A film that is hard to watch in an age where everything is so easy.
47/100
Original Release: 2002
Director: Danny Boyle
Writer: Alex Garland
Cast: Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Brandon Gleeson, Megan Burns
Favourite Quote:
“If you look at the whole life of the planet, we, you know, man has only been around for a few blinks of an eye. So, if the infection wipes us all out... that is a return to normality.”
Favourite Shot:
In an early scene of Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later our main character Jim meets fellow epidemic survivors Selena and Mark. Mark’s opening line to Jim is a joke about a man and a camel in a bar. No one laughs and Mark replies with a line that could probably be directed at the whole film “He’s completely humourless”.
28 Days Later is a nightmarish, dark and extremely sincere apocalyptic-horror film that never gives you a second of laughter or colour. And it’s very hard to stomach in an age where everything we are given is meant to be easy to watch and digest.
Written by Alex Garland (his first credited screenplay) the film follows Jim (Cillian Murphy) who awakes from a coma to discover that London has been overtaken by virus-infected humans (zombies). It’s an interesting premise, but it just feels as if there is no life to this world. It’s so dreary and hopeless, and it’s hard to make yourself excited to watch the rest of it.
Boyle films with a DV-based Canon XL1 camera meaning the whole film just looks as if it is bad quality. The images are unclear and grainy. There aren’t beautiful shots (in the conventional sense), or colourful compositions and it just adds to the harsh viewing experience.
The first time the film gets a bit of life into it is when Brandon Gleeson arrives as Frank. Jim and Selena (Naomie Harris) team up with him and his daughter Hannah (Megan Burns) to try and reach a certain spot where army soldiers are supposedly protecting survivors. Frank and his daughter have a cute relationship, and he at least injects some sort of energy to keep us moving through the bleak atmosphere.
There is a couple of nice scenes including one where they are driving a car through a tunnel and Frank is attempting to drive over a pile-up of cars. Everyone inside the car begins to laugh and it’s possibly the only moment in the film where you get to see the main characters enjoy themselves.
They reach the location, but Frank turns into a zombie and he, and the mood, is murdered by the soldiers. There’s still a little hope since they have found the soldiers, but even from the beginning you can sense that something is not right. Boyle has conditioned us to believe that hope is useless.
It is revealed that the soldiers didn’t send out a message for survivors to come find them and get protection, but instead they wanted women to come so that the soldiers could use them for their own personal activities.
This power struggle occurring between the soldiers is interesting at first. They are the ones with the guns, they’re at the top so they think they can do what they want. But it just once again becomes hard to watch because they are all just terrible people with no redeeming qualities. Everything about the film just makes you want to look away.
There is a gruesome, satisfying conclusion to end the film, but at that point you just are glad it is coming to an end.
Comparing the film to one of the most popular zombie films of the last ten years in Ruben Fleischer’s Zombieland, you couldn’t find two more opposite films in the same genre. Zombieland is all about making the film easy to watch. There are video game graphics, good looking actors, narration, beautiful shots. You can watch that movie over and over easily.
But 28 Days Later is a slog. Everything about it wants you to look away. The images, the actors, the sound, the tone, the pacing - it’s all unappealing. Boyle wants you to put in the work to get through this thing because it's all part of the experience. It’s very respectable.
You can tell he has successfully made the movie he set out to make. And if that’s the type of movie you love, then you are going to love this film.
It is just particularly hard to view this film in a day and age where we are conditioned to believe that every movie should be easy. We should be force fed everything. If something is boring, tell it to me interestingly. If something is ugly, show it to me in a beautiful way. And that is the complete opposite of what Boyle is trying to achieve.
Garland’s writing is solid. The ideas are all there and are even a little reminiscent of his later work (especially the soldiers and their power struggle). But it doesn’t have the creative flair and originality of his later writing. It follows a simple structure and story.
Garland’s directing usually does a great job of blending the beauty of his worlds with the terror of his writing and it would be curious to see how he would’ve directed this film.
It took myself three separate viewings to get through Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later. But it is a rewarding experience and it is fascinating to wonder why he made a film so hard to watch. If you are interested in this genre and the sort of gritty, harsh style that Boyle presents you will love it, but if you’re looking for something more digestible, stick with Zombieland (I certainly will be).
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