28 Days Later

Release Year : 2002

AKA : 29 Days Later (extended version)

Directed By : Danny Boyle

Written By : Alex Garland

Starring : Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Noah Huntley

Related Links : IMDB, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com

 

People are getting angrier these days. Heck, all ya got to do is look at someone the wrong way and they are trying to tear your face off, and that's just a night out drinking around where I live. C'mon, ya know what I mean. That bitch at the telephone call center puts you on hold and you want to rip her throat out. Someone cuts you up when you are driving and nothing would be more satisfying than to grab them out of their car and beat them into a bloody pulp. Violence, anger, rage, is a part of us all.

But now those damned scientists have really gone and done it. They've gone and created a virus that goes and harnesses all of that. It turns it's victim into a pure vessel for hate, a complete crazed and inhuman killer. A viral zombie so to speak. Animal rights activists break into the lab and get infected. Soon the virus is everywhere, spread by blood, devastating in seconds, and the whole of the UK is disintegrating into bloodcrazed madness.

Jim, a courier who has been in a coma since an accident, wakes up to a London where the streets are deserted. Or so it seems. His real nightmare begins when he encounters the victims of the devastating disease, called appropriately enough Rage, and a desperate struggle for survival and escape from the maddened hordes begins.

This has got to be one of the best horrors to come out of the UK in recent years. Intense, crazy, bloody, sad, it tears along throughout at breakneck speed, Jim and his fellow survivors constantly in danger, escaping from one peril only to face another. Even in safety lies greater peril and risk. The atmosphere is really worked upon, the picture of a devastated UK and a handful of bewildered survivors battling against the odds is lovingly created. There's always a threat, the danger never lets up, the slightest lapse in attention could spell death.

Zombie purists will argue this isn't a true zombie movie as zombies don't run and these creatures are not actually returned from dead, and I wouldn't argue the point. Perhaps viral zombies is the best name, think Romeros Crazies, inhuman victims of a madness causing plague, driven only by pure hatred, that most primal of all emotions. They have no restraint, no emotion, they exist to destroy.

Whatever we call them, what we end up with is a devastated and overran England, chaos reigning in the wake of societies collapse, that looks absolutely convincing on screen. This is one of those films that pulls you in, makes you believe, casts you in the story. It's fast, it's furious, and works a charm. You'll feel the tension of impending doom, fall victim to that paranoia that monsters lurk everywhere, even within your closest friend or most intimate lover if they fall victim to the disease.

Great story telling, filmed and directed like a treat, my only complaint is that the ending was a little weak and predictable.