28 Days Later

Review by Tom Johnson
TomJohnson@TheCinemaSource.com

The original theatrical poster for director Danny Boyle’s thriller, “28 Days Later”, featured a critic’s quote, blown up to a larger size than the title. It read: “Danny Boyle has reinvented zombie horror, and it’s scary as hell!!” The bad news: this quote is utterly misleading. The good news: the movie’s still pretty good.

Released back in October of last year for British audiences, “Days” did well enough to warrant a full-blown US theatrical run, which turned into the sleeper success story of the summer(along with the omnipresent "Bend It Like Beckham"). Boyle, director of “Trainspotting”, “Shallow Grave” and for some reason, “The Beach”, brings his trademark style to the film, and manages to provide a fun ride into familiar territory.

In the near future, scientists are studying a virus that drives its chimp subjects into a state of pure, psychotic rage. One drop is all that’s needed to spread the infection. Thanks to a 12 Monkeys-like team of animal activists, the virus is released, spreading through London over the course of-you guessed it-28 Days. Jim(Cillian Murphy) has been in a coma the entire time, and wakes up clueless to the terror that lurks all around him.

First thing’s first; “28 Days Later” is not a horror movie. If you want pure, unfiltered horror, check out “May”. But if you’re just looking for a scary movie, then “Days” should hit the spot quite nicely, because it has scares to spare(Gee, I almost rhymed. How cute). From a deserted London metropolis, filled with the quite shuffles of unseen figures to a military compound fighting for survival against the infected masses, there are enough nail-biting moments of tension to keep you on the edge of your seat. Once again, the film rarely explores new territory. If you don’t know who’s going to survive and who’s going to get torn to shreds, you’ve obviously never seen “Aliens”, “Night of the Comet” or any other “us vs them” style flick. There’s a formula to these things, which the movie follows to the letter.

The reason I don’t bring up the obvious zombie movie parallels takes me to my second point: “28 Days Later” is not a zombie movie. If it were, it’d be two hours long and feel like four. It would have moaning, slow-moving actors in bad make-up clawing at some “last refuge” for the first hour and 55 minutes until something crashed or blew up, letting the zombies in to kill everyone in the cast. Or everyone but one survivor, who’s shot by accident to somehow prove that “humans are the real bad guys”. The end. Let’s face it: with a few exceptions(like Peter Jackson’s awesome “Dead Alive”), zombie movies suck. What we’re then left with in “Days” is a fast-paced adventure through a deserted landscape, pitting our heroes ...