Favorite Friday: 28 Days Later

 Jello-O and Zombies.....lets discuss.

     I like apocalypse. I like that show "Life After People" on the History Channel. I like The Road by Cormac McCarthy (haven't seen the movie yet, but will ASAP). I like Planet of the Apes and The Road Warrior. I could live in the Thunderdome. I want to be Tank Girl. I liked Waterworld (yeah, don't hold it against me). Wall-E makes me tingly.


I love this cover

     But why? For me, there is just something so innately fascinating about viewing the world through the lens of destruction. I'm addicted to imagining what would happen to the world if society went kaput. When I watch these films I feel prepared, justified and safe. Like I somehow know something that other people don't. I prefer zombies films where society has already crumbled. Past the chaos and onto living on scavenged cat food and making weapons out of old car parts.

     So.



FAVORITE FRIDAY: 28 DAYS LATER

     I know this isn't a zombie movie (yes it is) because director Danny Boyle has constantly told everyone that is not a zombie movie (but it is). That being said, it is the most zombie-like post-apocalyptic movie about sick people who transfer their sickness (very zombie-like...because it is) to others.

     Okay kidding aside, this technically isn't a zombie movie. Not really. These bad-guys are really just very very sick people. They aren't killed and then reanimate. They die when you shoot them in the chest. They starve to death. They bleed out etc.  They also don't eat people. They just get angry and express it in a very rude way.



left to right, Gleeson, Murphy and Harris



     28 Days Later follows a group of people who after 4 weeks following the initial outbreak are seemingly the remaining survivors of an extremely contagious epidemic that has struck the United Kingdom. The virus, unlike anything ever seen before causes those afflicted (they are referred to as "the infected", never the "z-word") to become as so succinctly put at the beginning of the film "infected with rage." The disease is instantly contagious and the only cure is death.

     Jim (Cillian Murphy, Scarecrow from Batman Begins) wakes up from a coma alone in a hospital. As he wanders the streets, he is set upon by Selena (Naomie Harris, scary voodoo lady from Pirates of the Caribbean) whom he joins forces with and eventually Frank (Brendan Gleeson, Menelaus (Helen's hubby) from Troy) and his daughter Hannah. Together they travel across country towards the promise of safety. Without revealing too much, they meet trouble in the form of infected and not infected persons.

All alone.....

    But the reason I like this film so much is that it is personal.  The setting is real. Society has been rushed into evacuation and quarantine. Is that so hard to believe possible? Could a disease like that spring up somehow in the world? In the United States? To us? Oh yes. That makes it scary. You look out the window when you watch this movie, looking for furious red eyes.



that's just funny

 I know I said I was scared of zombies. But my fear somehow makes what these characters are going through much more real. I feel for them when they share moments of despair. I understand a father wearing riot gear to protect his kids. The confusion, anger and terror. You meet so many different crazy end of the world kind of people. Despairing people. "Screw it lets do this" people. Funny people. Good people. Really bad people.

And it's funny! There are moments of quaint pleasure found in the simple act of eating peaches after months of soda and snack cakes. A soldier running away screaming like a girl while an infected chases him down a hallway. The pure zit-popping pleasure of a bad guy getting exactly what he deserves. A guy getting smacked over the head for fear of him biting a girl when he was actually kissing her. Slapstick end-of-the-world humor. Awesomeness.
Great down-played carnage and special effects coupled with truly scary infected persons. Their eyes are what get me. *shudder* It reveals what really scares us...ourselves! Real people scare us! OMG!



spoooky eyes!

 And yet. And yet. There is a depth to this film that as you watch it over and over again you find yourself seeing a different film each time. You notice different layers of destruction, toys laying in the mud, good-bye letters that you were too distracted to notice. Lines so simple:

"Infected with what!?"
"....Rage."

So simple. So effective.

And it is rage that is explored here, not zombies. Rage is what is so fascinating. It's not evil here that has filled these people. It's not a flesh-hungry violent zombie virus like in Dawn of the Dead. This a war movie. It's people killing people. It's just hyper-concentrated. Rage is a human thing. Animals don't get mad (to be specific I think they just really scared because they're scared). Plants don't get mad. Yes.

28 Days Later can be taken on two levels. A scary zombie-like movie full of action, suspense, gore and drama. Or as a treatise on the human condition by putting people in the worst of situations and seeing what happens.

Watch it alone or with people. It's like the Jell-O of scary zombie-esque movies. And there is always room for Jell-O.