28 Days Later (2002)

Probably this will be rather blasphemous of me to say, but in my humble opinion, '28 Days Later' is one of the best zombiefilms ever made.

And it is not even about zombies.

Confused?

Let us start at the beginning. Filmmaker Danny Boyle soared to superstardom after his much acclaimed 'Trainspotting' and lost all credit with the bloated 'The Beach', so what to do next?

How about going as lo-fi as you can, shoot everything rapidly and digitally and stick to a genre that works pretty darn well being lo-fi and relatively easy to shoot, as in 'horror'? Which is exactly what he did.

Really low budget fare this is not, but considering the insane amounts of money certain films have at their disposal, this one was made on a shoestring budget and yet you would never know it by looking at the finished product. The film looks great considering, every last penny was used to full effect and the story, although nothing really new, is fast paced and has realistic and likeable characters that do not do complete asinine things when in a crisis. They react in the most human way possible, which is a nice change of pace from some other films along the same lines. (Yes, Brad Pitt superhero against a world full of zombies, I am looking at you. Or those people that stand around screaming when the monsters come instead of running. The latter being idiots that deserve to be finished off.)

The story is mayhap not the most inspired of it all. One day, a young man wakes up in hospital to find London ostensibly deserted. Whilst looking around for other people, he stumbles across a rabid priest who attacks him and then he realizes all is not well. He is then rescued from his predicament, meets up with other people and they set out to find a military operation in hopes of rescue or aid, and then things turn out to go from bad to worse.

The biggest monster is always man. Who knew?

Sarcasm? What do you mean, 'sarcasm'?

While this setup seems to be reminiscent of most viral outbreak stories (which it most definitely is), '28 Days Later' works so well because our main characters are so likeably flawed. They are, in fact, people doing things people would do in a real crisis situation. Along the way, unexpected things can and do happen and you will be rooting for these characters and feel sad when something happens to them. The film also never slows down storywise, so even though there are a few slower moments, these allow you to catch your breath before the mayhem returns. They do not make the story slow down and get boring or repetitive, what some other films lack.

There are a lot of people not too happy with the ending, which I will not spoil here. Their objections are valid, because it seems to be tacked on as an afterthought, but in all honesty: the ending never bothered me that much. It is rather hard to create a fitting end to a true rollercoaster of a film that will keep you on the edge of your seat for its entire runtime.

Well done, mister Boyle. Well done.