28 Days Later (2003)
Review by Zachary K. Parker
Jim
(Cillian Murphy of Batman Begins)
walks the deserted streets of
As a genre, I have no problem with horror in general, and I’m not willing to throw it out just because men like Wes Craven (Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream) have popularized the horror sub-genre: slasher flicks.
Hitchcock, Shyamalan, even Stanley Kubrick, Roger Corman, and Stephen King have contributed to making meaningful horror movies.
In keeping with the standards set by the filmmakers listed above, Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later is a laudable example of a horror movie that engages the viewer on a level above animal instincts and desires.
28 Days Later is actually
about a virus, Rage, which unleashes man’s animal nature and rapidly modifies
him into a vicious, fast-moving zombie. Twenty-eight days later after the first
infection, Jim (Cillian Murphy) wakes up from a coma in a seemingly deserted
Soon he makes friends with Mark (Noah Huntley), Selena (Naomie Harris), Hannah (Megan Burns), and her father, Frank (Brendan Gleeson). Together they attempt to flee the zombie infestation.
Throughout the film, Boyle makes it a point to demonstrate the cause and effect of violence among humanity. He consistently avoids the urge to explain, and lets the standard of “show, not tell” guide his direction.
The film begins in a lab where scientists are experimenting with Rage on primates: they have tied one particular monkey down in front of several TV monitors showing news footage of violent riots and other brutal events. Just see how violent people are towards each other, the TV screen taunts, and their addiction with violence makes them oblivious to the pain they inflict even on animals.
As its name implies, Rage is not limited to a scientific formula, but entrenched in humanity, ready to assault anyone though it disfigures its own body. The virus does not alter a human into an undead zombie; it simply makes them super sub-humans.
However, Boyle narrows the scope to center on the conflict between self-serving violence and self-defense. He makes the point that even the military can be indistinguishable from zombies when its actions are based on some Darwinian struggle for dominancy.
In the characters’ struggle against the zombies, we are reminded that even the slightest intake of Rage-infected blood will transform any living animal, making it a risk to even fight the zombies.
Thus Boyle insures we understand the importance to devote ourselves to a higher ideal, executing our enemies (only if we absolutely must) with pure intentions and pure methods to avoid becoming like them ourselves.
Even when someone has a good end in mind, choosing violent methods to resolve the situation only leads that person to a fatal end. Revenge for the sake of fulfilling justice, rape for the sake of preserving humanity are misguided efforts, which often reverse their intentions upon the individual.
Is there a cure? Possibly. Boyle points the audience to love as the bandage for man’s various wounds, as well as indicating truth as the litmus test for Rage or restrained violence. Where does love and truth come from?
One of the most stirring moments in the film comes when in the background, we hear “Abide with Me” and “Ave Maria,” as the new “family” drive peacefully through the countryside and enjoying themselves while grocery shopping, mundane everyday activities highlighted delightfully in spite of the chaos behind them and the bloodshed ahead of them.
The amount of blood in this movie is often extremely harsh and unsettling. Whereas other horror movies indulge violence and gore, 28 Days Later is mostly disturbing for its frequent portrayal of blood vomiting zombies, which evoke the intended relationship between this movie’s blood borne virus and Ebola.
There are other moments of extreme violence, but it is the ideas of “violence without restraint” that intensify their impact. Even so, the movie does not focus as much on the blood and gore as it does on portraying the means and costs of survival.
Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later is a stylistic and appropriately startling call to think, to think about the “violence inherent in the [human] system.” Accordingly, it would be a shame to “repress” this effort.