Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
I’m hoping to slip out tonight and see the sneak of 28 DAYS LATER. If you haven’t had a chance to check out the first six minutes of the film, go check it out. It’s remarkably effective stuff. Disturbing.
It’s strange when something comes out in the US after it’s played pretty much everywhere else. Reverses the typical order of release, and means that many of our international readers already have this film on DVD. That region 2 disc sure does look like a nice package.
Anyway... here’s Beaks with his take on the film.
If you live in one of the twenty-eight markets listed here on Fox Searchlight’s website, DO NOT READ THIS REVIEW. Instead, why don’t you head out and get tickets for tonight’s sneak preview of 28 DAYS LATER at 10:00 PM? Horror fans: consider this your penance for helplessly shelling out full admission for WRONG TURN two weeks ago. I know you couldn’t help it (I’ve got a copy of THEY sitting in front of the DVD player as I write this, so I know this shame), but, finally, here’s something really worth supporting. Check it out, then come back and, if you’re so inclined, read my review. Or ignore it and post some clever variation on the “reinventing zombie horror” quote jumping out from the busy ad at the left side of the page. In any event, on with my review...
28 DAYS LATER (d. Danny Boyle, w. Alex Garland)
“28 DAYS LATER is not a zombie movie!” For days prior to seeing this movie a month ago, Moriarty would continually beat this into my head as if my potential enjoyment of the film somehow hinged on my false perception of it going in. And he was right in that, technically, it’s a contagion film; a theoretical melding of THE STAND and THE CRAZIES with some OMEGA MAN sprinkled into the mix.
But the more I think about it, the less I agree with him. 28 DAYS LATER is not only a zombie movie, it’s essentially Romero’s “Dead Trilogy” in 120 minutes, wandering from the simple siege dynamics of NIGHT to a brief flirtation with the consumerist satire of DAWN before arriving at the doomed survivalist nightmare of DAY (they’ve even got a Bub!) But while there is homage aplenty, Boyle has contemporized the material by applying his own socially conscious message mongering, which intrigues and provokes for a good portion of the run time, only to end up being the least convincing aspect of the film if only for the way the filmmaker fails to evince the courage of his cynical convictions. But we’ll get to that later.
Boyle’s toxic catastrophe begins in an animal testing lab, where helpless chimps are being injected with an experimental serum called “rage”. (They’re also strapped to a metal slab CLOCKWORK ORANGE-style, and inundated with continuous news feeds of human brutality and anarchy.) When a militant animal rights group infiltrates the lab to document this cruelty, they inadvertently find themselves under attack by the violently mad primates, and, suddenly, the sickness is unleashed on an unbeknownst and unprepared London.
“28 days later” – see, they really weren’t capitalizing on Sandra Bullock’s 2000 rehab comedy! – we’re introduced to Jim (Cillian Murphy), a hospitalized bike messenger who awakens from an accident-induced coma to find that the whole world has disappeared. He drowsily waders out onto the streets of London looking for signs of life, surrounded only by scattered newspapers screaming out their last ominous headlines before everything presumably went to hell. It’s not until he ambles into a church that he finds something with a heartbeat, but when that “something” turns out to be the rabid, walking (more like sprinting) infected, he finds himself running for his life, and chased into the protective custody of two tough, young survivors, Mark (Noah Huntley) and Selena (Naomie Harris), who quickly bring him up to speed on what looks to be the end of civilization as we know it.
Against Mark and Selena’s better judgment, they head out for Jim’s home so he can confirm the worst suspicions about the rest of his family. This is actually a very poignantly handled section of the film that firmly links the audience to Jim’s plight, but, like any good horror filmmaker, Boyle is just lulling the audience into a false placidity before staging a furious attack by the infected. In the process of fighting these nasty buggers, Mark gets wounded. As we learned earlier, once a healthy human incurs blood contact with the infected, they’ve got maybe thirty seconds before they’re transformed into one of them; ergo, the brutally pragmatic Selena lets fly with her machete, hacking her friend and likely lover to pieces. There’s no joy in this, but, in this kill or be killed scenario forced upon them, there’s also no choice, and Selena makes it absolutely clear to Jim that he’ll get the same should he fuck around and get bitten. For now, however, they are two, and they need to get moving lest they become sitting ducks for more infected.
Running low on food, Jim and Selena luckily encounter Frank (Brendan Gleeson) and Hannah (Megan Burns), a cheerful father-and-daughter who live near the top of a well-barricaded apartment complex, escaping the hopelessness of their situation by celebrating Christmas year-round. It’s here that they learn via radio of a sanctuary outside of town. Though it’s a perilous two-day journey, the group – clinging to the hope of more survivors – opt to head for this stronghold, even though the message guiding them there is a recording of unknown age. However, what’s waiting for them upon arrival is a punchy pack of horny soldiers led by Major West (Christopher Eccleston), which may not be the salvation they were counting on.
Blown up to 35mm from digital video, 28 DAYS LATER has that typically ungainly look that, in lesser films with uninvolving stories, gets awfully annoying awfully quickly. But just as Romero’s trilogy got by with a drab color palate and competently unspectacular cinematography, Boyle and veteran Dogme ’95 DP, Anthony Dod Mantle use the inherent limitations of the transferred image to their advantage, conjuring up a grimy atmosphere that nicely complements the down-and-dirty nature of the film.
What really anchors the picture are the lead performances by Cillian Murphy and Naomie Harris, both of whom I was watching for the first time in this film. They manage their respective character arcs quite nicely – Murphy’s Jim becoming increasingly confident and aggressive, while Harris’s Selena softens from a hard, unfeeling bitch to something more closely resembling a compassionate human being – and establish an appealing chemistry that gives us a palpable rooting interest in their survival. But Harris is the real find here. I’ve since watched her in the BBC’s solid adaptation of WHITE TEETH, and I’m convinced that she’s one juicy role away from a breakthrough performance. She’s got a remarkable ability to lend fragile shadings to her powerfully sexy tough girl exterior that shames most of her peers. Casting agents and filmmakers would do well to take notice.
Ultimately, there’s nothing terribly original about 28 DAYS LATER (the only thing it’s “reinventing” is Boyle’s career, which has been flagging since TRAINSPOTTING). Fast moving zombies are certainly nothing new (hell, Umberto Lenzi had ‘em running and operating firearms in CITY OF THE WALKING DEAD), and the contagion angle, as I mentioned earlier, has been played several times. Where Boyle’s looking to leave his mark is by articulating a commentary on how little truly separates the civilized and the animalistic within us. There’s a telling moment near the end when Selena has to face down a rampaging Jim, who’s gone horrifically primal in order to save her. The way I read it, and maybe this is just my own cynical view on human nature, there was only one way to resolve this, and I felt Boyle’s resolution was a bit of a copout. Though this surprising, and unearned, optimism will restrain 28 DAYS LATER from being mentioned in the same breath of the genre’s best films, it by no means negates the film’s primary achievement as a flesh-ripping assault on the audience. This is *real*, blood-and-guts horror. It doesn’t just go for the throat, it rips the fucker clean out of your neck. Enjoy.
Faithfully submitted,
Mr. Beaks
What?! You disagree with me on something?! That’s it... if you were standing here right now, I’d slap you with a glove and challenge you to pistols at dawn. Since you’re not, I’m just going to have to settle for rewriting your next review when you submit it in subtle and humiliating ways. Just you wait...
"Moriarty" out.
