Zombification

[Wojciech Derechowski]

Here is my rather uncharacteristic attempt to review a film.[0] The film is
Decay (2012) shot for the most part in the service tunnels of the LHC by
Luke Thompson & Co. who are PhD students working in CERN.
Decay is a zombie movie.

As physicists the filmmakers are able to overcome effortlessly one of the main
conditions as well as deficiencies of the known zombie attack models where it
is assumed that zombies do not attack/defeat other zombies[1] i.e. by simply
ignoring said condition. Does it do any good to the film? Yes, very much so.
And there is even one little programming joke about the Higgs. They must have
had great fun making that movie.

However, speaking about the film Luke Thompson said: "The theme and location
also gave us a great chance to do some satirical commentary on various aspects
of people’s perceptions of science ... So there are some hidden depths to the
film too, beyond us just having fun!"[2]

What are those depths is beyond me so let's simply move on a tangent by asking
what perceptions scientists have of that common perception by ordinary people.
That by and large was the topic of Michael Crichton's lecture for the AAAS in
1999.[3] Despite its rather stuffy subject the lecture, suprisingly, provides
the answer to the basic questions about the film: is it any good or how good
is it, the questions any reviewer will be well advised to answer.

Take the four basic rules of film storytelling: "Movie characters must be
compelled to act." [check]; "Movies need villains" [check]; "Movie searches
are dull"... well, the film characters are searching, literally, for an exit
from a dreadful situation, and "Movies must move"... a little limpy towards the
end but that's because people get wounded [check].

I give the film three bites out of four.

WD
[0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-NwLUPZWZc
[1] http://mysite.science.uottawa.ca/rsmith43/Zombies.pdf
[2] http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/10/cern-zombie-movie-decay/
[3] http://web.archive.org/web/20090517090745/http://www.michaelcrichton.com/
speech-scienceviewsmedia.html
--
Who is Entscheidungs and what is his problem?

[Juancho]

Wojciech Derechowski wrote:
> I give the film three bites out of four.

I think I'll bite and watch it. Being free on Youtube, I won't regret
paying the tickets for it; and I think I have beer at hand...