'A Life Less Ordinary' and 'The Beach' would be perfectly acceptable films coming from anyone else, but something a little more striking is expected from the director who first exploded so furiously onto our screens with 'Shallow Grave' and 'Trainspotting'. Fortunately, with his new film, '28 Days Later...', Danny Boyle has returned to form, producing a guaranteed crowd-pleaser with enough eccentricity to stand out from the competition.
The time is now. Animal activists attempting to liberate monkeys from a Cambridge Research Centre accidentally unleash an experimental virus. 28 days later, London courier Jim (Cillian Murphy), injured in a collision, wakes up in a hospital bed to find the world infected and unimaginably different. Isolated, and forced to fight for his very life, he teams up with a few other survivors, and embarks upon a journey in search of new hope (in Manchester, no less).
The plot of '28 Days Later...' is certainly not as 'genre-bending' as its publicity would have us believe, as it is inspired by a generically narrow range of sci-fi/horror films, to which it pays ample tribute, both visually and verbally (e.g. 'The Twelve Monkeys', 'The Day of the Triffids', 'Vanilla Sky', 'The Omega Man', and especially 'Dawn of the Dead' and 'Day of the Dead'). What really makes this film original is its focus on convincingly ordinary characters in extraordinary circumstances, so that the horror is constantly offset by the main players' surreal attempts to maintain a veneer of normalcy and respectability. Unlike his earlier adapted script for 'The Beach', here Alex Garland's screenplay, developed from scratch especially for this film, is witty and tight, revealing characters with whom it is easy to identify.
Most striking of all, however, is the camerawork. The film's occasional moments of extreme violence are conveyed more through shockingly rapid editing than through visual explicitness. Everything has been shot on digital video, lending it a documentary feel that makes the nightmare scenario seem uncomfortably close to home. Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, best known for his work in 'Festen' and 'Mifune', has created the nearest thing to a Dogme horror film that has yet been seen - and it really works. The most familiar things are made to look strange, as for example in the scene near the film's beginning where Jim, dressed only in a hospital gown, wonders confused through the streets of Central London, which are otherwise completely, eerily devoid of life.
With '28 Days Later.', Boyle has tapped right into the world's current fears about the threat of mass destruction and sudden, undiscriminating acts of ruthlessness. It is a film which explores people's capacity to kill other people, and calls into questions which values, beyond beyond our basic will to survive, have importance. It is also funny, unnerving, and at times very frightening. Welcome back, Danny Boyle.
The time is now. Animal activists attempting to liberate monkeys from a Cambridge Research Centre accidentally unleash an experimental virus. 28 days later, London courier Jim (Cillian Murphy), injured in a collision, wakes up in a hospital bed to find the world infected and unimaginably different. Isolated, and forced to fight for his very life, he teams up with a few other survivors, and embarks upon a journey in search of new hope (in Manchester, no less).
The plot of '28 Days Later...' is certainly not as 'genre-bending' as its publicity would have us believe, as it is inspired by a generically narrow range of sci-fi/horror films, to which it pays ample tribute, both visually and verbally (e.g. 'The Twelve Monkeys', 'The Day of the Triffids', 'Vanilla Sky', 'The Omega Man', and especially 'Dawn of the Dead' and 'Day of the Dead'). What really makes this film original is its focus on convincingly ordinary characters in extraordinary circumstances, so that the horror is constantly offset by the main players' surreal attempts to maintain a veneer of normalcy and respectability. Unlike his earlier adapted script for 'The Beach', here Alex Garland's screenplay, developed from scratch especially for this film, is witty and tight, revealing characters with whom it is easy to identify.
Most striking of all, however, is the camerawork. The film's occasional moments of extreme violence are conveyed more through shockingly rapid editing than through visual explicitness. Everything has been shot on digital video, lending it a documentary feel that makes the nightmare scenario seem uncomfortably close to home. Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, best known for his work in 'Festen' and 'Mifune', has created the nearest thing to a Dogme horror film that has yet been seen - and it really works. The most familiar things are made to look strange, as for example in the scene near the film's beginning where Jim, dressed only in a hospital gown, wonders confused through the streets of Central London, which are otherwise completely, eerily devoid of life.
With '28 Days Later.', Boyle has tapped right into the world's current fears about the threat of mass destruction and sudden, undiscriminating acts of ruthlessness. It is a film which explores people's capacity to kill other people, and calls into questions which values, beyond beyond our basic will to survive, have importance. It is also funny, unnerving, and at times very frightening. Welcome back, Danny Boyle.