It's All the Rage
28 Days Later... Reanimates Zombie Movies

When I first started seeing movies (I mean REALLY seeing them -- in that obsessive-compulsive way that future movie critics have), my friends and I were hooked on horror movies. We saw all the slasher flicks like A Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween, but what we really liked were the "cult" films, the low-budget horror movies that relied on bad special effects and good storytelling to scare people.

Seeing 28 Days Later... by director Danny Boyle reminded me of those old cult classics. Without elaborate special effects or eerie music, Boyle has returned to the heart of what makes people afraid. It really gets the blood pumping.

The story is frighteningly simple. Some animal activists break into a lab in England to free some chimpanzees that are the subject of gross experiments. A scientist catches them in the act and warns them not to release the animals, but (as you probably know) it's already too late. The animals are infected and pass on the infection through blood and saliva. One bite, one cut, and the infection spreads.

Twenty-eight days later we discover Jim (Cillian Murphy), a man on the verge of starvation waking up from a coma. No one is around, as Jim quickly discovers, and he struggles through the hospital looking for food. Once he ventures outside, he discovers London is as empty as the hospital. Upon stumbling into a church, however, he finds several bodies lying in the pews and makes the mistake of waking them up. Soon he is fleeing for his life.

Jim hooks up with other survivors, Mark (Noah Huntley) and Selena (Naomie Harris) who clue him in to the infection that has destroyed Great Britain. "The day before the radio and television stopped broadcasting, there were reports that the infection had spread to Paris and New York," Mark tells him. There is no government, no military, no police. Rescue is not an option. There is only survival.

Nevertheless, there are moments of hope, as Jim finds out. Finding food, finding other people, hearing a broadcast that -- although it may only be a recording -- offers a glimmer of civilization. In each small victory, however, there are setbacks. Zombies are everywhere, and survival means killing them. Later in the film, one character notes that he only sees humanity slaughtering humanity, just as it did the month before, and the month before that, and the month before that...

This is the strength of 28 Days Later.... The truly viciousness isn't in what the zombies do to people or in what the survivors do to the zombies. The most frightening moments are seen in what the survivors do to each other in order to survive. There comes a time in the film when the savagery of the characters is so severe it becomes indeterminate who is infected and who is not.

Shot entirely in digital video, the film has a very "real" look to it. The ease of setting up a six camera shot in DV allowed the crew the flexibility to work with police and local authorities to hold up traffic in key locations while they filmed some of the scenes of deserted streets and city locales. The result is a creepy sense of desolation that looks authentic and not like a studio backlot.

While horror films are not everyone's cup of tea, this one is worthy of note. Despite the violence and gore, there is a thought-provoking question beneath it all: What does survival mean, and what will we do to ensure it?

MY RATING: 7 out of 10.

RATED: R
RUN TIME: 112 min.