Spoiler Discussion

1. The sexual slavery aspect of the military cult was disgusting, but also provocative. The reason West (Christopher Eccleston) goes through all this trouble is to get women- why? To give his military members a reason to live. The human survival angle seems like a “moral” excuse, tacked on to make the depravity of the action seem less intense. Is humanity really worth saving at the cost of tricking and abusing innocent women? What’s really being saved here? It’s only the preservation of a notion of entitlement and coercive violence.

2. West asserts that the violence done by the zombies is truly no different than the violence humanity normally inflicts on one another during events like war. Later it’s suggested that the rest of the world isn’t suffering from the disease and is just leaving England alone, in a quarantine. This is supported by the presence of the plane and the original ending of the film. The realization that no one did anything until 2 months had already passed, tinged the ending with a sense of somberness. If the infection had been any greater would anyone have survived? If the world wouldn’t do anything meaningful for an entire country for so long – then a larger issue could be cataclysmic. It was also a nifty re-articulation of the fight between self preservation and compassion and re-affirms that the former tends to win out.

3. Jim’s transformation at the end was awesome, even though it felt out of place. He never wanted to “kill” and even seemed to feel haunted by what he did to the young child he executed earlier. To go from that to literally gouging out a persons eyes seems a bit extreme. But, artistically and thematically the loss of humanity and transformation into a metaphysical zombie is beautiful. When both Selena and Hannah perceive him as a zombie, I genuinely expected at least one of them to kill him. It would’ve made sense and made the whole ending feel more tragic and fitting- as he loses his humanity he too is exterminated – the price he has to pay to protect his makeshift family. But instead, he survives the injuries, and makes it out for another month with the group before being rescued. I’m not used to the happy ending in a horror movie, so this felt nice to me on a personal level, even if it wasn’t what I wanted/expected.