Things That Didn't Work...
3. Gerry's Family Are Given Nothing To Do
When a character is written out of a film or show, but the possibility of their return is not quite ruled out, they are said to have been 'put on a bus'. Here, Gerry's family are put on a boat. Having been rescued by Gerry's former colleague Thierry (Fana Mokoena), the Lanes are lifted from the panicked streets of Philadelphia and are flown by helicopter to a US Navy ship off the coast of New York. On board are leading scientists, top military personnel and a precocious virologist who seems to speak only in soundbites (perhaps it's nitpicking, but when racing against time to rescue humanity, do we really have to observe military protocol and pause to salute every brass bigwig that steps into shot?) It is here that Gerry is asked to help on the front line. He agrees, knowing that his family would be safer circling the Atlantic for days on end than braving the hordes back home. And it is here that his family practically disappears from the plot. Having passed his wife Karin (Mireille Enos) and daughters into the capable hands of the Navy, Gerry can concentrate on saving the world and anticipating a hero's return. His family, however, can look forward to the onset of cabin fever and staring at the ceiling on those anxious, sleepless nights. Gerry and Karin each have mobile phones, but his quickly runs out of battery and hers can barely receive a signal. So it becomes a waiting game. On the handful of occasions that we do return to the ship, we can never fully ignore that creeping thought at the back of our minds that tells us that this is the subplot. And so we prepare ourselves for the discovery that the ship has unwittingly allowed a bitten victim to board. We expect to be jostled back and forth between Gerry and his family as they each become reluctant action heroes and overcome the odds. If it sounds too obvious, then that's because it is. This doesn't happen. Instead, they wait. And wait. Karin could use this time to comfort Tommy, the stowaway orphan whose parents had sheltered the family before being overwhelmed by the attack (incidentally, and even by film standards, this lad seems to have recovered from his parents' death a little too quickly) but instead she finds other ways to alleviate her boredom. Namely, glaring at Thierry in that 'you've sent my husband to his death' way and sleeping with her ear to a faulty phone. It's probably just as well that the phone doesn't work, now that she finds herself with considerably fewer lines of dialogue than everyone else. And herein lies the filmmaker's dilemma: as these scenes are largely unnecessary, do you keep your audience invested in this family's tension by letting them stew for a bit longer, or do you offer them an obligatory zombie attack to tide them over until we're back to Brad? It's realism versus entertainment: one story's too boring, the other's too far-fetched.