28 Days Later
The Days Are Numbered
A group of animal rights activists break into a laboratory and manage to release a rage virus…
28 days later, Jim (Cillian Murphy) wakes up in a deserted hospital…
The opening scenes of Danny Boyles much anticipated zombie film reminded me a lot of Day of the Triffids with the solitary figure of Jim wandering through the deserted streets of London trying to work out what has happened.
The sense of emptiness, achieved through snatched and grainy shots of deserted landmarks, is both stunning and harrowing.
Before long, he meets the zombies. These are not your common or garden shufflers; infected by the rage virus they are both fast and angry.
Eventually a group of four survivors gather in a tower block. The Britishness of the film comes across very strongly here - rather than collecting an arsenal and going on the warpath, these survivors are reduced to trying to collect rainwater in plastic buckets and living off whatever is still edible - chocolate.
However, plots must progress and, in this case one of the survivors, Frank (Brendan Gleeson) has managed to pick up a radio broadcast from a military unit calling on survivors to head to a blockade near Manchester. This sounds like their last best hope so they pack and go.
On the surface, 28 Days Later is a new take on the zombie genre - the zombies are fast, agile and angry - but the core of the film goes right back to the roots laid down by Romero in trying to use the horror genre to make a social statement.
Unfortunately, while Dawn of the Dead was a brilliant satire on consumerism, 28 Days Later lays it all on a little bit too thick so that, instead of exploring the way people try to survive - and the extremes they are willing to go to - in a desperate situation, the film starts to become a parody of itself with the soldiers becoming increasingly unbelievable as the one-note villains.
That said, who knows how any of us would react in a situation as desperate as this.
Sunday 13 Apr 2003 | Paul Pritchard | Horror, Quick Takes
