Black Summer | An Intimate look at the Apocalypse

"[Sun gives a monologue in Korean* that Velez interprets]

Yeah they died in the crash and then they woke up   

It's true. It's not a fucking joke

They weren't bitten no they just died

anything that dies turns" - EP5 "Diner"

 "My daughter

I lost my daughter

I need to go to the stadium" - Rose, EP1 "Human Flow"

Black Summer is a Zombie Horror Series and a spin-off prequel of SyFy's Z Nation. It was created by Karl Schaefer and John Hyams and produced by The Asylum created for Netflix. Black Summer is slated for a Season 2 but has been delayed to 2021 due to the pandemic. It stars the Acting Talents of Jaime King(Rose), Justin Chu Cary(Spears), Christine Lee (Ooh "Sun" Kyungsun), Sal Velez Jr (William Velez), Kelsey Flower (Lance), and Erika Hau (Carmen). For a full list of cast and crew. 

When Black Summer premiered in April of last year I was impressed by its the cinematic quality of its camerawork and the scope. In many post apocalyptic stories we are introduced to the world after society has collapsed and the new order has settled into place. Sometimes the character wake up from a coma into a zombified hellscape and sometimes reports of "rioters" or a new-fangled "rash illness" drone from the radio as the cities are quickly overcome and the protagonist becomes a badass overnight.  More often than not the early days of the apocalypses are skipped over as writers are more concerned with constructing their New Vegas then putting feet on the ground in the Battle of Yonkers. Black Summer shows us the very early moments of the apocalypses. 

For those that don't know Black Summer was created by the creators of Z Nation and is a spin-off set in the early violent days of the apocalypse. As Schaefer said in his 2018 ComicCon Interview ,"Black Summer is before the apocalypse got weird and was just scary". Black Summer abides by the same logic as its predecessor but is rapidly different in tone. Unlike Z Nation where the denizens of the apocalypse are jaded and battle hardened, Black Summer deals with everymen who are afraid, paranoid, and unskilled and to take a page from the canon don't know how to give "mercy"**. Where Z Nation is clearly fight, Black Summer shows us the flight response as even a single zombie becomes an obstacle that is almost impossible to overcome. 

Black Summer's scope is small taking place over a few days of the zombie apocalypse. Like a found footage film BS has an almost documentary style following the characters in long tracking shots with scenes following seamlessly into the next. Each episode is titled simply as a chapter and this is a great way of visualizing the story not as a compartmentalized episodic plot but as a continuous flowing narrative. Each chapter is told through a series of scenes as we pan back and forth between the characters often seeing the same events from different perspectives. For viewers that get bored at long tracking shots, atmospheric location setting, or a lot of running ala Invasion of the Body Snatchers(1978) than Black Summer may not be the best fit. But fans of slow burn, (Blue Ruin(2013) is a great comparison here) or more atmospheric work will have much to enjoy. For the indifferent Black Summer offers something for everyone whether it's intense action scenes or white knuckle drama. The show trades between its various aspects well giving each of its genre aspects equal treatment under its virtuoso cinematography. 

Black Summer unsurprisingly for a grimdark apocalypse show has a revolving door of characters and doesn't pull their punches at their inevitable death/reanimation. Here I would like to give a few words some of the most memorable characters. 

ROSE: Our lead protagonist is Rose, a midwestern housewife who bereft of both husband and safety now has to brave the horrors of the city to find her daughter. While I enjoyed Rose character growth and King's fantastic performance I can't say that Rose had the most dynamic character arc. That being said her determination, compassion, and strength of will help round out her more striad storyline.

 SUN: Another great female lead is Ooh "Sun" Kyungsun. Played by Christine Lee, Sun is a North Korean refugee separated from her mother during the apocalypse. Dealing with a language barrier is hard enough in day-to-day life but in an apocalypse it can be deadly. Sun fights aggressively to prove herself as worthy in situations where others would outright dismiss her and proves to be one of the most strong and badasses characters in the series. 

LANCE: "[T]he guy that's terrible at the Apocalypse. You'd think he'd be the first to die.". Let's be honest, Lance is terrible. He's an idiot, a coward, and just in generally bad at life. It's these flaws however that make him such a strong character. Lance is the everyman, a representation of all the stupid unprepared people, (including yours truly), who are not in any which way ready for the apocalypse. Episode 4 "Alone" almost entire focuses on Lance and features one of the best character arcs of the series as Lance realizes that there comes a point where he is going to have to fight. Long story short Lance is the underdog. He's us and that's why we root for him. 

Another great aspect in terms of casting is the amount of representation and diversity. Black Summer features a surprisingly refreshing amount of racial and cultural diversity. Hyams stated in an interview that one of the running themes of the show was "essentially the idea of an American refugee crisis in our country but in the kind of genre confines of what we would call a kind of viral outbreak zombie Apocalypse". For characters such as Sun, Carmen, and Manny, the experience of being a refugee is a lived one. Black Summer does representation right. Not by shoehorning in minority actors but by creating the space by telling stories from a variety of perspectives and experiences. Black Summer also features Mustafa Alabssi, a deaf actor, in his debut role as Ryan. The deaf community is grossly underrepresented in both the horror genre and in general in media and I wanted to use this time to give kudos to his fantastic performance. While we're on the subject I would like to mention that they was a lack of visible LGBT representation in the series but since people don't spend a lot of time discussing who they want to bang  during the apocalypse I can give it a pass. 

The first thing I noticed about Black Summer was the amount of polish that went into the cinematography. Yaron Levy and Spiro Grant worked together to create a well-oiled cinematic experience with close quarter tracking shots and wide angle establishing shots that constantly keep the camera in motion. Like the characters the camera rarely sits still as the characters are always running from someone or something underlining the sense of unease in the show as the characters are rarely safe. Another aspect of the filming was the large amount of cinematic language used throughout the show, (I.E the use of framing to distinguish the groups of characters and their shifting alliances in EP5 "Diner"). Black Summer is intelligently and masterfully shot providing a feast for the eyes for both the horror fan and cinephile. 

Black Summer has an incredible minimal soundtrack with much of its sound design amplified by its use of silence and ambient sound. The scoring that is provided is done by Alec Puro, (The Fosters, Deadsy) which falls into the modern ambient horror style. Puros scoring is innocuous, and pairs perfectly with both the aesthetic and cleanness of the visual but also knows how to heightened an emotional moment if needed. 

Black Summer excels with a strong cinematic style, dynamic characters, and an intense tradeoff between its horror and drama elements. BS breathes new life into a genre that for the most part had been written off proving that its execution not themes that makes a story universal. Through some may dislike the Slow Burn Narrative and Atmospheric Storytelling for the rest Black Summer is the next show to keep you up all night. 

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*As a stylistic choice Sun and Ryan are not subtitled. I have no idea if the dialogue Velez spoke in this scene has any correlation to what Sun was actually saying or if he was just grandstanding. That being said if you do know of translations of either of the characters scenes let me know down below in the comments. 

**I realise that not everyone who reads this article will be familiar with the originally show. In Z Nation, Giving Mercy is the act of killing a person before they become a Zombie, or if it is already turned giving them there second Death so that they no longer are one of the undead. Also If I didn't make it clear in the article above in the Z Nation universe everyone is infected with the zombie virus but only becomes "Symptomatic" after there death whether they have been bitten by zombies or not. This is one of the reasons why euthanasia is such a important theme in the work. 

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Important Links 

https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/#educate

https://traveloregon.com/things-to-do/ways-to-help-during-oregon-wildfires/