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28
Days Later
Starring: Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Megan Burns,
Brendan Gleeson and Christopher Eccleston
Written by: Alex Garland
Directed by: Danny Boyle
Director Danny Boyle has managed to take the semi-joke genre
of apocalyptic walking dead films and injected it with some
well needed scare pheromones, unleashing an actual thriller!
28 Days Later is like an old fashioned drive-in movie
that's modern-style scary!
The cast
handle the barren doomsday sci-fi setting and their zombie counterparts
with a wonderful realism. And there's no gratuitous gore - but
what gore is given is devilishly gross and always taken to that
"ooowwwwwyyyeeecchhh" stage one looks for in
a pedigree horror film.
Story
goes… Messenger man Jim (Cillian - um yum - Murphy) had
been struck by a car and awakes from a twenty-eight day coma
only to find no loving family by his side nor a buxom nurse
sponging his torso. There's nothing. In fact the whole city
of London is now an empty town.
Well
except for some wildly evil looking crazed flesh-hungry zombies!
Poor soul Jim and his 98 degree body are first attacked (as
a kind of informal introduction to the new world of mayhem)
by a rabidly demonic priest and his parish of frothing undead.
Bewildered
but dealing, he meets up with fellow living person Selena (Naomie
Harris). Her new career goal in this new world is simple, she's
hell-bent on survival among the dead.
She
allows Jim to join her - and she lets him know she has no qualms
about blowing his head off if he gets infected with the zombie
virus...she's anything but girly girl smitten - very cool.
Together
they get armed to the teeth and set forth on an adventure that
ultimately must lead to more live counterparts. And sure enough,
en route the duo hook up with a couple more stragglers of the
living human kind and have those delightful horror film ballets
of the macabre with some more of the walking dead kind. A recorded
message is being repeatedly broadcast via radio about "survivors"
up north and the motley crew decide this is their mission.
As they get closer to their destination the outlook is looking
so bleak they earnestly start to question if they are not face
to face with the end of civilization itself! (<- Insert dramatic
apocalyptic-like music here please).
The
premise has been done a billion times, but cinematographer Anthony
Dodd Mantle lights director Danny Boyle's macabre little yarn
(written by Alex Garland) in the most ominous way that you're
sucked in from the very first frame! The sets are positively
devoid of human presence going about their days, which adds
to the believability of dread engulfing the cast. A cast that
even with the film's end-of-the-world-zombies-gonna-eat-ya stuff
manage to make you care about them while fighting off human
flesh slurping mutants snarling and spitting up buckets of Saturday
afternoon Creature Feature©-like blood. Bravo! And watch
for this Naomie Harris who plays Selena, she's one talented
chickbabe we should be seeing a lot more of in the future.
Snack Recommendation: A big old poo-poo platter of concession
bits!
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