The zombie movie, that special sort of horror film that appeared in its current incarnation with The Night of the Living Dead, is a genre that lots of filmmakers in lots of different countries try to put their stamp on. It can be somewhat cheap to put on, and there is that central fantasy that a world full of zombies is one where there basically aren’t any rules anymore, and the survivors can basically just do whatever they want. But every so often, someone comes up with a new twist for the zombie.
Director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland were among the first to come up with the so-called “fast zombies” with 28 Days Later.
A group of animal rights activists break into a lab to release some chimps. One of them is infected with something called the “rage virus,” and it spreads fast through bites and fluid transmission. The infected basically just attack anyone or anything that moves that isn’t themselves infected, so no such luck in hoping they’ll just whale on each other. Enter Jim (Cillian Murphy), a bike courier who was in a coma during the initial infection. Waking up alone in a hospital, he wanders out until he is attacked by an infected priest and various others. From there, he finds some other survivors, most notably Selena (Naomie Harris) and the father and daughter pairing of Frank (Brendan Gleeson) and Hannah (Megan Burns). The city of London really isn’t safe, and there is a radio transmission of what sounds like a military base in the North offering protection. The group decides they might as well get out there.
Of course, as with any decent zombie movie, the zombies themselves may be the lesser threat. Sure, the zombies are dangerous, but they are single-minded beings, and the thing that makes the Rage Virus infected more dangerous isn’t that they’re particularly intelligent or anything, but instead, they move fast and seem to ignore pain. Like all zombies, they are basically predictable. The problem is always for any survivor of a zombie apocalypse, even a small-scale one like this one that is essentially limited to a single country, is that other survivors are generally far more dangerous than the raging hordes of mindless humans. That’s the case here. Will Jim and his party somehow survive this mess?
So, let’s address the elephant in the room: are the infected zombies or not? “Zombie” may or may not be the right term. They’re mindless, their infection is spread through bites, and they don’t seem to do anything but attack the uninfected. But they’re also still living people who can die as easily as anyone else. They just don’t go out of their way to protect themselves from harm or take care of themselves. The infected will more or less starve to death left to their own devices. The problem is they tend to spread their infection very quickly.
But the longer the movie runs, the less the zombies are the problem. However, the movie is using the rage virus to basically explore how different people react to a societal collapse. Jim figures it out through dumb luck. Frank is a largely gentle man, mostly looking to take care of Hannah. Naomie became ruthless in the face of infection. But then there are others who take advantage of where they are and what’s going on to seize power for themselves and try to remake society in their own image, and not the sort that would work for a lot of people. And those people are the real enemies. 28 Days Later is like many of the best zombie movies where the collapse of a society brings out the best and the worst of people. It’s just this time, the zombies can sprint.
Grade: B+
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