ArghZombies

Source: antiquated.omens on Instagram.

I'm not even sure where to start with describing this video, but let's go with the choreography and the tricky videography that captures it. It's hypnotic and conveys so much visceral emotion, and tentative hope. From a technical perspective, I suspect they're utilising variable speed, and multiple cameras focused on different areas of action, which are then stitched together in post production. This is what gives it the uncanny quality of something that might be AI (because almost everything in frame is also in focus).

And then there's the overall story in the full video:

The story is set at an all boys school in the UK in the near future (2034) and opens to the protagonist moving through a school hall of reposing or unconscious school boys. As he passes, they begin to stir and awaken.

In the next scenes the protagonist seems to cast himself as the schoolyard bully antagonising some of the boys while others begin to admire and assist in his bullying and chaotic revelry (perhaps to avoid being bullied themselves). In this first half of the story he seems to be the epitome of rebelliousness and unrepressed masculinity in a setting notably devoid of any adults. He is the unforgiving storm bringing chaos to listlessness.

The protagonist and his admirers get high on technology (literally), and the tension that has been building culminates in a scene reminiscent of Fight Club with one of the boys finally landing a punch on the protagonist during a fight. We, the viewers, are left in this suspended moment of tension, just like the boys watching the fight, wondering how this will resolve, and the protagonist reveals he might not be quite the brutal bully we assumed at the beginning of the story. He smiles and embraces the boy who fought back, rather than escalating with further violence, and therefore galvanises his status as the leader in the eyes of the other boys. This brings us to the conclusion of the first half of the story with all of the boys arranged around him in confident solidarity.

In the second half of the story, everything flips in a catharsis of some of the most evocative and beautiful choreography I've ever seen. The school boys now move together in an emergence of order from controlled chaos. In contrast, the protagonist stands calm and unaffected at the centre. He is now the eye of the storm.

Like an empty fire Like your desire Like an empty fire Stand tall, go higher

This arrangement of 'The Point of No Return' has me in such a chokehold.