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28
Days Later
Danny Boyle, UK, 2003
Rating: 2.9 |
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Posted: July 02, 2003
28
Days Later
Danny Boyle, UK, 2003
Rating: 2.9
Finally! While Laurence Station is fixing his MP3 player, and Kevin Moreau is
installing a new security system to protect himself from disgruntled
Pearl
Jam fans, I, Clemenza, get my shot at prime time. I always knew this day
would come. Though in all honesty, I thought I'd have to push Station down some
stairs, or at least try out some voodoo mind-control maneuvers on Moreau to
speed my opportunity along. But here's my chance to graduate from B-movie limbo.
If I screw this up, it's back to the
Jeff Speakman film festival for me. Ah, well, all good things come to those
who wait, right?
Well, if you're waiting for a top-notch apocalyptic horror movie from the
director of Trainspotting, however, you may have to wait a bit longer.
Let's consider exactly what Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later is. What it's
not, I can tell you with some relief, is a sequel to the Sandra Bullock rehab
chick flick 28 Days. (Yeah, I know, that was a close one.) What it is, is
a suspenseful film packed with all the key ingredients necessary to knock it out
of the park. Take a little Dawn of The Dead, add a pinch of The Omega
Man, and lightly sprinkle with some bits of Day Of The Dead, and
you'll start to get the idea of where we're at here. The story begins with a
group of animal rights do-gooders who decide to liberate some primates from a
lab. But these primates are infected with a blood-borne "rage" virus, and upon
release they infect their liberators, who in turn infect others, who in
turn...Well, anyway, it takes about 28 days of this to bring the world as we
know it to a screeching halt. Streets are littered with corpses and wrecked
automobiles, while stores and homes are abandoned. The "infected" mutants roam
the deserted cities in search of victims. But lest you think you've seen this
flick before, these are not the kind of zombie antagonists who stumble about
clumsily. These infected baddies here can, and do, haul some serious ass. This
has to be the ultimate terror, right? Well...no. Not really.
That's because, for some inexplicable reason, 28 Days Later never
plays the hand it was dealt. One almost gets the sense that it goes to the
trouble of intentionally drawing parallels between it and George Romero's
classic zombie yarns (Dawn Of The Dead and Day Of The Dead), and
then turns its back and tries to proceed with a larger " human" theme of the
savagery that man must exhibit to his fellow man in order to survive. That's a
great theme, don't get me wrong, but here it's achieved at the expense of what I
dare to suggest most customers plopping down eight bucks for a ticket will
likely be expecting, if not craving -- a horror flick. Despite all its hype,
28 Days Later just isn't scary. Sure, it has flashes of brilliance, such as
when the "infected" storm a stronghold defended by British soldiers: the
invaders are blown apart by land mines and cut down by machine gun fire as they
try to claw through the humans' defenses. Had the movie started here, and played
to the strengths of the story, we might have had something to work with.
Proponents of the film will suggest that the struggle of our protagonist Jim
(Cillian Murphy) and his associates is the strength of the story; I guess it's
all in the eye of the beholder. And from where I was beholding, this was an
excellent chance to make a great horror movie, one that went off the tracks
because it's afraid to be what it should have been. I don't want to make direct
comparisons to Romero's
zombie films,
but in them he's able to display man as his own greatest threat while still
exploiting the zombie aspect for its full horrific potential. In 28 Days
Later, the "infected" monsters are little more than a backdrop to chart the
de-evolution of the main character into his most primal self.
But it strikes me that I, too, am now guilty of the same offenses perpetrated
by this film. I have tried to make this review more "high brow" (really now, I
can't recall the last time I used the word "de-evolution") to better suit my
front-page billing. Allow me to atone for my hypocrisy by sharing some
observations that seem more in line with my niche here at Shaking Through.
First we get full frontal nudity from our hero Jim. Then we get to see his
bare ass twice. Twice? This I don't need. Kudos, then, to the blood-vomiting of
the infected mutants. It's not quite as captivating as the fluid vomiting in
Prince Of Darkness, but it's
vomiting nonetheless, and we should be grateful. Meanwhile, I must admit that
I'm a bit perplexed by exactly what it is the mutants do to you if they catch
you. If they tear you to pieces, I guess you're just dead. If they bite you or
vomit blood into some orifice, then you become infected. But if they're infected
with uncontrollable rage, would they not stop until you were dead? Lastly, no
offense to my British brothers, but there's nothing in this film that
Steven Seagal could not have brought to
a swift conclusion. Then again, that's true of most things.
So what have we learned? If one gears up for a full-scale horror flick, then
28 Days Later is likely to be a disappointment. If, however, one is
willing to accept that the most appealing features of the story will be used as
a canvas to paint the human struggle, then things won't be nearly as bad. No
matter how you approach it, you'll probably leave the theater with the feeling
that 28 Days Later left a lot on the table, and what was left untouched
was the main course.
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