28 Days Later (2002) Review

28 Days Later (2002) Review

 

You hear the title 28 Days Later and you just know it’s going to be a scary movie based on how ominous it sounds without even knowing anything else about it. Though it’s cited as one of the best zombie movies of the 2000’s, it’s not, actually. What I mean is it’s not technically a zombie movie, but it is one of the best post-apocalyptic horror films of that decade.

It begins with hardcore animal rights activists breaking into a lab to free some chimps being tested with a deadly virus that induces rage and is easily spread. The activists seem to be trying to do something positive, but they inadvertently do the worst thing imaginable. I think the message being conveyed here is not to test on animals in the first place. As the title alludes to, we jump ahead nearly a month to a guy waking up naked in a hospital bed. This is our protagonist Jim, played by Cillian Murphy, and he has been in a coma for the past 28 days from a bike accident, so he has no idea what is going on when he gets up and starts wandering through the desolate hospital and into the eerily empty streets of London. He ventures into a church and is attacked by a priest infected with the virus—talk about a way to shake someone’s faith. He’s rescued by two non-infected survivors and learns about what happened, as well as how brutal and unforgiving the new world order is, but whether or not it’s just London that has turned post-apocalyptic or the entire globe is unclear, so along with a couple other survivors Jim sets out to find a solution to the rage virus.

The reason 28 Days Later isn’t actually a zombie movie is because the virus doesn’t seem to turn people undead. It spreads within 30 seconds and turns victims into mindless raging versions of themselves with seriously scary-looking red eyes, but the dead aren’t rising again, nor are they hungry for flesh or brains, the living are just becoming infected and spreading the virus to other living people. For arguments sake, though, we'll still call them zombies, just a new version. Another big difference between 28 Days Later and older zombie films such as Night of the Living Dead (which, although different, influenced this film quite a bit) is how quick these infected people can move. The Dawn of the Dead remake from 2004 popularized the idea of fast-moving zombies in horror films, but 28 Days Later was the cinematic debut for them, and it’s a simple change that makes them scary in a whole new way. In fact, that’s how I feel about 28 Days Later as a whole: it doesn’t reinvent the genre (not that it needed to) but it reinvents just enough elements while telling a pretty standard post-apocalyptic survival story to make it feel fresh and new instead of stale and repetitive.

There is definitely a focus on the characters and building suspense over action and conventional horror movie scares, but that’s not to say it isn’t scary. There are several disturbing scenes with infected people attacking the survivors, and while there are some bloody moments throughout, it isn’t nearly as graphic or exploitative with the violence as many older, more traditional zombie films. On a rather low budget of five million pounds, English director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland found clever ways to evade it looking cheap or silly, like having characters exchange intriguing dialogue instead of cutting away and showing too much of the back story, or filming in dark settings and using quick cuts. This was one of the earliest films to be shot partially on digital video, which gives it a strange look at times, but also helps the whole thing feel more authentic and gritty, with an almost documentary or found footage aesthetic at times. There are a few questionable “artsy” moments though and a bit too much shaky cam for some of the more kinetic scenes. The music is interesting, but adds to the scariness most of the time, doing so most effectively in the final act. Cillian Murphy was perfectly cast as Jim, and most of the other actors do a good job as well. In a character-focused story like this, there’s a large dependency on the performances, and they sell it well. 

Like many of the great films before it in the same genre, 28 Days Later gives the viewer moments of optimism along the way only to yank that hope out from under you and plunge you back into fright and despair along with the characters. The original ending was reshot to give it a less depressing conclusion, which I think was the right decision, but I am still surprised that after the film’s international success, profitability, and contribution to the resurgence of zombie films, a sequel took five years to be released. We’ll look at the next chapter tomorrow!