Movie Review: 28 Days Later... (2002)

28 Days Later... (2002) directed by Danny Boyle

Some do-gooders break into a Cambridge lab that is experimenting on monkeys to free the primates from their exploitation. One of the scientist stumbles upon the invaders and tries to stop them because the monkeys are infected with "Rage" and will spread contamination. The do-gooders don't buy it until they open one of the cages and the monkey bites. That one do-gooder starts throwing up blood, which infects the others as the scene fades to black. 28 days later, Jim (Cillian Murphy) wakes up in a hospital bed. No one is in the hospital, no one is on the streets of London, television and radio are static. Jim is utterly alone and confused. He goes to a church where he discovers a dead congregation, though a few of them pop up and growl at him. The pastor comes out of a side room and tries to attack Jim. He flees with infected parishioners in pursuit. Two other survivors (Naomi Harris and Noah Huntley) save him and take him to shelter in a gated convenience store. Jim finds out about the Rage virus and how it has wiped out most of England. He wants to check on his parents; the couple tell him they are dead or worse but Jim still insists on going. Thus starts a long odyssey through infected England as they try to survive the horde of the undead at every turn.

On the good side, they get through the cause of the zombie infection right away, which is always the least plausible part of any zombie movie. People switch from human to virus-infected killing machine in ten to twenty seconds. Anything that acts that fast would just kill most people, so I found the transformation unbelievable. But they rush through that and don't look back, letting viewers go along if they don't notice. The visuals are very visceral and the whole tone has the bleakness of a lot of zombie films.Viewers don't have to work hard to imagine that any character might die at any moment.

Which brings up stuff on the bad side. The movie is unrelentingly bleak until the confusing upbeat ending. In a lot of horror films, there's something you can rely on for safety. Jim goes to a church and there is no sanctuary inside, only danger. The government, which should be taking care of the citizens, is completely gone. The military show up in the final third but they turn out to be villains worse than the infected. The characters can barely rely on each other since they might change almost immediately into the infected. Little jokes pop up here and there but not enough to relieve the tension or provide a break from the misery. The movie is too nihilistic for my tastes. Then the ending, where the survivors put out sheets on the ground spelling "HELLO" as a jet fighter goes by overhead is confusing. Who has enough infrastructure left to be flying military jets? Why can't they broadcast on radio, television, ham radio, etc., to England? A character claims that, as an island nation, they've been quarantined. But why doesn't everybody know about it? The movie falls flat once you start thinking about it.

Mildly recommended--this movie did do a lot to make the zombie genre more mainstream and it looks great. Just don't look under the hood, the engine might be missing.