28 Days Later

Woah. This the first time I've had to write the same review a second time. Server crashes are almost unheard of here at FilmBooster (I had to complain somewhere :-). The most impressive scene of the picture 28 Days Later is undoubtedly Cillian Murphy's pilgrimage through depopulated London, which is basically the second scene in the movie. After that, it's a post-apocalyptic movie about survival and human relations, crossed with a not-so-normal zombie horror movie. The flimsy screenplay is a bit of a problem (it can't decide what type of movie it wants to be), but Danny Boyle saves it with visual touches (once even with an oil painting) and unconventional camerawork. (24/08/2007)

Though, strictly speaking, 28 Days Later should not be ranked among zombie movies, given that the origin of the apocalypse it depicts would rather place it among contagion films, it draws directly from the tradition of zombie-apocalypse movies on many levels. Furthermore, its international box-office success had a fundamental impact on the revitalisation of the zombie genre in the new millennium. The legacy of zombie movies in the Romero tradition is fully evident here, as the monsters and the apocalypse associated with them serve both as a catalyst for a drama involving a handful of survivors and as a mirror held up to contemporary society and its ills. Danny Boyle and Alex Garland focused specifically on the global phenomenon of rage, which they see – at least in England – as the result of frustration arising from unfulfilled ideals about the value and importance of the individual in a democratic society. The use of digital cameras highlights the immediate tension of the characters, while also serving as a reminder of the mass deployment of security cameras, which are intended to protect people, but only contribute to anxiety and the feeling of diminished privacy, as well as to rising fear in the population brought on by the released footage of criminal acts being committed. (15/09/2013)

Raw British horror that replaces slow zombies with fast infected people, influencing this horror subgenre for many years to come. The casting of Cillian Murphy in the main role was an interesting move, his face has both boyish and girlish features and his transformation from “someone who’s being dragged on” into “the one that saves everybody” was also interesting. Great. (17/11/2007)

Strong as a whole, but unconvincing in the development of the plot, or solid filmmaking that is hard to keep up with. Either way, Danny Boyle is a very good and smart director who, in the broader narrative context, elevates his film above the level of B-movie (whether in the naturalistic intro or in the end, where is bluntly suggested that the aggressive infection is actually part of the human DNA), but the explicit meanings at times feel so loose and dumbed-down and the character development so hasty that they hurt the film’s added value. The intentionally cheap look is fitting, what is more arguable is the adequacy of the music, and personally I was bothered by some editing montages and the dumb behaviour of the characters. An interesting take on the material that actually deserved a more thoughtful and psychological layering. 65% (26/03/2020)

First of all, I was surprised that Boyle would venture into something like zombie (or rather, contagion) horror. But as such, I understood it at the beginning and therefore wondered about the inappropriately placed scenes, unsuitable for this genre. Even the unusual musical score suggested that something was amiss. And in the second half, it became clear. Against the backdrop of the struggle for survival, Boyle attempts to portray the behaviour of people in a liminal situation, when they have a choice between retaining a shred of their humanity or being overwhelmed by an instinctive desire to survive at any cost, even at the cost of harming others, and he really doesn't give people the best report card. One of the soldiers in the film says that people killed each other before and will kill each other in the future, in that sense, they are not really that different from the infected. The "infected" themselves are very reminiscent of the aggressive running zombies from Snyder's remake and can occasionally cause a few hear attack situations. (08/12/2003)