Review - 28 Days Later (2002)

Director: Danny Boyle

Made In: UK

Released: 2002

Plot: Stupid animal rights activists break into a lab and release all the test-subjects including a monkey who has been infected with the "Rage" virus. (From this point, the fall of humanity can be blamed on animal rights activists.) The monkey bites the hippies, and the scientists, and although we don't see the events that follow, we can assume that within the next four weeks there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth as the virus spreads. 28 Days later, Jim, the protagonist, wakes to find himself in an abandoned hospital, unsure of why he is there and confused about the total lack of people in the place. Jim walks out of the abandoned hospital, and out into the street, only to find a similar lack of humanity, he walks for miles without seeing anyone, but eventually comes across a wall plastered with 9/11 style flyers from desperate families desperately trying to find the whereabouts of lost loved ones (who have obviously been infected). Jim reads a few newspapers and eventually realises that the population has been wiped out. As he continues to walk around he soon catches the attention of a few zombie-like infected beings – who chase him like he was a cupcake in a weight-watchers meeting. Jim is rescued by two others - Selena (Naomie Harris) and Mark (Noah Huntley), who tell him to wake up to himself and be ready to kill anyone infected with the "Rage" virus. Soon mark is toast and Selina and Jim keep moving. They come across more survivors, London cabbie Frank (Brendan Gleeson) and his teenage daughter Hannah (Megan Burns ) who convince Jim and Selina to come with them to Manchester, after hearing a recurring military radio announcement declaring that they have "found the answer to infection". When they reach the abandoned blockade, Frank the cabbie is bitten and promptly shot by a sniper. A team of soldiers reveal themselves and take the survivors back to a heavily defended mansion where the few soldiers are living relatively comfortably, albeit without any women. It is revealed that the commanding officer of the team, Major Henry West (Christopher Eccleston) has promised his men the opportunity to re-populate the earth and Selina and Hannah seem to be the perfect candidates. After a few struggles and traps, all the soldiers are killed and Jim, Selina and Hannah escape to a farm and after catching the attention of a jet passing overhead they are presumed rescued. The remaining infected are seen laying on the ground dying slowly from starvation. They are still human after-all, and not zombies, who are already dead, so don't die of starvation.

Review: This is a pretty good movie, similar to other zombie movies, except for one main diferrence – there are no zombies in this movie! The infected humans act like zombies – with the biting and the killing and the running like a zombie, but they are infected with the "Rage" virus – and have not risen from the dead.

The movie is shot very cleverly, the infected humans are frantic and whenever a group of them get together – panic ensues, translated by the use of quickly changing frames and music-video style effects. The scenes where Jim is walking around in an abandoned London are absolutely amazing and one can only wonder about the inconvenience caused to real-life Londoners when they filmed those shots. The director is said to have chosen relatively unknown actors to make the characters seem more realistic and desperate, and all the actors are relatively convincing, even if the story does get a bit crap by the end when the soldiers get a bit frisky. The ideas in the movie are nothing new, but the British influence gives the story a bit of an edge. A sequel has been released, called 28 Weeks later, which expands on the story but with a different set of survivors.

All in all a solid movie but nothing to write home about. Nothing new.

2.5/5