28 DAYS LATERA film by Danny Boyle
By Attic Girl
Day 1 : Exposure, Day 3 : Infection, Day 8 : Epidemic, Day 20 : Evacuation, Day 28 : Devastation
We’re in Cambridge, England. It is night. Inside the Primate Research Center, cages full of chimps with wires attached to their heads are surrounded by a collection of screens displaying the most unspeakable, violent acts that mankind commits. A group of animal rights activists break into the lab and free the monkeys, despite the warnings of one of the scientists that the animals are infected with a virus called ‘Rage’. One drop of blood from an infected creature turns its victim into a state of destructive rage within 20 seconds. Almost immediately one of the activists is ruthlessly attacked by a screaming chimp.
28 days later... bicycle courier Jim (Cillian Murphy) awakes from a coma in a deserted intensive care unit of a London hospital. Completely mystified he stumbles out into the streets of London that has turned into a ghost town. No traffic, no people, no sound, just piles of debris, abandoned cars and kiosks plastered with missing person messages. Seeking shelter in a church Jim only finds dead bodies piled in heaps on the chapel floor. Accidently he arouses a priest, whose lightening speed, blood stained eyes and murderous screams send Jim reeling into the streets again. Rescued by fellow survivors Mark (Noah Huntley) and tough and streetwise Selena (Naomie Harris) it becomes clear to Jim that Britain is overrun by this killer plague.
When a set of flashing Christmas lights in a tower block calls their attention, Jim and Selena hook up with taxidriver Frank ( Brendan Gleeson) and his teenage daughter Hannah (Megan Burns). The four pick up a remote radio broadcast from a military outpost in Manchester and decide to flee London in Frank’s cab, unaware that the worst is yet to come...
In some ways, 28 Days Later certainly is a homage to earlier zombie classics and has some references to the movies of George Romero, like the scene in the supermarket, but contrary to horror movie tradition, Boyle’s creatures are fast and furious and very much undead ! Nevertheless, the splatter didn’t really make me look away. Most of the attacks are hard to see because of the murky images – Boyle used digital video - and the extremely fast action.Clearly, 28 Days Later is more than just a zombie movie. It makes you think about what people can do to one another, or about the choises you would make to survive. Would you be able to kill a loved one or leave a friend behind to save your own skin ? Mainly the character of Frank brings a lot of warmth and humanity into the story, especially during the survivors’ journey to the Midlands.
The military part, when Jim and his friends arrive at the mansion, was a weird and unexpected twist in the story. Suddenly it feels like you’re watching a completely different movie. The zombies get forgotten and a new enemy takes their place. In the final version Jones, one of the soldiers, gets killed by Jim when he re-enters the house. A completely alternate take of his death appears on the DVD. The zombies finally manage to get in the mansion and start attacking the soldiers on mass. This sequence reintroduces the infected back in the story, and would have brought the movie more in line with the genre. I really don’t understand why they cut those scenes.
Also, there were two alternate endings filmed, both available on the DVD. One, more grim and realistic, had Hannah and Selena taking Jim to a hospital to treat his gunshot, but he dies and the girls move one together. The other ending didn’t differ a lot from the released one, which looks like the end of a feel good Disney film, except that Jim was replaced by a rooster.
I was really stunned by the phenomenal shots of a devastated London. To turn a town this hectic into a desolate and haunting place was a brilliant idea. A completely deserted Westminster Bridge, the London Eye not moving at all, the notice board filled with messages for lost loved ones - which strongly recalled the fence around that little NY church after 9/11. Not to forget that amazing shot of those hundreds of buckets on top of a building... it looked as if Tony Cragg had pitched his tent there for a week !And what better music to complete this incredibly alienated atmosphere than the music of Godspeed You Black Emperor !
To make this all possible, the exteriors of the streets of London were shot in the early hours of weekday mornings, so the crew only had a couple of minutes each day. To shoot the first scene of an empty London Boyle organized for good-looking women to stop the traffic from entering the empty streets. He reckoned the drivers would be more co-operative with good looking girls. Very clever and as it turned out... very right !The day after I finished writing this, there was this breaking news about the bombings that struck London. I had Boyle’s amazing views of the town still vividly on my mind when suddenly they were replaced by images of a wrecked bus and shocked and injured people. What Danny Boyle was trying to tell us in the second part of 28 Days Later became cruel reality. I hope the London people are courageous and don’t give in to this. I will visit London again, walk through its streets with Godspeed You Black Emperor ! in my ears and get inspired by all the creativity this town can offer as much as ever before.
