Nurse! Where's everybody gone? (28 Days Later (DVD))

Member Name: cswann

Product:	28 Days Later (DVD)
Date:	27/01/04 (63 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Geat subject, Well directed

Disadvantages: Some gory bits

Danny Boyle?s movies are well worth watching, as far as I?m concerned. He?s already made the classics ?Trainspotting? and ?Shallow Grave?, and ?A life less ordinary? and ?The Beach? also had a lot going for them.
?28 Days Later? is every bit as good, in different ways, as any of these movies, and shows that he?s very capable of producing fresh, exciting work, and he?s as unpredictable as ever.

With a script by Alex Garland, who wrote the novel ?The Beach?, it renews that association, but this is nothing like a retread of the idyll turned nasty storyline we had in the movie of ?The Beach?. On second thoughts, there is a kind of similar theme, if you think of the anarchy and power struggles, but, no, it?s completely different. Except that both are great stories adapted into movies.

?28 days later? has been described as a film about zombies. But I think it?s a lot more than that ? it?s a horror film, and it?s great science fiction, too.
If you?re a fan of zombie films, how about an updated version of ?Dawn of the
Dead?, George Romero?s classic? Well, I?d say ?28 Days later? really is a brilliant stab at bettering it.

It?s a low budget affair, shot entirely on digital camera, which far from making it look cheap and tacky, gives it a very realistic, immediate feel.

Cillian Murphy plays Jim, who wakes up in hospital, and finds it?s eerily quiet. In fact, no-one?s been to look after him, either. (This is very like the first scenes in ?The Day of the Triffids?, where the hero wakes up in hospital with bandages over his eyes after an operation ? great film by the way).

Anyway, back to ?28 Days Later??
Jim wakes up to a world where 99 per cent of humankind - probably more than that, in fact - seem to have been completely wiped out. He wanders out into the streets, and it is very, very, quiet on the streets of London. He can wander in the idle of roads which would normally be chock-a-block ? and there?s not a sou
l around.

These introductory scenes are really quite eerie ? and I?m reminded of The Survivors, which was on TV in the mid-70s, about the effects of a deadly virus on the world and its population. This movie is different from many with a theme of global catastrophe, (and I?m a big fan of them, I seem to have seen them all, from ?Threads? to ?Stephen King?s ?The Stand?). There?s no big investigation into why it?s happened. It just has, and the movie concentrates on the plight of those who are left.

You?ll notice I?ve mentioned rather a lot of other movies that I was reminded of, but in the end I found it entirely original, and very thought-provoking, as well as just a good, chilling, horror zombie fest.
Boyle himself was reluctant to label the movie, and not keen to call it a horror movie. But, for want of a better description, that?s what it is.

OK ? onto the ?zombies??
Actually, they are called the ?Infected?.
They are infected with Rage virus. It?s not a clinical virus, but a psychological one ?
whew, plenty to give you those ?it could happen one day? chills. The Rage seems to be like road rage gone a few steps further. As soon as Jim meets some of the infected, he finds out that all they want to do is to attack him, no questions asked.
The victims show their symptoms within only 30 seconds of being infected as well ? so you don?t get a lot of warning, or chance to defend yourself.

Other members of the cast include:
Naomie Harris plays Selena, who Jim meets while he is in London, along with
Frank (Brendan Gleeson) and Hannah (Megan Burns), his daughter.
Christopher Eccleston is particularly good as the head of a military bunch who are camped out up in the north of England.

The best thing about the movie, apart from the plot, is the way it?s filmed.
It was shot on DV, and there?s a very gritty texture to it, but it doesn?t suffer from that low-budget look that many DV movies have
. Indeed there are some good special effects, with some zapped-up scenes featuring the infected, running about the place, and some swish editing. Boyle?s view on using DV was that it helped to promote a view that whoever is filming in all is a survivor as well.

The shots of the deserted streets of London are well-worth seeing. They had to be filmed over the course of one week, holding back traffic each day, in order to get enough quiet shots.

Overall, I thought the movie was great, and would recommend it to anyone who likes thrillers/horrors with a philosophical side to them. There are some bloody scenes, there are some genuinely shocking scenes, and there were many things about it that made me ponder deeply on the future of mankind.

At 113 minutes, it?s longer than many horror films, but I didn?t find it too long at all.

... and I'm not going to happen what actually happens after 28 days...

Summary: