28 Days Later (2002)
Warning: This review contains spoilers.
The London sequence is still spectacular. If you know anything about 28 Days Later, Danny Boyle’s viral spin on the zombie apocalypse genre, you’ll know about the scenes in which powerless protagonist Jim (Cillian Murphy) wanders through an abandoned London’s empty tourist spots. They are the film’s clear highlight, adorning the iconic red poster, taking up a good deal of the original trailer and dominating discussion of the film ever since. Jim is a bike courier, the fortunate victim of a car crash. After spending a month in a coma, he wakes to find himself completely alone in Britain’s capital city, treading his way past the Houses of Parliament and through Piccadilly Circus without a soul in sight. Double-decker buses are overturned, rubbish litters the streets and cars are left abandoned in the middle of the road. London is dead.
After narrowly escaping an attack from a sprinting group of the undead, Jim learns that an apocalyptic virus has spread throughout Britain, destroying the vast majority of the population. There’s no government, no electricity and no running water. Those infected by the ‘rage’ virus become ravenous beasts, spreading their infection by attacking their nearest targets. If a single drop of blood makes its way into a victim’s mouth or eyes, they transform into an aggressive zombie within twenty seconds. Teaming up with tough survivor Selena (Naomie Harris), kind taxi driver Frank (Brendan Glesson) and his daughter Hannah (Megan Burns), Jim searches for the last vestiges of civilisation. A broadcast from a Northern army outpost promises a cure to the infection, prompting the survivors to travel across Britain.
Shooting on rough, low-fidelity digital video, Boyle creates unclean footage that looks like it belongs in a nightmare or a snuff film. Google the phrase ‘28 Days Later quality’ and you’ll find endless forum posts complaining about the 480p footage, captured on a Canon XL1 MiniDV camcorder. I love it. It’s my favourite directorial choice in the entire film, making the grungy video aesthetic of the Blair years part of the film’s text. This movie’s cinematographer, Anthony Dod Mantle, shot Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen: the original Dogme 95 film. Mantle brings the texture of Danish experimental cinema to the streets of London, making the familiar plain, scratched and shabby. The choice of camera was partly functional, allowing the abandoned London scenes to be shot very quickly, but it does wonders for the film’s uncomfortable, realistic tone. 28 Days Later is far from flawless, but it’s a glorious mood piece, capturing an ugly, urban tone of lonely doom.
The 9/11 attacks took place eleven days into filming and have been associated with the film ever since. Boyle’s film wasn’t designed as a response to the brand-new war on terror, but its footage of devastated cities and bloodthirsty troops are an eerie complement for the new political reality ushered in after the towers fell. It’s notable that the film’s ultimate villains aren’t the infected humans: it’s the isolated squad of British soldiers broadcasting a false message of sanctuary. Times may have changed significantly, but some things will always stay the same. Even after the apocalypse, authority can’t be trusted. Boyle and writer Alex Garland take the civilian vs military clash of George Romero’s Day of the Dead, and add the British class system to the mix. Christopher Eccleston plays arch-villain Major Henry West with a high-born RP accent completely unlike the actor’s Salfordian tones. Before they rebel, the targets of his prey are working class Hannah, Irish-accented Jim, and Selena: a black woman.
Whilst Romero’s Zombie movies were extremely gory, they were so over-the-top and cartoonish that the the horror was a little diluted. 28 Days Later is disturbingly real. It was one of the first 18-certificate films that I ever watched (I was about thirteen), and I found it upsettingly violent. Sympathetic characters are hacked to pieces with a machete or suddenly torn apart by a volley of gunfire. The nasty chase sequence that ends the film is full of screaming men and constant gore. Devourings, stabbings and eye-gougings are accompanied by John Murphy’s gorgeous, ominous score. In the House - In a Heartbeat, the slow-burn explosion of a track used in this final sequence, has since developed a life of its own, scoring TV series, pear cider commercials, video game trailers and a pivotal scene in the superhero film Kick-Ass. Aside from an upbeat electronic tune by Grandaddy, the rest of the soundtrack is a stew of brooding ambience. Gorgeous tracks by Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Brian Eno are dropped at the perfect moments, accompanying vast stretches of isolated devastation.
Following his successes with Christopher Nolan and his leading role in Peaky Blinders, Cillian Murphy has become a household name. It was 28 Days Later that introduced the Irish actor to mass audiences. Murphy is instantly likable and sympathetic in his role as the bewildered survivor, playing fear and confusion with great skill and detail. Once Jim gives himself a buzzcut and picks up a baseball bat, his character changes, becoming a little more casual and cheeky. This is where Murphy excels. With short hair and a laid-back attitude, he reserves a steely grit but makes himself the lovable survivor, the one to root for. Against Harris’s no-nonsense brash attitude and Eccleston’s eerie manner, Murphy is the recognisable human, the 20-something everyman with a conscience. Eccleston and Harris are strong, but I was particularly impressed by Gleeson as Frank, the warm-hearted cockney taxi driver. He’ll be a good dad until the moment of his death.
Despite its gorgeous tone and powerful central performances, I found 28 Days Later a little uneven on my most recent viewing. Actress Megan Burns’ affectless style is well-suited to the film’s final act, when her character is tranquilised by a heavy dose of Valium, but it rankles in earlier scenes. Hannah reacts to the zombie apocalypse with a shrug, speaking her lines with a blunt coldness at odds with the performances around her. In the film’s weakest moment, she reacts to her father’s obvious, bloody death with complete nonchalance. She’s profoundly upset in the next scene. Furthermore, I’m not convinced by Jim’s sudden transformation into an uber-capable action man in the final act, given that he has absolutely no background in brutal hand-to-hand combat. The final action sequence is punchy and engaging, a headfirst descent into amped-up haunted house horror. It’s nicely edited and gorgeously scored, but a big shift away from the film’s docudrama tone. 28 Days Later has its issues, but they don’t cause me much trouble while the film’s running. Murphy ably guides Boyle’s zombie drama through its weaker moments, and the blurry digital video always keeps me hooked.
Danny Boyle’s vision of the apocalypse is more successful as a mood piece than a horror movie. If I wanted to watch a full-blooded Zombie picture, I’d choose either Day or Dawn of the Dead. Boyle’s movie has effective action and brilliant jolts of fear with its sprinting, staring, red-eyed creatures, but the film is far more effective in its quieter moments. When Tony Blair’s Britain is reduced to warm cans of Irn-Bru, abandoned Vauxhall Corsas, concrete and council estates, 28 Days Later glows. It captures the spirit of urban decay, paranoia and anxiety incredibly well while staying true to the prosaic details of British life. Everywhere feels lived-in and nothing is too shiny. The docudrama style works beautifully and the performances match it, remaining understated and appropriately restricted. This film will always remain a fascinating object to me, a mass-marketed 480p digital hit full of emptiness and creeping fear. Whenever a line feels awkward or a plot shift is a little too sudden, I remember the London sequence. It’s perfect.