Starring:
Cillian Murphy
Naomie Harris
Directed by:
Danny Boyle
... When Zombies take over
The day after the 28 days later, you’ll probably be thinking about the leftover popcorn from the movie (which you could not stomach after the gruesome scenes), the apocalyptic impact of a deadly virus unleashed in a primed post Sars-world. And perhaps wondering what would you do if you ever become a zombie.
The story begins with some animal rights activists breaking into a research centre and unknowingly releasing captive monkeys that are infected with a highly contagious virus called “rage”, which becomes the catalyst of an impending disaster.
The virus spreads to humans and turns them into zombies. Soon, all of London is filled with the living dead walking the streets.
Wait, didn’t you watch that somewhere before? Yes, and you might even have played it as well. Resident Evil, the video game turned movie followed a similar theme of virus infections, zombies and naturally lots of running from the zombies. The difference however is the existence of a stronger plot in 28 Days Later that makes it a better movie next to the original, which should have simply remained a video game.
Director Danny Boyle shot the film on a video camera, giving it a documentary and B-grade movie feel. Jerky at times, you can almost sense the tension and urgency from the characters to survive the ordeal from the camera movement, a la Blair Witch Project.
The murky colour tone which the movie was filmed in contributed to the bleak mood that is almost palpable in the theatre, but to say that the movie’s a horrifying flick is an overstatement because it’s definitely nowhere as scary as other horror flicks like The Exorcist, much less The Ring.
Grotesque is a better word to describe the movie, with the amount of blood and gore enough to drive a vampire mad from hunger. In a scene, the protagonist Jim (Cillian Murphy) kills a soldier by sticking his thumbs into his target’s eyeballs, mangling with the insides of the soldier’s skull until he dies (which explains why there was leftover popcorn).
One of the biggest challenges of producing zombie films is to make the zombies look believable – after all, we know zombies aren’t real. And kudos to the makeup team for doing this so well.
Portraying a sense of hopelessness and seclusion, one of the most striking scenes is when Jim walks out into the London streets in daylight to find the whole city void of people, except for the occasional cooing of pigeons amid the frightening desolation.
You can feel the eerie chill, the daunting silence, and the absolute condemnation of humanity.
Fortunately for Jim, he soon finds a few other survivors while running away from the zombies. As they find out about a surviving community in Manchester, the group embarks on an eventful trip from London yearning to get in touch with civilisation once again.
The movie implicitly conveys a disturbing statement of how humans can be worse than monsters. It’s a study on the neuroses of human nature. What would you do if your loved one becomes a zombie, knowing that your loved one is pretty oblivious to your name/face and single-mindedly craves for your blood?
28 Days Later straddles between the lines of Darwinism giving a new perspective to human evolution, and the plausibility of a diabolical humanity in the doldrums with the massacre of an entire populace.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
As much as your stomach may protest, linger on because an additional footage after the credits will show an alternative ending.