28 Days Later
From Academic Kids
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28 Days Later is a 2002/2003 post-apocalyptic science fiction movie directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland. 28 Days Later is set in Great Britain at the beginning of the 21st century.
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Style and inspiration
The film is Boyle's re-interpretation of the "Zombie flick" genre, and was very well received both in the United Kingdom and internationally.
- "the power of the film is not that it hasn't been done before, but that it hasn't been done recently."
- Kim Newman, Empire
Similarities in the concept could be drawn to David Cronenberg's horror film Rabid and in storyline to works by George Romero. The film also bears similarity to John Wyndham's novel The Day of the Triffids in several of its story elements, notably in scenes depicting a post-apocalyptic London. The plot device of the military post also bears noticeable resemblances to the warren of the Efrafa in Watership Down.
Boyle has written that 28 Days Later is not a science fiction or horror film but rather a drama. Indeed, the film's "zombie moments" are few and far between, and the bulk of the running time is dedicated to character study and building suspense. Of particular note is the character Selena, one of the strongest black female heroes in recent years. We first meet Selena as she saves a life, and her physical strength, cleverness and determination are vital to the film's plot.
The film's score was composed by British composer John Murphy and was released in a score/song compilation in 2003.
The film inspired and is somewhat parodied by another British film, Shaun of the Dead. It was also the inspiration for the music video for the song "Blood Red Summer" by the progressive rock band Coheed and Cambria.
Tagline: Day 1: Exposure - Day 3: Infection - Day 8: Epidemic - Day 20: Evacuation - Day 28: Devastation
Synopsis
The film begins with a group of activists storming an animal testing laboratory and releasing the chimpanzees therein. The animals however, were being tested with a disease known as "rage", making them extremely violent. Rage is highly infectious, and any contact with infected blood will transfer the disease in a matter of seconds. The activists release a chimp, which straight away attacks and infects them. The disease is impossible to contain and inevitably spreads.
28 days later, Jim (Cillian Murphy), a bicycle courier who had been in a coma all this time, wakes up to find his hospital completely empty. Wandering around empty London streets he soon realises that something completely devastating has happened. He unwittingly attracts the attention of some 'infected', and narrowly escapes death when two fellow survivors pick him up.
The survivors, Mark (Noah Huntley) and Selena (Naomie Harris), tell Jim what has happened. Jim insists on trying to make a trip to visit his parents' house. The others reluctantly agree, but on arriving there Jim finds that his parents have committed suicide together. An infected — one of their former neighbors — attacks them, and Selena hacks Mark to death with a machete when she realizes he was himself infected in the attack and about to turn. Jim accepts, however tentatively, that Selena will be more than willing to do the same for him should he be infected.
The two of them venture out once again and spy a set of working Christmas lights — an aberration when there is no electricity — in the window of a flat. The building itself has been heavily barricaded from within against infected, and inside they meet Frank (Brendan Gleeson), a cabdriver, and Hannah (Megan Burns), his teenaged daughter. They haven't seen anyone in weeks themselves, and are only too happy to have Jim and Selena as company.
A pre-recorded looped radio broadcast reveals an area near Manchester which the military have secured. The four eventually decide to set out for it in Frank's cab. Frank is infected when a drop of tainted blood lands in his eye. Jim is about to reluctantly kill Frank when Frank is riddled with bullets, ending his misery. The bullets were fired by the soldiers who have been transmitting the broadcast.
Jim, Selena, and Hannah are taken to mansion that has been turned into a base of operations by the small band of soldiers. Their leader is Major Henry West (Christopher Eccleston). The mansion has hot water and a kitchen where food can be prepared — prepared food is a luxury that the trio haven't experienced in a long time. Unfortunately, the soldiers are in their own way just as dangerous as the infected. Selena and Hannah are set up to be sexually enslaved. Jim tries to escape with the women but is captured. He narrowly escapes execution and in a grim series of incidents, he uses the infected as a weapon against the soldier-rapists and helps free the women.
In the film's coda (shot on 35mm film, unlike the rest of the film), Jim re-awakens in a country cottage to find Selena and Hannah have managed to attract the attention of a jet pilot from another country (possibly Finland, since he speaks Finnish). Their fate, along with the fate of the rest of the country, is left open-ended.
The DVD of the film provides a number of alternate endings.
In the first, which is fully filmed, Jim is mortally wounded escaping from the soldiers. Selena and Hannah, having rushed Jim to a local hospital in hope that they might save his life, leave his body there; completing an eerie circle for Jim who began and ended the film alone in a deserted hospital. The same coda scene of potential rescue from the air then plays, although this time Jim is not present and, amusingly, has effectively been replaced by a chicken.
