Danny Boyle's poignant and shocking 28 Days Later is a zombie movie you should see and this is why.
There are hundreds (maybe thousands) of zombie movies in existence. Here's a must-see movie if you're interested in the genre, or just looking for a great movie to rent this weekend.
28 Days Later
While 28 Days Later is not technically a zombie movie and many purists refuse to consider it as such, in many ways it's a perfect update of George A. Romero's classic Night Of the Living Dead which introduced the modern world to the zombie film.
Danny Boyle's "Infected" in 28 Days Later are not the stiff, shuffling, reanimated corpses that we tend to think of when we hear the word zombie. Instead they have been exposed to the Rage virus which turns them swiftly-moving and snarling, almost like animals infected with rabies and just as mindless and hungry for human flesh. Call them zombies 3.0, if you will - stronger, faster and harder to kill.
The film's chilling opening sequence opens in the intensive care ward in a hospital where a young man lies naked and unconscious in a recovery room. He is a bike courier who has been in a coma for 28 days and when he awakens, it's to a seemingly abandoned city of London. He wanders the streets putting pieces of the puzzle together and becoming increasingly alarmed yet emboldened until suddenly he discovers that he is not alone. When he meets two other survivors, he learns that the entire island of Britain has been overcome by a virus and that those who are not dead have become blood-spewing, hyperactive zombies.
What follows is fairly loyal to the zombie genre as the survivors try to find a safe place, then the next safe place, then the next safe place while battling with the opposing need for human contact while trying to remain as self-reliant as possible. Normally mild-mannered human beings become ruthless killers when one of their own becomes infected and a split-second decision needs to be made to save them all. The third act of the film mirrors the final scene of Night Of the Living Dead but takes it much further, as the survivors reach a safe haven outside of Manchester where a battalion of soldiers have built a fortress. What follows asks the question what might happen not only the morning after but a month after? In 28 Days Later it’s safer amongst the Infected.
As in Night Of the Living Dead but even more so, 28 Days Later is so successfully unsettling because it blends its surreality with the reality of everyday life. 28 Days Later was coincidentally released in the summer of 2002 AKA the summer of SARS, and a year after the real life horror of 9/11. The film skillfully plays on issues such as the growing distrust of government, the very real actuality of highly contagious super viruses, and the “what-if” possibility of the breakdown of society, suggested daily by newspaper headlines shouting about power outages, terrorist attacks, tsunamis, earthquakes and hurricanes.
Shot with video for a slightly shaky, visceral, documentary-feel, and with strong performances from stars Cillian Murphy, Christopher Eccleston, Naomie Harris, Brendan Gleason and Megan Burns, 28 Days Later is a zombie movie for the 21st century that hasn't forgotten its roots.
