequel to 28 DAYS LATER draws heavily from the symbolism of the vastly superior virus movie THE CRAZIES.

28 WEEKS LATER lazily rehashes the first film’s ideas; the only addition to the virus Rage’s cannon is the hint that the ‘infected’ may be undergoing a kind of memory-recall that Romero’s zombies have long since taken for granted. London suggests a decimation of civilisation in general and heroes are hard to find; the two most sympathetic people, Don (a wizened Robert Carlyle) and his naturally immune wife Alice (Catherine McCormack), set the new outbreak in motion in a world of relenting doom. In fact, the film rolls in like a poisonous dust cloud of nihilism. Fresnadillo presents 28 DAYS LATER’s trademark shutter-strobe jump cuts even more frenetically than the original, adding only to the confusion. The director makes the fatal mistake of believing that chaos equals fear, and while he may have been trying to purposely disorient his audience, in reality, all he does is frustrate, equating the whole premise to that of a Rage victim: quick, loud and with little control.

Alfronso Cuaron’s CHILDREN OF MEN is a BLADE RUNNER for the 21st century, telling of a dystopian future where mass infertility has led to a world without children. Unlike Stanley Kramer’s comparable ON THE BEACH – where Australians await killer radiation with good-humoured stoicism – here the Londoners of 2027 respond to the apocalyptic sterility with a howl of self pity, which is embodied in a quasi-fascist democracy of riot shields, caged refugees and feral gangs ("The world has collapsed, only Britain soldiers on.") Beautifully filmed in battle-scarred colour drained hues, the film climaxes in a Hadean vision of Bexhill-on-Sea which most closely resembles war torn Bosnia. In this existence of rubble, Cuaron comments on the problems society faces today: racism, terrorism, government-inspired paranoia and decaying infrastructures.

Theo (Clive Owen) and Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey) hold the future of humanity literally in their hands in CHILDREN OF MEN. This scene has warring factions stunned into immobility by the sight of a baby.

Non-British filmmakers, who observe the strangeness of this land with the empathy of an outsider’s eye, direct both of these releases; they also add to the grand tradition of British horrors that turn familiar sights into killing fields. Romero’s American Living Dead movies, a quartet of films spanning four decades, saw its zombies become powerful metaphors for racism, consumerism, vivisection and class. Yet there is something particular about phantasms that are placed within familiar British sites, a juxtaposition that has long been exploited by purveyors of the uncanny. Ever since Bram Stoker brought Dracula across the waters from Transylvania to Whitby, and H.G.Wells deposited his extraterrestrial invasion on the outskirts of Woking, these tales seem more credible when played out against the down-to-earth, uptight backdrop of Britain. The United States can use its landmarks to startling effect – one need look no further than the climax to PLANET OF THE APES – but it doesn’t have Britain’s deep, dark ocean of history, and perhaps it is because of this abyss which makes such scenarios resonate more subconsciously.

Layer upon layer of London soil reveals burials from prehistoric and medieval times; the city is one giant grave, from plague pits by The Houses of Parliament to St Paul’s foundations built upon remains of previous eras. One particular location – the brooding labyrinth of the London Underground – has come to embody the morbid groaning of horror’s repressed psyche. DEATH LINE surely inspired John Landis when he let his AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON loose at Tottenham Court Road station. It's here that an unsuspecting passenger is stalked and savaged in a film which trades heavily on the distinction between English locations (Yorkshire pubs, West End porno theatres, Piccadilly Circus, Tower Bridge and London Zoo) and lycanthrope fantasy. More recently, V FOR VENDETTA ran into unexpected controversy when its tube-bound finale chimed too closely with the real-life horrors of the July 7th bombings. Its fitting that the multi-lined network has such appeal; after all, the reason why the tunnel curves between Knightsbridge and South Kensington is because it was impossible to excavate through skeletal catacombs.