# 28 Days Later (2002)



## Tabitha (Jul 15, 2002)

*28 Days Later (2002) - New Zombie Flick*

Trainspotting and Shallow Grave director Danny Boyle is due to bring us a zombie film based on an Alex Garland (The Beach) script/story.

Check out the imdb entry to see who is in it ---> http://us.imdb.com/Title?0289043

www.aintitcool.com has a spy report up from someone that worked on the film:


> I worked on this flick with the INCREDIBLY nice Mr Boyle. It IS The Omega Man crossed with Survivors ( Brit 70's TV eerie series about end of worls/rabies type virus) It was all shot on DV, and, as a result, I havnt seen one tiny bit of it until you showed that nifty trailer,looks good to me! Its pretty hardcore, and the first ten minutes of the film ( in the script at least ) are really grim,V.good! Danny has a cool style which was shown to good effect in the recent Vacumming film he did for the BBC starring Tim Spall,and I think there will be some neat visual touches in this too,lots of death too.
> 
> Animal activists accidentaly release an experimental virus into the world,it takes seconds to take effect, and turns you into an Uber Zombie, or "infected",no shufflers here! Fast moving homicidal maniacs, you had better move your ass! Shot around Britain,its being tweaked as we speak.



Sounds interesting and will definitely tide me over until Omega Man remake I am Legend makes it to the big screen....


----------



## Tabitha (Jul 23, 2002)

Warning!  Plot spoilers ahead - I _really_ want to see this movie!




> February 26, 2002... We haven't heard a peep about this film sinced it was announced last summer until today, when a reader dropped by with their review from last night's test screening of 28 Days Later. Apocalyptic drama? Zombies in London? Hey, we haven't seen that since the days of Lifeforce!
> 
> "Came out of a screening of 28 Days Later last night, a test screening in Soho, London organised by the distributors in order to work out how to market the movie. The colour balancing, titles and soundtrack aren't quite there yet, but apart from that the movie was in its entirity.
> 
> ...



All this wonderful info comes to you from www.corona.bc.ca


----------



## Dave (Oct 19, 2002)

> _Originally posted by Tabitha _
> *I really want to see this movie!*



This came to me from Fox:


> "BREATHTAKING! DANNY BOYLE REINVENTS
> THE HORROR MOVIE AND IT'S S C A R Y   A S   H E L L !"
> Baz Bamigboye, Daily Mail
> 
> ...



Maybe you can make one of the previews.


----------



## Tabitha (Oct 21, 2002)

Just caught an advert for this.  Still think it might be great!

Thanks for the info Dave.  Unfortunately I am planning to head to Glasgow this weekend and I couldn't justify two trips in one week!  Why o why does Edinburgh get neglected in these matters?

Still, only one week extra 'till I can see it on general release 

Anyone else planning to go see it?


----------



## Tabitha (Oct 25, 2002)

Found this on www.fox.co.uk


----------



## Tabitha (Nov 1, 2002)

If you see only one movie before the new Harry Potter hits our cinema screens, please please please make it this one.  I saw it last night at my local Odeon, and loved every minute.

The acting was wonderful on all fronts.  The scariest part of the story was how real everything looked.  There was one unbelievable element - the idea of such a potent virus, but otherwise there weren't too many inconsistencies in the framework of the story.  The eeriness of a deserted London was almost too creepy to watch. There was about 10 minutes with no dialogue apart from our hero Jim yelling "Hello", and wandering the streets of London.  Beautifully shot and unsettling.  The style of photography and treatment of the film reflects the different phases of the movie, with many long shots with pastel colouring and an almost artificial look for the lonely beginning, moving onto a grainy tv riot feel during the first confrontations with the infected.

The dialogue was good, not too cliched, a bit self-knowing, but not in an offensive way - Jim smacks a rage-infected Priest, and says "Oh, I shouldn't have done that.  He is offered a choice of lilt or pepsi, "Don't you have any tango?  On driving through a tunnel where the infected might be hiding in the dark (they like it there), Jim reckons this is a really bad idea - "You know why this is a bad idea?  'Cos it is so ******** obviously a bad idea".  

There are elements that are very reminiscent of other zombie movies - particularly a segment in a shopping mall which reminded me of Charlton Heston wandering through department stores in The Omega Man, although one of my friends thought it was more like Dawn of the Dead.  Whatever....  My line is basically that it is very hard to make a sub-genre movie without referencing, even accidentally, other similarly-themed films.  The movie does not suffer for these references in my opinion.


