31 Days of Halloween: Day Twenty Three

28 Days Later (Rated R in the US for strong violence, gore, language, nudity and because Cillian Murphy is FREAKY-looking)

Summary (from IMDB):

Animal activists invade a laboratory with the intention of releasing chimpanzees that are undergoing experimentation, infected by a virus -a virus that causes rage. The naive activists ignore the pleas of a scientist to keep the cages locked, with disastrous results. Twenty-eight days later, our protagonist, Jim, wakes up from a coma, alone, in an abandoned hospital. He begins to seek out anyone else to find London is deserted, apparently without a living soul. After finding a church, which had become inhabited by zombie like humans intent on his demise, he runs for his life. Selena and Mark rescue him from the horde and bring him up to date on the mass carnage and horror as all of London tore itself apart. This is a tale of survival and ultimately, heroics, with nice subtext about mankind’s savage nature.

RB Wood’s Rating (out of 5): 4.5 British character actors

Yes, it’s another zombie flick (of sorts).  But this one is different. The other films focus too much on extensive, special-effects-controlled, gory action sequences between infected and normals, with heavy background music. But here there’s always a tinge of sadness, emptyness, helplessness. Consider that empty London scene with that background music. We found out there’s much else to show than just electrifying action or gore to describe the picture of life in this condition that these movies talk about.

Twenty-eight days after being hit by a car, Jim, a bike courier and our film’s hero, wakes up to find London deserted. He eventually meets two other survivors and then encounters another two. After picking up a radio broadcast that calls all uninfected people to Manchester, the survivors fight off the infected and make their way to what seems like the promised land. Complications follow is all I’ll say.

Some have compared this film to George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead,” giving some people the wrong impression that this is the British take on the zombie flick. Wrong. The infected aren’t zombies– but they are terrifying. They can be killed and the director doesn’t gross us out by showing the infected feasting on human flesh. (All in all, “28 Days” isn’t visually disgusting. It’s the thought of what’s going on that bothers you.)

The acting in this film is really first rate, with Cillian Murphy giving an emotionally compelling performance. As in most Boyle films, the camera work also is exceptional and in the first part we are shown some phenomenal long shots of an evacuted London with a soundtrack devoid of sound. The effect is gooseflesh raising. Boyle also adds in other nice touches, like a bunch of goldfish swimming in about five inches of water. (Symbolism?) And a scene with wild horses is another fine moment.

The story too goes beyond what we might expect. We get the jumps associated with zombie films – they come out of no where and travel in packs – and yet the heroes don’t come off too much better. One character suggests that the virus, by killing off humankind, returns things to normalcy. Christopher Eccleston, a terrific actor, retorts that before the virus man killed man and now he’s still doing it. So what’s changed? The film also suggests that to save yourself, you would have to kill anyone – child, adult; family member, stranger. And these characters do. But what’s noteworthy is we see how having to make those sorts of decisions affects them, particularly Jim.

Like Lord of the Flies, the film strips away the civility we all think we possess and demonstrates that we, too, are bound by the laws of the animal kingdom – it’s survival of the fittest and to have a future we need to reproduce.

Tomorrow: Vampires done RIGHT.

Peace