28 Days Later Review – Rage, Run, Hide, Kill
Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
Three of us started watching ’28 Days Later’, but 20 minutes in, I was the only remaining viewer glued to the screen, still hoping for things to get exciting. And the patience paid off: things do get interesting, violent, gritty, even though the pace keeps dipping and the camera angles are often weird.
Directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland, 28 Days Later opens with a gruesome, horrifying scene where a group of activists frees highly infected, violent chimpanzees from a lab, despite warnings that the animals are dangerously contagious. The freed chimps immediately tear their liberators apart, and viewers are then transported to a hospital 28 days later, where protagonist Jim (Cillian Murphy) wakes up, unaware that a “rage virus” has wiped out most of the UK’s population. The film follows Jim’s survival journey as he teams up with others who aren’t infected. Yet.
“Wait, isn’t this exactly how The Walking Dead begins?!” my movie buddy blurted out, and funnily, I was thinking the same thing. In both the show and the comic, Rick Grimes wakes up from a coma to find the world crawling with zombies. But the Walking Dead comic came out a year after ‘28 Days Later’, which makes you wonder if Robert Kirkman took a little inspiration from Danny Boyle’s film. Although Kirkman has denied it, calling the resemblance a coincidence. Anyway….
Naomie Harris plays Selena, a hard-edged survivor who mentors Jim in the new world. Her survival primer is simple and savage: never hesitate to kill the infected. They later team up with Frank (Brendan Gleeson) and his daughter Hannah (Megan Burns), who want to chase a radio signal from a supposed safe zone offering food, shelter, and perhaps even a cure from the raging infection.
One of the standout sequences in ‘28 Days Later‘ comes within the first fifteen minutes, as a lost and disoriented Jim wanders through the deserted streets of London, not a single soul in sight. It’s eerily haunting to see the usually bustling city completely empty. Then, in true horror-movie fashion, smart cookie Jim decides it’s a good idea to shout, “Anybody there?” at the top of his lungs. Clearly, he hasn’t seen enough scary movies.
The first plot slip comes immediately, when Jim enters a church to look around, only to find pews filled with decomposing bodies. Realistically, he should have recoiled the moment he opened the door, the stench alone would’ve been unbearable. It’s a small but noticeable oversight, one that Danny Boyle wisely avoids repeating later, when Jim and his newfound companions enter another location house rotting bodies.
’28 Days Later’ moves at such a slow pace, it gives viewers time to notice things they wouldn’t otherwise dwell upon, so I told myself to stop nitpicking. Although, ironically, in its more frenzied moments, the film is very chaotic and not in an entertaining way. But at least it does deliver a few good scary violent scenes and tense face-offs, especially towards the end.
Beneath the blood and chaos, the film explores despair, hope, and transformation in the face of horror. Cillian Murphy’s Jim starts off as a timid, confused soul, driven by fear and emotion, but by the end, he’s a hardened survivor himself, ready to kill, infected or not, to protect his own.
The climax packs in a few contrived twists that don’t necessarily makes sense, but well, it gives the leads an triumphant end.
Rating: 6 on 10. Watch ’28 Days Later’ on Prime Video.
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