I think my only complaints would lie with the final segment of the story, the climax, if you will.  Where Jim goes a bit psycho-ninja.  Um, he was a bloomin bicycle courier before the rage took hold of the country - how on earth was he able to outfox various soldier-types and rescue some damsels in distress???  But that is only really a small complaint - the overall quality of the film and the look of this climax segment in particular made up for any small problems I had.

One of my favourite films of the year.  5 Stars.


----------



## Dave (Sep 10, 2003)

> It IS The Omega Man crossed with Survivors



I have to agree with that, but in a good way, taking the best elements of both and adding more. Totally realistic, very chilling, very graphic and frightening. This is exactly what would happen.  



> _Originally posted by Tabitha _
> *The scariest part of the story was how real everything looked....  The eeriness of a deserted London was almost too creepy to watch. There was about 10 minutes with no dialogue apart from our hero Jim yelling "Hello", and wandering the streets of London.  Beautifully shot and unsettling.*



How did they manage to do that? Even on a Sunday morning London is busier than most places at Noon.




> _Originally posted by Tabitha _
> *I think my only complaints would lie with the final segment of the story, the climax, if you will.  Where Jim goes a bit psycho-ninja.  Um, he was a bloomin bicycle courier before the rage took hold of the country - how on earth was he able to outfox various soldier-types and rescue some damsels in distress??? *



I thought that was the whole point of the story, he had to learn what it took to survive. It went back to his conversation with Selina in the flat when she said that the father and daughter needed them more than they did, but he said it was more than just survival. Jim began a sort of personal journey then, from mild-mannered bicycle courier man, to "pycho-ninja."

Eventually, Selina came over to his kind of thinking -- there had to be more to life than just survival -- and Jim (who had been 28 days in a coma and never had to kill anyone yet) had to first kill a child, then become a killing machine. Maybe I was reading too deep a meaning into it, but I was saying to myself, "I would die, there is no way I could do that." 

I think the film was saying we all have it in us, the "Rage" just brings out the worst. Notice that both Selina and Hannah did think that he was infected at first.

The Major also talked about survival, using it as a excuse for the attempted rapes. If I were Jim, I would have become worried about him when I saw the infected man tied up out the back. Anyone capable of that would be capable of anything.

Also these "various soildier-types" were not the pick of the crop remember. How do you think they survived? I think they had hidden in cupboards a few times before as well. And the Sergeant had lost his marbles.

Also Jim was seriously p*****d. While I might not be able to do what he did, I could understand how he felt!

A very good film. It had that perculiarily British feel that I can't put a finger on, but is lacking in Hollywood movies. Maybe it is because not everybody is black and white, and every hero is not likeable and all-american.

I didn't like the ending. It was happy without giving us any solution. I very much doubt there would be a sequel, so where did the British Air Force fighter come from? Were we a quarrantined island while the rest of the world was free of Rage? Without the answers to those questions I think I would be happier to set up someplace like that farmhouse alone and forget the rest of humanity. They could easily find themselves back in a similar situation to the one that they just escaped from.


----------



## Tabitha (Sep 11, 2003)

> How did they manage to do that? Even on a Sunday morning London is busier than most places at Noon.


There was quite a lot of publicity over the release of the DVD (possibly moreso than when the film was actually in cinemas!), and this was one of the topics that came up often.
Apparently they filmed at dawn, and had runners on hand to divert people wandering home from the clubs away from shots.  I think I read somewhere that they had to do quite a lot of cleaning up of these scenes, and that if you look closely enough you can see people in the office buildings etc.


> Jim began a sort of personal journey then, from mild-mannered bicycle courier man, to "pycho-ninja."


I agree that this is essentially the core of the story, I just question the coherence of this very speedy character change.  The film's duration is what? A week? (excluding the ending) The transformation is just too sudden, although I admit that the story wouldn't have worked without it.



> It had that perculiarily British feel that I can't put a finger on, but is lacking in Hollywood movies. Maybe it is because not everybody is black and white, and every hero is not likeable and all-american.


Mmmm, I have never quite understood why it is that people in Hollywood movies never really seem real.  Even after trips to America I could never really figure out how they got away with presenting these figures that aren't like any real people at all, American or no.  I suppose it would be like watching Fawlty Towers or My Family, and expecting all Brits to be just like that.  I doubt the characters in most American movies are any more accessible to the average American audience than they are to us.
This movie really does find a realistic tone in portraying the people caught up in a fantastical situation.  I loved it.  Glad you did too.


Oh, and as for the ending, I think the jet is not British - I am pretty sure that the pilot or co-pilot is speaking in a scandinavian language.  I do remember being confused at the time though, as it seemed to make sense that the virus would quickly cross the channel to Europe, and I had imagined that it was a post-apocalyptic scenario in the fullest sense, not just in Britain.


