28 Days Later

[rm]

I'm going to stop just shy of saying this is an important film. I mean, for heaven's sake, it's a zombie film done by Danny Boyle. BUT, it is important in terms of what horror is (which is utterly different than frightening) and because for a mass release film, it's absolutely an art film in every way and stunning for it. It really made me stop and think about what film is capable of, and even made me wonder the wisdom of that.

I loved it, and I think you should all go see it, but I'm pretty tough, and I feel like I am never ever going to be okay again. Everyone I saw it with was shaking for a good hour after we came out of the theater -- not from the gore, or the stuff that pops out at you and makes you scream, but for the sheer visceral honesty of the world the film presents us with.



Yeah, it's still Danny Boyle, so yeah, that is spray painted on a wall at one point early in the film, but oh my god, you never expected this from him. This is raw, powerful stuff, that's not going to sit well with anyone.

I feel impelled to warn New Yorkers that there's a scene where our hero, having awoken from a coma into a new world where he's yet to see any people, and he doesn't know why, comes across a large kiosk in a plaza, covered with missing posters, home-made, ripped, water-logged, ink bleeding. We've seen those here, and it's a very very hard moment to take, but an important one because what happened here, that wasn't the fucking end of the world, and we'd do well to remember as much.

There is a moment, when our hero goes to his parents house, to find they committed suicide before the virus got them. They are clutching a picture of him as a child. On the back of it, it says, handwritten, "we left you sleeping; now we are sleeping with you. don't wake up."

I almost vomitted during this movie repeatedly, again, not for the gore, but elements like that, you know what it takes to live in this world, and I was left thinking of my childhood nightmares, where it was so much easier to let the monsters capture and kill me, than to live with so much terror. There's some interesting allegory about my life there too -- but not in a film review.

Also a lot of stuff about women, and their place in the end of the world -- a bit heavy handed, but a film about rage and the end of the world, is about simple things.


This is a daring, horrifying movie. Please go see it.

Comments

[genders.livejournal.com]

Excellent review as always. That's one on my list to see.

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

It's worth noting that 28DL was filmed in summer 2001 -- the Missing posters were prompted by pictures of the days following an earthquake in China, if I recall correctly, not by the World Trade Center.

Weird that it took so long to get to the US. I saw it 6 months ago in London.

And it was written by Alex Garland, one of my favourite writers.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I didn't say it was inspired by WTC, just that it was uncomfortably evocative.

[kimberlycreates.livejournal.com]

I'm non-plussed by TV ads saying "THIS! IS! THE! SCARIEST! FILM! EVER!" After the Blair Witch Fiasco and that Mel Gibson alien movie, I have lost all faith in the advertising media's ability to point me to a really scary movie. So when I saw ads for this one, I thought, "Yeah sure, scariest movie ever. Whatever. I'll wait for it to come to television."

After your review - YIKES! Now I don't want to see it because I'm afraid I WILL be too scared! lol

I used to be a horror buff, watched everything that was horror - working in a video store didn't help. Now I have a love-hate thing with them. I want to watch them for the sheer emotional-roler-coaster effect, but I the gore makes me sick to my stomach now and if it's too scary I have trouble sleeping for a few nights afterwards.

Maybe I'll watch this in PPV - where it somehow feels safer than on the big screen.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I also found Blair Witch decidedly non-scary (although I remain bothered by something in the end of the film, that sat oddly with me for reasons I've never figured out) and I didn't see Signs, but yeah this is WAY fucking scary.

Won't make you not want to be alone in the house though -- just, it'll make you think about a lot of awful awful stuff.

Also, it was shot on DV -- to great effect, but it's pretty murky for it, and might not hold up at all on a small screen.

[kimberlycreates.livejournal.com]

The only thing I liked about Blair Witch was the end - aside from the fact that it was over, it left a lot to the imagination which is scarier than anything you can put on the screen.

[coyotegoth.livejournal.com]

I'm heading off to go see this as soon as I click "Post Comment."

[coyotegoth.livejournal.com]

BUT, it is important in terms of what horror is (which is utterly different than frightening)

In a word, unsettling. I need to see it again before I can say more. Gods, this film rocked me.

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know; I just thought it was interesting that it was an independent development.

[random-goblin.livejournal.com]

I was otherwise engaged, and your journal moved.
Time has been doing odd relative things here, sorry it took so long to catch up.

The most haunting thing about this film, which probably won't hit you unless you've lived in london, is the empty streets.
Its like seeing someone you care about lying deathly still, and that heart dropping feeling that you have to check they are still breathing.
they couldn't get permission to actually close the streets for filming, they just filmed very early morning, and asked people nicely if they would mind waiting out of shot while they filmed, which, it being london, they patiently did.

[on an earlier post- the willy wonker factories were right by where i grew up as a child, in reality they are victorian buildings full of vast water pumping equipment, but all built on the grand gothic scale only the victorians could manage, who now puts grand arched windows in a water processing plant?]

[rm.livejournal.com]

I was wondering with their small budgets how the street closings were managed.

After 9/11 a huge permiter was set up in lower Manhattan and it was very weird to be in utterly empty streets, or streets with no cars and just people vascillating between giddyness and hysteria.

[random-goblin.livejournal.com]

Its odd the distinction between empty wrong, and empty quiet. the streets in the film have this feeling of 'wrongness' about them, i would imagine that was how Manhattan must have felt, different from just being empty/quiet/not busy. I think its the diffence between someone lying sleeping, and someone lying dead.

[lllvis.livejournal.com]

I have heard this referred to as a remake of "The Omega Man" essentially...would you agree or disagree? I'd like to see it, not sure if and when though...