28 Days Later... (2002)

User Review

• 

  Barneyonmovies

  8 / 10

  WHAT I LIKED: What would happen to humanity without the prospect of a happy future? This is what Alex Garland's '28 Days Later,' asks, as it follows the few survivors of a zombie apocalypse in the UK.
  
  Given that all their family and friends are gone, the central characters are constantly faced with the powerful question of whether to go on living at all. But, rather beautifully, they find reason in their kinship with each other; lost soles Jim (Cillian Murphy) and Selena (Naomi Harris), and a father (Brendan Gleeson) and daughter they come accross as they scavenge around London.
  
  Their drive for survival and the desire to meet more people sends the four following a radio call from a makeshift army barracks outside Manchester. But, as soon as they get there and are welcomed into the operation, it becomes clear that far more animalistic drives are keeping the soldiers alive, and before long we learn they'd planned to lure in women as sex slaves. The prospect of fulfilling their desires and continuing the human race is their reason to go on living, and this horrifying gender-based lens adds a cynical but vital contrast to the perspective reached by Jim and Selena, and reminds us that the biggest danger to people is always other men.
  
  The final act then turns into a battle between the captured friends to escape from the soldiers, but it has to be said that the smaller set-pieces in the film are far more gripping as Danny Boyle as ever directs with unparalleled grit and realism, and he and the script manufacture numerous creative moments of tension whilst maintaining the messy realism of chance and circumstance.
  
  WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: Some of the camerawork is a little distracting, and the action movie climax is a little disappointing.
  
  VERDICT: In the throws of a terrifying zombie apocalypse, '28 Days Later,' has its characters find a humanistic worldview, then pit that against a horrifying, animalistic one. The results are radical and somewhat profound.

  Like?

  0 member like this review.