----------



## Dave (Sep 11, 2003)

> _Originally posted by Tabitha _
> *....as for the ending, I think the jet is not British - I am pretty sure that the pilot or co-pilot is speaking in a scandinavian language.  I do remember being confused at the time though, as it seemed to make sense that the virus would quickly cross the channel to Europe, and I had imagined that it was a post-apocalyptic scenario in the fullest sense, not just in Britain. *



Thanks, I didn't listen to the pilot. At the begining of the film the guy with Selena, called Mark I think, told Jim that before the radio and TV stopped they announced that it had spread to Paris and to New York. So you are correct to think that it had spread. In a normal infectious disease like the recent SARS, such isolated cases could be dealt with given time and enough warning to start control procedures. Due to the nature of Rage, I'm not sure that that could be done. If it had got to Paris and New York, then it was probably all over Europe and North America.  

I'm not going to go deep into plot holes since I've only seen it once, but which animals could catch the disease? -- Man and Primates obviously, but not birds since we saw loads and they would spread it everywhere. The Rats ran through the tunnel because they were scared -- so could they be infected? But what was that part with the horses, I didn't get that bit?


----------



## Tabitha (Sep 11, 2003)

Regarding the spreading of the disease - it has such a fast infection rate that I think there would be a lot of quarantines in effect.  I think they say that very virulent communicable illnesses, like ebola for example, are actually self-defeating in that they incapacitate an entire community within a very short period of time.  Thinking about the Rage it almost makes sense that it couldn't get that far geographically at all.  And the fact that the infected die out after a few months (I presume) would suggest that it can be beaten with very strict quarantine measures.

I am not sure what the implication was in the scene with the horses.  I had the feeling that they were suggesting that the horses couldn't get it, and that perhaps they would be better off once people died out.  It has been a while since I watched the movie though.

I liked the fact that because the outbreak happened so fast there was actually very little information left to the survivors.  Often in these kinds of films the survivors have either been given the information about how to defeat the zombies/mutants before the infrastructure dies altogether, or our heroes happen upon a scientist/military unit that has all the answers.

In this film, even those who lived right through it didn't really know what was going on.


----------



## FeedMeTV (Aug 22, 2004)

I saw this film on an aeroplane coming home from holiday and it's not one of the best places to watch a horror film. For a start off you're very close to the screen and there's no room to hide behind your legs so I was hit with the scaryness full on. Secondly the sound quality's absolutely terrible so I missed a lot of the dialogue but what I did hear I loved and I was raving about this film for months after I saw it. I'd love to rent it out and watch it again.


----------



## Dave (Mar 9, 2005)

*28 Weeks Later*

A sequel...





> _from Scifi Wire_
> 
> Boyle Talks 28 Days Sequel
> 
> ...



Do you think he's serious? -- "six months later the Americans arrive to reboot it back up again, particularly the franchises" -- it sounds like he's joking.


----------



## rune (Aug 20, 2006)

I think this is one of the best recent horror movies   Its got great atmosphere and the actors are really good at portraying their parts


----------



## -putawaythosepliers- (Sep 12, 2006)

I really liked it too, freaked me out a bit though.

although, i have to admit, the part that scared me most was the bit at the start when everything was silent, and then that car alarm went off.


----------



## dustinzgirl (Sep 12, 2006)

*Re: 28 Weeks Later*



			
				Dave said:
			
		

> A sequel...
> 
> Do you think he's serious? -- "six months later the Americans arrive to reboot it back up again, particularly the franchises" -- it sounds like he's joking.



Will the third movie be 28 years later? Or 28 minutes later?

You know, it wasnt that great of a movie in the first place. I dont see the need for a sequel, since everyone of the infected should have 
starved to death.


----------



## the_faery_queen (Sep 13, 2006)

i didn't really like or care about the original that much. the soldiers annoyed me, (well more than that, insert big feminist rant here) and it wasn't really a zombie film. they weren't dead, after all. just infested. im kinda a stickler for that, zombies are corpses that come back to reanimated life, not really people who get infected and go funny 

but it was ok  i've seen far worse!


----------



## Dave (Sep 13, 2006)

The mini Oxford Encyclopaedic Dictionary: _*Zombie* 1. (in Voodoo) Supernatural force or spirit re-animating and controlling corpse; corpse so re-animated. 2. person thought to resemble zombie; mindless or will-less automaton._

The victims of Rage fit the second definition of a Zombie.

As I said already, I don't believe these soldiers were the pick of the crop. These were the soldiers who hid in cupboards while the Rage took hold of their comrades in arms. Their behaviour is what you would expect of cowards.


----------

