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Danny
Boyle's "28 Days Later" came along at a very tough time
in my life. Like most movies that are around during
difficult periods in your life, they tend to have a very
important impact and influence on your mood and overall
outlook on your fate. Around the time "28 Days Later"
was released, I was about to go in to open heart
surgery. And while my survival rate was very high we
were all considerably on edge. I remember that year my
dad took us to see "Terminator 3" in theaters to cheer
us up, and on the way home we bought the bootleg VHS for
"28 Days Later" which didn't work. Days later I was able
to obtain another copy with crisp quality and indulged
in one final incredible horror movie before I went under
the knife and endured an excruciating week in recovery
that involved sleepless nights, aches, and a hospital
ward waiting to see if I'd slip in to an infection or
heart failure at any minute. "28 Days Later" pretty much
did what it set out to from the teaser trailer and that
was grab me by the throat and leave me wondering what
I'd just seen. I don't really recall what movie I'd gone
to see that day (It might have been X2), but I can still
recollect being in the theaters and seeing a montage of
scenes including the infected running across the fields,
the African American infected peeking in through the
window, and Cillian Murphy running from the infected
priest. Drawing its influences on "Day of the Triffids,"
"Dawn of the Dead," and "Day of the Dead," Danny Boyle's
indie horror film about a massive infection that lays
waste to Europe is one of my favorite horror films of
all time and continues to be a film I will sit down to
watch over and over again without ever growing tired of
it.
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Sadly, I
can't say the same for the sequel which is
entertaining enough but not as gripping or
emotionally invested in its characters as
Boyle's film. "28 Days Later" is one of the
few films ever made that has stuck with me
since its release in theaters and I've
attempted to seek out about as much
information as humanly possible since its
initial release in theaters. I can still
remember sitting down to watch the entire
DVD including the special features where I
learned a lot about the directions this
movie was going to take. One final ending
included the rest of the group conducting a
blood transfusion on Frank that didn't make
a lot of sense, another involved Jim dying
after the gunshot wound and a chicken taking
his place in the happy ending. And in
another alternate ending, Jim dies on the
table in the abandoned hospital while Selena
and Hannah leave his body along a gurney. |
They
turn walking down the dark corridors of the hospital
engulfed in darkness wielding their guns and the film
comes to a close. That would have and should have been
the logical closer because not only is it unflinching in
its bleakness and provide us with a mature look at the
end of the world where even those who fight for their
lives are invulnerable to fate, but it allowed a better
segue in to the sequel where we never heard from Jim,
Hannah, or Selena again. No cameos, no lip service, no
extras, no explanation, they just disappeared in to the
background. Nevertheless "28 Days Later" remains one of
my top ten horror movies of all time and my top movies
of the decade, a grizzly and often uncomfortable little
foreign gem from Danny Boyle whose own guerilla style
filmmaking and grit make for one of the most compelling
bits of horror ever made. Re-popularizing the concept of
the running zombies, "28 Days Later" really does offer
the notion of the world ending while one single man
slept and narrowly avoided the clutches of the infected
who were outside his door all the time waiting for
someone to pounce on.
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a lot of explanation needed for how Jim
survived, or who left the key under the door
for him, but the little plot device
involving the key is Boyle's own subtle hint
that even during the carnage, bloodshed, and
sheer mutilations taking place, someone had
hope that this one man would see tomorrow
and make it, thus this one little key is one
ray of hope and Jim's entrance in to hell.
Jim is safest in the confines of his
hospital room, being kept alive by tubes and
wires and being shielded by the solid door
keeping out the infected. When he dares to
venture outside of the womb in to this new
world where the humans have all but been
exterminated or have disappeared in to the
darkness, this is more than a little
surprising. Especially when he happens to
enter in to the holiest of properties to see
people still clinging to hope, all of whom
have either died, or have been lingering
with this horrible disease looking up at
their crucifix. |
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When
Jim interrupts this seemingly peaceful scene, he gets
much more than he bargained for even considering he can
barely walk under his own power. He then has to run for
his life, make sense of this scenario, and battle a
horrible foe. The prologue to "28 Days Later" puts to
test that classic adage that the road to hell is often
paved with good intentions. The laboratory within this
compound is testing animals to study the emotion of rage
and have managed to manifest it in to a physical form
that can help them to better understand it and possibly
control it. Their good intentions is met with someone
else's as a bunch of animal activists try desperately to
free a slew of primates only to unleash rage, the blood
disease that can stain someone's blood stream in under
thirty seconds making good on its promise of rage.
Victims vomit blood, garner red eyes, and lose absolute
control of their tempers and emotions making way for a
vicious new apocalypse that is seemingly unstoppable.
There's never an indication as to why Selena and Mark
try to save Jim and help him get away from the infected
when all along they could have used his attack as a
spring board for more stealth. As we see later on
they're short on supplies and completely lacking in any
real sustenance of shelter, but they save Jim
nonetheless with the purifying fires of their cocktail
bombs that make way for a massive explosion that clears
out some of the ragers for a few blocks.
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Boyle
constantly parades characters in and out of
his and Alex Garland's narrative allowing
for a more realistic approach toward the
survival of the species and providing a
deeper sense of dread where anything is
possible during this outbreak of this
massive blood born disease. While Boyle was
restricted from shooting in massive locales
for a long period of time thanks to a
limited budget and lack of real space, he
instead relies on our imaginations by giving
Mark and Selena podiums upon which to stage
their own memories and create a larger
picture of the end of the world. As we
suspect, the downfall of their society is
immediate and awfully abrupt and the only
thing people can think of doing in this wave
of violence is run for their lives, and not
even that is a reasonable solution when you
consider it's almost impossible to pick out
which person in a crowd of fleeing citizens
are infected and which are just anxiously
looking for an escape. Noah Huntley's
character is rather fantastic considering
the short screen time he's given. |
He's
resourceful, he's fast, he's witty, he's strong, and he
keeps Selena in check more times than she can count. And
he dies a horrible death at her hands when he's cut in
the middle of an attack by the infected after Jim gets
stupid and is lost in a sea of memories and thoughts of
a better time. Jim is sadly a newcomer to the world of
survival and all out barbaric battles for one's life
with an enemy that can turn you in to one of the
population by a scratch or a mere strand of spit, and
his lapse of judgment makes for the end of one really
solid character who is hacked to pieces by Selena the
minute her instinct kicks in and she is convinced his
open wound has made an entrance for infected blood. Jim
looks on in horror and can do nothing but blame himself
and try to make heads or tails as their unwitting leader
lays in a pool on the floor in literal pieces. "28 Days
Later" is all about hope and the hope for something to
come along and save this society. Mark relies on hope to
keep him going, Selena has lost all hope in herself, and
her world, Jim is trying to figure out if he has hope or
should just lay down and die, and they soon find a ray
of hope in a high rise where Frank and Hannah have left
their Christmas lights on as sort of a guiding star in
the darkness. |
