[EDITOR’S NOTE: In 2003, long before MovieManifesto.com existed, I spent my summer as a 20-year-old college kid writing as many movie reviews as I could. My goal was to compile them all into a website, possibly hosted by Tripod or Geocities, which would surely impress all of the women in my dorm. That never happened—neither the compiling nor the impressing—but the reviews still exist. So, now that I am a wildly successful critic actually have a website, I’ll be publishing those reviews on the respective date of each movie’s 20th anniversary. Against my better judgment, these pieces remain unedited from their original form. I apologize for the quality of the writing; I am less remorseful about the character of my 20-year-old opinions.]
28 Days Later is like a Twilight Zone episode on crystal meth. It takes a standard science-fiction concept – a small band of mismatched renegades must save humanity from extinction – and infuses it with Danny Boyle’s high-octane style to create quite a gruesome cocktail. There’s a lot of potential here with such an intriguing motif, but the result is disappointingly bland. So intent is Boyle on creating his twisted, macabre universe that he fails to immerse us within it. Thus, while the movie is supposed to be chic, edgy, and above all scary, we’re too detached to be frightened. 28 Days Later is occasionally taut and innovative, but it is never compelling.
Things begin promisingly enough. After a brief prologue involving a trio of unwise animal activists, a hapless scientist, and some very angry chimps, we open on Jim (Cillian Murphy), who wakes up in an utterly empty hospital. In a surreal moment, he wanders the streets of Britain, screaming “Hello!” to the solitary streets, receiving nary a word of consolation (this is reminiscent of the opening of Alejandro Amenabar’s Open Your Eyes, which Cameron Crowe remade as Vanilla Sky).
But Cillian Murphy isn’t Tom Hanks, and 28 Days Later isn’t Cast Away; clearly, Jim needs some company. He finds it in Mark (Noah Huntley) and Selena (Naomie Harris), who inform him that the U.K. is now overrun by “the infected”, a bloodthirsty group of vicious zombies who contracted a nasty virus. As is the nature of a virus, any exposure to this epidemic will transform even the most humble human into one of the infected. Traveling as an unruly mob, these packs of nightmarish beasts are snarling, savage, ferocious creatures bent on murder and mayhem … come to think of it, they behave a bit like British soccer fans after their team loses a penalty shootout.
Anyway, three’s a crowd, and Selena’s awfully good-looking, so Mark’s quickly out of the picture (and in grisly fashion). Soon the pair teams up with a kindly father, Frank (Brendan Gleeson), and his young daughter, Hannah (Megan Burns), and the foursome hears on radio a recorded report that there is a military survival station set up past Manchester. It may simply be a mirage in this vast desert of blood and gore, but it’s the only hope they have, so off we go.
That’s about it. Sure, there are a few unexpected (and dubiously conceived) twists and turns later on – Christopher Eccleston shows up, lending experienced savvy to a preposterous part – but I’ll refrain from spoiling things too bluntly. Not that it much matters, because as things plod along, 28 Days Later heads downhill quickly. Admittedly, the movie is an exercise in concept, not plot, but there’s little excuse for such a ham-handed second act. Once the plot developments take center stage, the film begins to lose its legs, and then it chops them off with a denouement so incongruous it is almost offensive.
Part of the problem is that, while it’s being billed as one of the creepiest movies in recent years, 28 Days Later isn’t very scary. There isn’t much subtlety involved here; what we get are zombies, zombies that scowl and bite and scream, zombies that used to be children or soldiers or priests. There are those archetypal moments when undead beings burst suddenly through walls or doors, and they provide occasional flashes of fright, but the film lacks a suspenseful core.
The movie exhibits likenesses of an array of horror films, but it most closely resembles George A. Romero’s superlative Dawn of the Dead, in which four humans fleeing from zombies hole up in a shopping mall. (This is faintly echoed in 28 Days Later, when the quartet raids a deserted shopping market for supplies.) Romero’s zombies were of a different breed than Boyle’s – they were sluggish and stupid but relentless, and it was their absolute otherworldliness made them marvelously frightening. On the other hand, Boyle’s undead seem more human, faster and bloodier but overall less intimidating.
But the real issue here is that, mainly, we just don’t care. Good horror films require characters that resonate with the audience, so that we feel helplessly magnetized, pulled unwillingly into their plight along with them. No one in 28 Days Later possesses that allure. This is not the fault of the actors; all the performances here are first-rate, especially Cillian Murphy, who’s unaffected and convincing as the lead (he seems uncannily like a British version of Jim Caviezel). It’s that the people we meet just aren’t very interesting. Screenwriter Alex Garland tries hard to create ordinary characters we can relate to, but Boyle is so enraptured with chaos and carnage that we wind up feeling disconnected.
There are junctures when his imagination pays dividends, however. The opening minutes of desolation are tremendous and were in all likelihood extremely difficult to film, as well as a later shot in which the camera pulls back and we see a lengthy abandoned stretch of road. Perhaps the most chilling scene in the picture occurs when a drop of infected blood falls unexpectedly into a man’s eye from above. Sadly, though, these moments of genuine inspiration are lost amid the rubble.
Danny Boyle is an enigma. His best theatrical releases to date remain his first two: Shallow Grave, a gritty psychological thriller focusing on three roommates and a suitcase full of money, and Trainspotting, a similarly turbulent examination of heroin addicts (both starred Ewan McGregor, the latter making him a star). Then he lost his identity in Hollywood, where he made some poorly received features, including The Beach with Leonardo DiCaprio.
He has hailed this as a return to his independent roots (the budget was a relatively meager $8 million), but in the process, he himself seems to have forgotten them. True, 28 Days Later maintains the uncompromising intensity of Boyle’s earlier works, but here it is misguided, put to waste on cheap thrills while neglecting the characters that should be the film’s center. And so the movie runs full-bore into its creator’s wilderness, only to find nothing of sustenance within.
Jeremy Beck is the editor-in-chief of MovieManifesto. He watches more movies and television than he probably should.