In a second unfilmed alternate ending, the film picks up at the point where Frank is infected at the military roadblock near Manchester. The director animates the following largely with storyboards and voiceovers of the proposed script. This time the sub-plot involving the soldiers does not take place. In a radical turn, Jim, Selena and Hannah take Frank to a local research complex (the same complex in which the infected chimpanzees were being held in the first scene). Their goal is to attempt to find the cure for the virus, which the radio broadcast had suggested was nearby. In the end, the cure is suggested to be a complete blood transfusion. Jim sacrifices himself so that Hannah can have her father, Frank, back. Again, Jim is left alone in a deserted hospital. The director believed that this ending - namely the "cure" of a total blood transfusion - was unbelievable, given that it had already been established that a single drop of infected blood would infect. It is impossible to remove every drop of blood from the body in a transfusion.
The "Infected"
28 Days Later differs from many zombie films in that "the Infected" are not undead zombies, but living humans driven insane by a highly communicable virus. As a result, rather than lumbering towards human victims like zombies, the Infected actually move extremely fast and because of an adrenaline rush have great strength and endurance. However, as they are not zombies the "only way to kill it is to shoot out its brain"-rule that applies to zombies doesn't apply to them, so any wound that would kill a normal human could kill them.
A development that Major West pointed out is that the Infected are living human beings, but they never eat food (or human flesh like zombies do), either because they've forgotten how or are so consumed by rage that they don't bother. Major West correctly surmized that the Infected would all eventually starve to death as a result, though exactly how long was uncertain; he actually had an Infected-soldier chained up but not killed for the express purpose of finding out how long it would take for it to starve. In the flashfoward to another "28 days later" at the end of the film (2 months after the outbreak), the ground was seen litered with emaciated, immobile Infected that would soon die of starvation.
The film is also ambiguous on how far across the planet the Rage-virus infection has spread, thus putting us in the position of the characters who also don't know now that communications are gone. Early in the film, Selena tells Jim that the infection spread across all of Great Britain, and that the day before all television communications went down, there were reports of Infections in New York and Paris. However, later in the film a dejected soldier laments to Jim that because they're radio-isolated, for all the characters know the infections in New York and Paris were contained and the rest of the planet survived, while the entire island of Great Britain has been quarantined. Another unusual fact is that the virus infects people so fast that it could not possibly make it to New York on any kind of transportation. The other characters were skeptical of this, however talks are going on for a sequel to 28 Days Later titled "28 Weeks Later" which seems to assume that the rest of the planet stopped the spread of infection and now that most of the Infected in Britain have starved to death, are going to try to re-colonize it.
Filming details
The film features spectacular scenes set in normally bustling parts of London such as Piccadilly Circus, Horse Guards Parade and Oxford Street. To capture these locations looking empty and desolate, the film crew closed off sections of street for a matter of minutes at a time, usually early in the morning, to minimise disruption. The film was shot on Digital Video cameras, which are much smaller and more maneuverable than traditional film cameras, on which such brief shoots would have been impractical. The use of digital video also adds a 'documentary' feel to movie, and adds to the realism.
The scenes of the M6 motorway completely devoid of traffic were also filmed in limited time slots. In this case, a mobile police roadblock slowed traffic down enough to leave a long section of carriageway empty while the scene was filmed.
Public and critical reception
The film was a considerable success at the box office and became highly profitable on a budget of about £5 million. In the UK, it took £6 million, while in the US it became a surprise hit, taking over US$30 million despite a limited release at less than 1,500 screens nationwide.
Critical views of the film were mixed. On the whole, the reception was positive, with the L.A. Times describing it as a "stylistic tour de force", and efilmcritic.com describing it as "raw, blistering and joyously uncompromising". While most critics were impressed with the technical achievements of the scenes of a devastated London, some were not taken with the overall effect of the film. Philip French, writing in The Observer, said that the film was "at best clutching at a straw", and was a "gory, depressing affair" [1] (http://film.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/Critic_Review/Observer_review/0,4267,824813,00.html).
Technical Details
- Writing Details: Alex Garland
- Original Music: Danny Boyle, John Murphy, God Speed You Black Emperor
- Release Date: 1st November 2002, (UK) 27th June 2003, (US)
- Runtime: 113 mins
- Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1
- BBFC Rating: 18
- MPAA Rating: R
External links
- Official Movie Site (http://www.28dayslaterthemovie.co.uk/)
- Template:Imdb title
- The Ultimate Zombie Book List (http://zombies.cjb.net) - Huge listing of zombie novels, anthologies, collections, comic books, and more.fr:28 jours plus tard
