The "Dead Island" Trailer (300 words)

I never played the 2011 video game Dead Island, in which the player battles zombies at a resort on a tropical island. But I did watch the game’s improbably brilliant announcement trailer by Axis Animation.

In just three minutes, the video sweeps you into the doomed struggle of a family trying to save each other and themselves in the midst of a horror show. To this day, it is regarded as one of the best game trailers ever. This is partly due to ingenious storytelling that unfolds in cinematic, slow-motion reverse chronology punctuated by glimpses of terrifying pursuit. These two narrative threads—one moving backwards, the other forwards—eventually meet. Even more extraordinary is the music by British composer Giles Lamb. 14 years after it was released, I still sometimes listen to the Dead Island theme on repeat.[1]

I love that someone took the job of creating a promotional trailer for a survival video game and produced a thrilling and tragic work of art. You care for this family; you grieve for them. It’s a reminder that beauty is always available to us, even in the most unlikely places.

If you watch it, keep in mind that it’s a promotion for a zombie combat game, and therefore bloody: you see the father attacking zombies with an axe; the young daughter being bitten and infected; etc. But if you have a mind that tends toward symbolism and metaphor, it’s easy to imagine all sorts of things the zombies might represent in real life.

We’ve entered the season of family, and of locating light in the darkness. It's our annual opportunity to afford ourselves some relief from old wounds, to discover what lessons we might learn, what bonds we might strengthen. To find the beauty—sometimes, the terrible beauty—in unlikely places.

[1] Giles Lamb’s theme music for the Dead Island trailer is on my writing mix, which I play on shuffle when I work. More about the mix here: https://raineyknudson.substack.com/p/89-brian-eno-an-ending-ascent