Jim (Cillian Murphy) wakes up in an
abandoned hospital after being hit by a truck. He walks through the
deserted streets of London. An apocalypse came and went while he was
asleep. The world is fundamentally different, and he wasn't there to
learn all of the new rules. This is itself a nightmarish concept, but
it is only one of the many reasons 28 days later is so memorable.
It's hard to make a zombie movie
realistic. There are a lot of things that need to be explained for
these films to make sense: How did the zombie infection start? Why
couldn't anyone stop it when there were only a few infected? Why
should people even be afraid of zombies? After all, they are just
slower, stupider versions of regular people.
The answer, it turns out, is to make
zombies fast. If you are infected, you have ten seconds to live
before you become one of them. Once you've turned, you sprint towards
the nearest source of food and they have ten seconds to live. The
Zombies in 28 Days Later are so fast that they seem more than capable
of causing an apocalypse in under a month.
While this film wasn't the first to
have fast moving zombies (that honor goes to Return of the Living
Dead in 1985), it was the first movie to have the speed of the
zombies be their defining feature. In Return of the Living Dead, the
zombies were just normal people who happened to be dead and have an
appetite for brains. They moved at a normal human speed because it
only made sense for them to. In 28 days later, the sheer speed that a
zombie could be upon you was the main reason the film worked.
The film switches rapidly from subdued
to action-packed, from brooding to brutal. The zombie attacks are
sudden and jarring. The camera will focus on a wide shot with a few
survivors moving slowly through the empty streets of a dead city.
Then, the film speeds up and zooms in. Zombies seem to come from
everywhere (or nowhere), and the camera angles are suddenly
claustrophobic. There is no way to run from them, and no good way to
fight.
But just like in George Romero's “Dead”
films, the true villains aren't the zombies. A military safe house
alleges to have the answer to infection, and has an open invitation
to survivors. Once survivors arrive, they “answer” is just to
hole up and let the infected starve, and meanwhile gather as many
females as they can to try to “save humanity”, by force if
necessary. The scenes in the mansion are easily the film's most
affecting.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about
this film is how good it turned out even with its small budget.
Horror movies are well known for doing a lot with a little, but post
apocalyptic films tend to look ridiculous without some real money.
This film was shot with a digital video camera, using mostly
unknown actors and actresses. But the director, Danny Boyle, uses
these things to his advantage. The actors look more gritty, while
glossy well-known actors might not have worked as well. The digital
video gave the film a rougher look, fitting for the subject matter.
This, combined with the great script and solidcharacters, gives the film a great sense of realism. Every dollar of the
films budget went on screen, and the result is one of the best horror
films of the decade.
