2002 (UK)
Contains spoilers.
Let's get 2 things
out of the way straight away. The first is easy; the picture quality for a
Blu-Ray presentation is as bad as other reviewers have noted. Danny Boyle shot all
of the film with a DV camera at a resolution of 720x576 and for this release
all they did was scale it up to 1080p; so it's full of noise, pixilation and
looks almost like a tape! The DTS HD master audio is tremendous though. With
this out the way I'll concentrate on the movie itself and the second issue.
Is this a zombie
movie? On the one hand there's been a UK and possibly global apocalyptic
meltdown caused through the rapid widespread transference of a blood infection
that turns people into savage, single-minded killing machines hell bent on
eating the non-infected. On the other hand the infected
aren't killed, coming back in a zombie state. The infected are still very much
alive, they can be knocked out, they can starve; to stop them they have to
actually be killed.
Contrast this with
say The Walking Dead where whilst everyone is infected (sorry spoiler) death is
necessary for someone to actually transform into a zombie and only destroying
the infected's brain actually stops them. It comes down to a virus causing people
into monsters on infection, or monsters on infection but after death. The
outcome is to all intents and purposes
the same; zombies/infected with a hunger for flesh, people getting chased and
eaten and doing all they can to survive. I can see both sides of the argument
and feel it's down to semantics and how strict one wants to be. Personally I'd
call it a film in the zombie genre but I'd counter that the monsters aren't
zombies per-se but infected very-much-alive humans. Anyhow, to the 28 Days Later directed by
Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland...
For me it's a film
of two halves. The first half is a highly stylised traditional zombie survival
story following Jim's (Cillian Murphy) regaining of consciousness in a secure
hospital room 28 days after an apocalyptic virus has been unleashed and wrought
devastation on the world. Fleeing the hospital Boyle perfectly portrays the
solitude, despair and mental terror of realising you're alone in a London gone very very wrong
and there's some real cinemagraphic eye candy. Stumbling into the zom... I mean infected
Jim soon joins other survivors Selena (Naomie Harris) and Mark (Noah Huntley),
and later teenager Hannah (Megan Burns) and her father Frank (Brendan Gleeson)
who happen to have, but are unable to act on alone, the plot point necessary to get
the group to the second half of the film up the M55.
The second half
moves the focus from survival against the infected to survival against humans.
With what I suspect to be some slightly anti-military and establishment
sentiments the companions, or those who are left, on reaching the M55 outpost
find themselves not in the hands of salvation but under the protection of
desperate, crude, unfeeling misogynists looking to get laid at any cost. Lead by Christopher Eccleston as Major Henry
West these highly trained and regimented band of professional soldiers soon
reveal their true intents en masse and Jim finds himself separated from
the group, running for his life and once safe ready to stage a dramatic rescue.
Jim, remember, previously a motorbike courier,
now turns into a Rambo-esque merciless efficient killing machine able to
successfully infiltrate a secure heavily armed military compound, outfox,
out-manoeuvre, and ultimately take out all the soldiers and avoid and utilise
the infected. All with his shirt off. He dispatches with manic glee in his eyes
and moves with calmness and purpose as if Jekyll himself had risen in place of
Hyde. Along with Jim's change I think Boyle's vision was to show how quickly
all could be dehumanised when faced with unremitting horror and survival. This
is seen in early scenes with Selena, Jim's half time encounter with a young
boy, which one could argue acts as the catalyst for his later episode, and then
later with the soldiers apparently easy scant regard for anything beyond their
own gratification. Despite this theme I still found the speed and manner of
Jims change a little over the top and not that believable.
From the extras you
can see that Boyle and Garland struggled with this second half as they dabbled
with an entirely different ending. The radical
alternative ending saw none of these second half events unfold but kept
the focus on the survivors and their attempts to find a cure. In a lot of ways
I think I'd have preferred to have seen this vision of the film realised but
Boyle apparently decided against it because he thought the idea of a total
blood replacement as a cure wasn't credible.
There's a lot to
recommend in the film. Great cinematography and music, some iconic scenes
especially of London and some good action and splatter. There's also in my
opinion a lot of problems with it once it's been critiqued and it's not helped by having a central character I never felt I could sympathise with
or understand - 7/10.
Steven@WTD.
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