28 Days Later... (2002)

28 DAYS LATER...
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 2003 David N. Butterworth

*1/2 (out of ****)

Not to be mistaken for a sequel to the Sandra Bullock drunk drama "28 Days," Danny Boyle's "28 Days Later..." is more a remake--or a nod to, or let's be honest here and call it a complete rip-off--of George A. Romero's apocalyptic horror masterpiece "Dawn of the Dead" (a superior sequel to his 1968 nightmare "Night of the Living Dead"). They start the same way--fuzzy TV screens depicting chaos--and focus on a gung-ho quartet of hapless, non-infected survivors struggling to stay alive in a world gone raging mad. Heck, there's even a wacky shopping spree sequence in both! But there the similarities end. Romero's film was a work of art. Boyle's is simply junk. I realized "28 Days Later..." was in trouble from its opening expression of shock and revulsion. What did animal activists expect to find at a Cambridge primate research center anyway? Perhaps my biggest problem with the film, however (apart from John Murphy's schizophrenic score--crashing guitar licks in the quiet bits, choral musings during the loud parts) is its cinematography, or lack thereof (credited to Anthony Dod Mantle). Here's another DV excuse for filmmaking that features grain as big as our heroes' heads. Sometimes gritty, blown-up digital video suits a film's mood and that's true here--it's bleak and pessimistic. But "28 Days Later..." just looks cheap. As a result we don't really get to see anything, except Cillian Murphy's willie and Christopher Eccleston (Boyle's "Shallow Grave") as a rogue military man with some serious issues. Unlike Romero's lumbering flesh eaters Boyle's virus stricken ghouls--what we can see of them, that is--look more like indigents with a bad case of conjunctivitis. They move at lightening fast speed (another reason we can barely see them), vomit blood, and need to be killed within 20 seconds of being infected or... Well, that's just one of the logic lapses in Alex Garland's script. The film has its moments--desolate scenes of England's capital and its surrounds impress (I was reminded of a British TV series from the '70s called "Survivors"), Brendan Gleeson ("Lake Placid," "The General") is always worth a look, and our heroine Selena (Naomie Harris) keeps her undercrackers on. But the rest is murky and manipulative. For those who thought Boyle's "The Beach" was his nadir, look again.

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David N. Butterworth
dnb@dca.net

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X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 1178500
X-RT-TitleID: 1123236
X-RT-SourceID: 878
X-RT-AuthorID: 1393
X-RT-RatingText: 1.5/4