Animal rights activists break into a British lab to rescue
chimps that have been experimented on. The researchers are trying to find a cure
for rage, an emotion that causes a lot of death and destruction. So the chimps
have been infected with an inhibitor that suppresses all normal restraints on
their rage in an effort to see if they can find a way to contain it. Despite the
pleas of a lab worker not to release the chimps, the activists do just that,
releasing a chimp from its sealed Plexiglas cage--only to have it savagely attack one of
the activists, viciously biting her. The activists quickly kill the chimp, and
the lab worker tries to kill the now-infected activist, but it is too late. She
already spat in the face of one of her comrades, instantly infecting him...and so
the contagion begins its deadly spread across England.
28 days later, a coma patient named Jim (Cillian Murphy) wakes up in an
abandoned hospital. A bicycle courier who was the victim of a hit and run, he
has basically slept through the end of the world. After wandering the streets of
a deserted London, he meets Mark (Noah Huntley) and Selena (Naomie Harris), two
survivors of the rage plague who have become adept at battling the Infected. As Jim
learns firsthand when Mark gets bitten in an attack, once a person is bitten by one of the Infected, it takes 10 to 20
seconds for them to become one of them. The Infected are known by their blood-red
eyes and by the fact that they exist in a constant state of primal rage. All
higher brain functions have been eliminated in favor of the most base,
instinctive feelings, which is mainly to rip people apart for food. This is a
far different and more realistic interpretation of the old zombie myth of the
re-animated dead; the Infected are still very much alive, but they are still
zombie-like in that all civilized thoughts are suppressed in favor of their
murderous, ravenous behavior. And unlike the lumbering, shambling zombies of
other horror films, the Infected move very fast, and just one drop of their
blood is enough to infect you.
Directed by Danny Boyle. And written by Alex Garland, 28 Days Later is a superb
horror film. It basically deals with the grim realities of day-to-day survival
where civilization is a thing of the past, in a land where cities and towns are
just as much as dead as the majority of their citizens. Shot on a moderate budget,
it still manages to tell its bleak story very effectively, with plenty of
visceral shock moments that make you jump out of your seat. And on top of this,
28 Day Later is still handled intelligently, and populated with characters that
you really care about. Brenden Gleason and Megan Burns are also great as a father and
daughter whom Jim and Selena meet up with.
The DVD includes a commentary by Boyle and Garland, deleted scenes, and two
alternate endings. There's a great "making of" documentary called "Pure Rage",
which examines the all too real threat of a pandemic, as well as the making of
the film. --SF