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| 28 Days Later |
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  (7/10)
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Runtime: 113 |
| Public Rating: 7.78 (167 votes) |
Director: Danny Boyle |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: drama, horror |
Year: 2002 |
| Writer(s): Alex Garland |
| Distributor: Fox |
| Reviewed by: Avril Carruthers |
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Produced by Andrew Macdonald
Starring Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Noah Huntley, Brendan Gleeson, Megan Burns, Christopher Eccleston, Leo Bill, Marvin Campbell.
“Gruesome, shocking yet ultimately exhilarating”
On surges of adrenalin and testosterone, this post-apocalyptic movie runs at breakneck speed almost from the moment young cycle courier Jim (Cillian Murphy) wakes from an accident-induced coma in a deserted London hospital. In heightened survival mode, the action scarcely lets up. Humans are never more alive than when in threat of imminent death, and it is this energy, and strong characters, that make this movie far more than most of this genre.
We know from the brief introduction that 28 days earlier animal activists broke into Cambridge Primate Research Centre to free chimps infected with a deadly ‘Rage’ virus. Despite the frantic warnings of a lab-coated scientist, the activists opened the cages and were immediately attacked. Transmitted through the blood, the virus acts within 20 seconds to turn normal people into jerking, blood-eyed, slavering and biting homicidal madmen. Jim wanders the evacuated streets completely unaware of what has happened, calling out, “Hello, Hello!”
He is confronted by piles of rotting bodies in a church and an infected priest who lunges at him. He’s rescued by two uninfected survivors, Mark (Noah Huntley) and Selina (Naomie Harris), who whisk him into safety and turn the church into an explosive pile of burning rubble with some handy gas canisters and a match.
Jim is compelled to go to his home in Deptford to find out what has befallen his parents. Mark and Selina give him the rules: never go anywhere alone, and always travel by day. They fill him in on some of the horrors of the previous 28 days and the pragmatic Selina informs him that once someone is infected they have 10 to 20 seconds to kill him or her before the infected turn on them. She’d do it in a heartbeat, she says, and soon he has every reason to believe her.
Jim and Selina find two more survivors, the warmly exuberant Frank (Brendan Gleeson) and his self-possessed teenage daughter Hannah (Megan Burns) and together they travel in Frank’s old London Taxi to find a group of soldiers who are broadcasting a recorded message on radio for other survivors to find them.
Contrasting strongly with the lurking kill-or-be-killed ‘infecteds’ are scenes of comic relief, high spirits and hilarity such their finding an abandoned supermarket full of food. “Let’s shop!” says Selina almost normally and four shopping trolleys are soon piled high. Among bins full of rotting fruit Frank finds one of perfectly preserved apples. “Irradiated!” he smiles, loading them into his trolley. There are also moments of poignant beauty. A green field of four horses running free. Each moment of normality allows an appreciation of life that their situation highlights.
The characters are strongly drawn with believable character arcs and powerfully acted. Naomie Harris (from TV’s White Teeth) plays Selina with elegant economy and presence. Far from being a tag along female, Selina has developed a tough exterior more than a match for the exigencies of precarious survival. A qualified chemist, she carries a quantity of medicinal drugs that are put to vital use later on. When the strong family bond between Frank and Hannah allows her to feel the situation is not as bleak as she has made herself accept, her momentary collapse only makes her more balanced and resilient.
Cillian Murphy ably draws young Jim’s journey from dependence on his parents and lack of discipline to an equally tough pragmatism and creative survival techniques balanced with a unique sense of justice. Brendan Gleeson as Frank is a powerful symbol for hope and a father figure. His humour and optimistic spirit stand all in good stead. Young Hannah is practical, able and wise, all qualities she will need in abundance for the lethal threats and tragedies that come.
Other notable performances are by Christopher Eccleston as the grave Major Henry West, demonstrating that a harsh moral order prevails when survival is paramount and doing what is necessary for the physical and mental survival of his eight remaining men. Only extreme discipline will govern fighting men in this situation and killing marauding ‘infecteds’ with bombs and machine guns is high sport which relieves a few tensions and excites others. Deadly competition, betrayal and subterfuge are all parts of this situation, and so is a less than resourceful cook who tries to disguise rotten eggs with too much salt.
The esprit de corps of these men matches the spirit of adventure the four newcomers developed to get to their destination. It’s life lived on the edge, everything has heightened clarity, the blood flows more freely and brief enjoyment, like passion or killing, is a powerful intoxicant.
Of all the horrors they experience (there is a great deal of blood, everywhere) the primal nightmare that haunts Jim most of all is waking to the deadly silence of an empty city. There are a few surprises in the movie and the camerawork and editing underline the surreal nature of the living nightmare they are in.
Digital Video technique makes for grainy immediacy that makes the experience a stunning and intimate one and also enabled the crew to set up swiftly enough to hold back London for shots of the empty city. Equally powerful in its effect is the sound track, led by Canadian group Godspeed You Black Emperor and featuring appropriately apocalyptic works from Gounod, Fauré and Brian Eno.
Director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, A Life Less Ordinary, The Beach) teams with Alex Garland, screenwriter of The Beach, noted cinematographer and Director of Photography, Antony Dod Mantle and innovative film editor Chris Gill in his debut feature to produce a gruesome, shocking yet ultimately exhilarating tale to grab you until the end.
(Later edit: Months after this screening I learned there was a second, alternate and bleaker ending to this movie - on which, since the distributors failed to show it - I cannot comment.)
© Avril Carruthers, 25th June 2003
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