28 Days Later (2002)
Directed by Danny Boyle
Twenty-eight days after a killer virus was accidentally unleashed from a British research facility, a small group of London survivors are caught in a desperate struggle to protect themselves from the infected. Carried by animals and humans, the virus turns those it infects into homicidal maniacs -- and it's absolutely impossible to contain.
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Not to be mistaken for a sequel to the Sandra Bullock drunk drama "28 Days," Danny Boyle's "28 Days Later..." is more a remake--or a nod to, or let's be honest here and call it a complete rip-off--of George A. Romero's apocalyptic horror masterpiece "Dawn of the Dead" (a superior sequel to his 1968 nightmare "Night of the Living Dead").
Unlike the monsters in classic zombie films like 1968's "Night of the Living Dead" and the throwaway copycats that followed, these aren't lumbering, mumbling zombies -- these are twitching, hissing zombies.
With their rotting flesh, blood-red eyes and snarling, spewing, clawing fury, the “infected” owe a debt to zombies of the genre launched by George A. Romero three decades ago with “Night of the Living Dead.”
Sure, the movie's creators have swiped most of their ingredients, from premise to casting to aesthetics, from George Romero's famous zombie trilogy, beginning with Night of the Living Dead (made in 1968, another catastrophic year in global life and political relations); the new film warrants praise for its effects even if it loses points for uniqueness.
And unlike George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead and sequels, these zombies can really move.
If you read Alex Garland's best-selling novel The Beach, you'll remember its jarring climax, which seemed like a cross between The Bacchae and Night of the Living Dead (1968).
Director Danny Boyle ("Trainspotting") makes no bones about the fact that his movie is a genre piece that happily rips off not only the Romero zombie movies but such end-of-civilization classics as 1959's "The World, the Flesh and the Devil" and 1971's "The Omega Man."
Yep, you’ve seen it all before with Vincent Price in The Last Man on Earth, Charlton Heston in The Omega Man and, of course, in George A. Romero’s “Dead” trilogy.
Fans of movies such as George Romero's classic Night of the Living Dead trilogy and Boris Sagal's 1971 apocalyptic The Omega Man will find buckets of flesh-eating fun in Boyle's hyperactive update of the infernal and always-entertaining battle between the living and the undead.
Let's call it the thinking person's version of "The Omega Man" or "The Last Man on Earth."
A cross between The Omega Man and Night of the Living Dead, 28 Days Later is a great action/horror movie.
After fizzling with "The Beach", Danny Boyle makes a solid comeback with "28 Days Later" - a film which had all the potential of being just another post-apocalyptic sci-fi horror clone of the likes of "The Omega Man", and while its not deftly original, it is a very engaging and dark little piece which is quite enjoyable.After the pre-requisite intro showing the virus' quite ironic escape the film begins with a nude Jim (Cillan Murphy) waking up in hospital and alone.
There’s also a bit of the “Road Warrior” films, a hefty dose of Stephen King’s “The Stand,” and even more of George A. Romero’s “Living Dead” trilogy, specifically the underrated third entry “Day of the Dead,” which is so closely emulated here that parts of “28 Days Later” feel like a shameless rip-off.
28 Days Later is like all three George A. Romero Dead movies packed into one: Its larky shopping scene recalls Dawn of the Dead (1978), and it ends in a military compound, where much of the messed-up Day of the Dead (1985) is set.
The entire subplot featuring the crazed military and the captured zombie borders on intellectual theft, as it is nearly a duplicate of the Bud the Zombie subplot, featured in George A. Romero's Day of the Dead.
Numerous plot elements recall "The Day of the Triffids" and "Night of the Living Dead."
Until 28 Days Later came along, I didn’t realize how much I missed movies like Panic in the Year Zero!, No Blade of Grass, Night of the Living Dead and The Day of the Triffids.
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Animal activists are seemingly to blame for this doomsday scenario (as they are in 12 Monkeys), having released laboratory apes infected with a virus called Rage that reduces victims to mindless whirlwinds of fury (one of the chimps is watching a loop of ultraviolent images like a simian Alex from A Clockwork Orange).
(The monkeys are watching footage of savage rioting, which I'd have predicted would discourage violence: That's what it does to Alex in A Clockwork Orange [1971].
Like Alex in "A Clockwork Orange," forced to watch images of atrocities while listening to his beloved Beethoven during an experiment in psychosocial engineering, the chimp has to watch.
Apocalyptic in a way that reminds of Geoff Murphy's The Quiet Earth and legendary British novelist John Wyndham's ( The Day of the Triffids ) end-of-days ethic, the picture resolves ultimately as something of a forced morality play and a cautionary fable about man's inhumanity to man.
Not to be mistaken for a sequel to the Sandra Bullock drunk drama "28 Days," Danny Boyle's "28 Days Later..." is more a remake--or a nod to, or let's be honest here and call it a complete rip-off--of George A. Romero's apocalyptic horror masterpiece "Dawn of the Dead" (a superior sequel to his 1968 nightmare "Night of the Living Dead").
“28 Days Later” doesn’t compare to such milestone horror thrillers as “Seven” or “The Vanishing” (the original Dutch version), but it’s still the best nerve shocker to come around since “The Blair Witch Project.”
28 Days Later will be hailed by many critics, for the same reasons that The Blair Witch Project received undue praise, when it was released in 1999.
The future of digital cinema may lie in the intimacy it affords "B" subject material, lending a documentary feeling to myth and allegory ( Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner , 24 Hour Party People , The Blair Witch Project ) that grounds archetype in the muck of mendacity.
Although "Later" was shot on digital video, Anthony Dod Mantle's cameras do not bob and jiggle, a la "The Blair Witch Project."
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Four decades ago, there was a terrific British end-of-the-world thriller, Val Guest's 1962 "The Day the Earth Caught Fire," which packed in almost twice as much character, social detail and honest tension as "28 Days"--and also seemed on fire with a good idea: an attack on the Cold War arms race.
It's not an original idea - George A Romero's "The Crazies" tweaked the formula back in 1973 - but in the hands of "Trainspotting" director Boyle, it's the basis for a stylish and occasionally very scary movie.