Better than a doctor`s note

I love disaster movies. I think they remind me of a childhood fantasy I used to have that everyone in the world would vanish (except for my best friend and my mother and maybe Harrison Ford) and I wouldn`t have to go to school anymore. I think I really didn`t like my teacher that year, so the fantasies became quite elaborate.

I was delighted to find my childhood fantasy borne out in motion picture reality, but horrified by the scriptwriter`s solution to what to do with the people.

Georgina Guedes, Journalist, ITWeb

I imagined myself running carefree through shopping centres that were somehow still miraculously illuminated, carefully rationing tinned foods, ploughing up the neighbourhood park to plant rows of mealies and generally having a great time. The two things that worried me were that I wasn`t ever able to figure out what would happen to all the animals in the zoo and I could never satisfactorily explain what it was that had made all the other people vanish.

Last night, to dispel the shock of being back at work, we decided to opt for a bit of distraction, so we went to the video shop and took out 28 Days Later. The basic premise is that the protagonist wakes up in a hospital in London to find that the entire city has been evacuated. Apparently shooting the movie was a nightmare, because they actually had to keep all people out of the streets of each location. And the English are such a nice, tolerant bunch.

I was delighted to find my childhood fantasy borne out in motion picture reality, but horrified by the scriptwriter`s solution to what to do with the people. They had been infected with Rage, a disease that fills them with an insane bloodlust that is transferred through bodily fluids to their prey. These enraged, demon-like Londoners sleep during the day, but prowl the streets at night, searching for the few remaining sane victims.

I don`t think that I`ve ever been so scared while watching a movie. I spent most of it with my eyes clamped shut and a pillow wound around my head so I couldn`t hear the snarling. I wasn`t even able to appreciate the aesthetic of the magnificent scenes of a deserted London because I was hiding in anticipation of the inevitable fright. But it was a brilliant movie.

Today, on my way into work, I was again trying to figure out what I would do in the case of such an evacuation. My adult desires hadn`t altered too radically from those of my childhood self. I`d choose a bigger group of different people to stay behind with me (I`m over Harrison Ford), and I`d really miss sushi, but I still think having the whole city to myself would be kind of fun. But if the pay-off was having to put up with bloodthirsty-zombie-demon-incarnations of former colleagues, I`d rather stick to the daily grind and leave that fantasy well alone.

The Day After Tomorrow is coming out in a couple of months. That one promises worldwide devastation from just about every climatic disaster known to man and a few others besides. Perhaps that will offer an apocalyptic solution that rests more easily with me than a horror virus. I wait with anticipation...