A film review by Mark O'Hara Copyright © 2003 Mark O'Hara

Danny Boyle’s “28 Days Later” is not your normal zombie movie.

I mean, the characters infected (within 10-20 seconds of contact) with the “Rage” virus are snarling, twitching, mindless animals that seem to hunt in packs. They don’t have much of an agenda – not even eating the brains of the uninfected – except spreading the fast-acting germ, and they can be killed as normal humans in movies are killed.

A friend of mine commented on leaving the theater that the movie “did well what probably did not need to be done at all.”

This statement is an apt review. “28 Days Later” is very well-edited, starting off in a largely abandoned hospital in a deserted London, and spanning a story with intriguing chase scenes and suspense. Jim (Cillian Murphy) awakes from his coma and wanders vacant streets in his scrub suit. In no time he stirs the wrath of the red-eyed critters, gets rescued by Selena and Mark, and finds his parents and former life are no longer part of his reality.

What follows is an engaging road movie, peopled by somewhat relatable characters (especially Brendan Gleeson’s Frank) on their way out of London to an apparent military stronghold outside of the city of Manchester. Matters on the British mainland are drastic, most of the population is dead and the government and its accompanying infrastructures are gone. OK – nothing we haven’t seen before.

I was fascinated by the politics of the piece. What more disenfranchised beings can you find than the soulless humans created by a struggle between animal rights activists and scientists that looses the monstrous results of experimentation on primates? You reap what you sow, the moral goes, and the ideas don’t stop there.

What is justified killing? To what lengths can a person stay heartless enough to ensure survival? Can the behavior of “clean” humans be worse than that of the “infected”? How important is the quality of life, and would a post-apocalyptic world necessarily give birth to a more civilized version of our world? When should factions from the “outside world” intervene in dire struggles? The film brings up gripping issues, and yes, there are even threads of a love story, between Jim and the strong female lead, Selena (Naomie Harris).

From the way zombie flicks are analyzed, it would seem a filmmaker needs an agenda to succeed; I mean a supply of ideas that comment on social and political issues and, as well, move the plot in interesting directions. Though the plot here is not strikingly original, the ideology makes “28 Days Later” worth seeing. From the ads (shampoo, jeans, video games) and trailers preceding the piece, the distributors seem unfortunately to be targeting viewers not old enough to get past ticket sellers enforcing the R rating. I would venture that the most satisfied viewers will have enjoyed the ideas more than the action and gore. And I would certainly want an usher to enforce the R rating if my own children were in the multiplex.

	Running Time: 112 Min | Rated: R | US Release: June 27th | More >>

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