You could call this Outbreak of the Living Dead, as it takes the idea of a deadly virus and merges it with marauding zombies. Only these zombies don't stumble around blankly; they run and spit and snarl and flash their beady red eyes!The film opens with a brief prologue in which we see a virus called rage accidentally "liberated" from an animal-testing lab. Then 28 days later a young man named Jim (Murphy, a Jim Caviezel lookalike) wakes up from a coma and staggers into a very empty London, clueless as to what has happened. He meets a few uninfected survivors and links up with Selena (Harris) to battle the undead. After hearing a remote radio broadcast, they team up with a father and daughter (Gleeson and Burns) to travel north to join a group of soldiers led by the slightly wild-eyed Major West (Eccleston), who has a theory about how to survive.
It's unclear why Boyle shot this using what looks like a consumer video camera, because the images are slightly blurred and the action scenes are hard to see in any detail. Fortunately, he has a terrific eye, so the film as a whole is very well directed, with clever camera work that builds the tension and actually jolts us out of our seats a few times. The cast is natural and solid, letting us identify with the characters and injecting some humour just when we need it.
Screenwriter Garland is obviously enamored with both the undead and mentally unstable control freaks, as the plot changes into something altogether different from your garden variety zombie movie. Like his novel The Beach, the story is startlingly gruesome, with one clever twist and a bunch of truly nasty developments that don't sit right with the characters (for the record, Boyle significantly altered the plot in his film of The Beach). This gruesome plotting combines with the gritty visual style to make the film an unsettling, creepy experience, complete with very strange sound editing and eerie musical choices that accent the offbeat post-apocalyptic imagery remarkably. But this just makes us wish Boyle had shot on film so we could see it more clearly.
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themes, violence, language, gore | 10.Oct.02 |
scr Alex Garland
with Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Christopher Eccleston, Brendan Gleeson, Megan Burns, Ricci Harnett, Stuart McQuarrie, Noah Huntley, Luke Mably, Leo Bill, Ray Panthaki, Marvin Campbell
release UK 1.Nov.02
Fox
02/UK 1h53
Post-apocalyptic love. Selena and Jim (Harris and Murphy) share a little tenderness amid the carnage...
"Boyle's take on post-apocalyptic Britain is entertaining but ultimately forgettable partly due to a clumsy script. The film opens promisingly with the inadvertant release of the rage virus that turns those infected into walking 'dead'. The virus can only be passed by contact with infected blood which sets us up nicely for some gruesome sequences as the infected hunt down survivors. The most impressive aspects of the film are the infected who move at lightening speed and attack with ferocity. They are a far cry from traditional zombies who walk and groan at snail's pace, and this makes the film genuinely frightening in places. I was also impressed by some of the camerawork. Yes it is grainy and blurry in places but does add to the atmosphere of the film, and the shots of a deserted London are fantastic, giving us a sense of the end of mankind as we know it. What disappointed me was the characterisation. I felt little for the people who were attempting to find salvation and cliches were coming thick and fast as we find romance (why do people have to fall in love when faced with adversity?) loved ones dying (the affable bloke always has to get it) and that your potential saviours are not all they're cracked up to be. Having been brave enough to shoot on DV and to twist the zombie genre slightly it would have been to nice to see more originality in the second half of the film. It seems Boyle can't get away from the whole community-survival theme as it's been prevalent in most of his work. Still, as a director I think he comes out with flying colours, not so sure about Alex Garland though." --Lyford Thomas, Cumbria 25.Oct.02
"Definitely one of the most compelling films to emerge from the post-apocalyptic genre. The opening scenes of survivor Jim shambling in disbelief through a deserted London are genuinely haunting. The sheer ferocity and unexpectedness of each and every zombie attack means that there are plenty of truly terrifying moments, so even the quieter moments do not enable the viewer to relax. Saying that, the film does contain a few Hollywood-esque moments of absurdity. Are we really expected to believe that a man recently emerged from a coma can easily outrun a pack of enraged and adrenaline-fuelled zombies baying for his blood? Why don't the hate-infused zombies ever turn on each other? And on the strength of the film's latter stages, the British Army should initiate a recruitment drive targetting all bicycle couriers immediately!
Boyle's message of 'unite to survive' is hammered home at every available opportunity. However, some deftness of touch is showed in the portrayal of how rapidly the order and discipline of Major West (Eccleston) and his soldiers degenerates into anarchy and brutality. Isolated from civilisation, their mission to protect becomes twisted in a disturbing and unexpected manner. At times we are left unsure who are the humans and who are the virus-crazed zombies.
In spite of the often grim and gritty subject matter, the slow motion shot of horses galloping through the Lake District is the film's central message of hope. Whatever insanity mankind inflicts on itself, the world turns regardless." --TJ Hatton, London 9.Nov.02