A cross between The Omega Man and Night of the Living Dead, 28 Days Later is a great action/horror movie. Unlike most of the post-Scream horror movies, this one takes itself seriously and isn't poking fun at the genre. It's an old-school end-of-the-world apocalyptic thriller with originality and scares galore.
The movie opens with a group of animal-rights activists breaking into a laboratory. Despite the lab technician's pleas to not release the animals as they are all infected with a highly contagious disease, the activists open a cage. The animals immediately begin attacking.
Cut to 28 days later where Jim (Cillian Murphy) wakes up from a coma in a hospital in London. The hospital is deserted. He wanders outside where again he finds no one. He walks the streets looking for some sign of what has happened and eventually wanders into a church. Corpses are piled throughout the building. Two of the corpses sit up when they hear him move. A door opens and the Vicar enters, his eyes blood-red, he is twitching and violent. Jim hits him once then turns and runs. All of the corpses rise and begin chasing him.
Jim is rescued by a man and a woman who drive his attackers back with Molotov cocktails. They take him to an empty shop where they tell him about the disease and how it has spread across the country. Anyone bitten or infected by the blood or saliva of anyone who is already infected becomes infected themselves in a matter of seconds, making them single-mindedly violent. Before the radios went dead there were reports of infections in New York and Paris. There is no way of knowing what's going on in the rest of the world.
The group soon hook up with Frank and his daughter Hannah, two other uninfected survivors. Frank has a radio that has picked up a signal from Manchester. An Army unit is calling all survivors together with the promise of a cure for the infection. With no other choice, the little band decides to pile into Frank's taxi and head north where they discover that their greatest enemy isn't the infected, but the other survivors.
Visually this movie has a distinct style. It was filmed on Digital Video, which gives the movie a blurry and unclear look that does take some getting used to. Although about 20 minutes into it, I accepted the look as part of the movie world, I do question the decision to film it this way. It is artistic I suppose, and suggests a 'Day After' feeling, but I don't think it would have hurt the movie, and might have even improved it if it had been filmed on actual film. The pictures accompanying this review do not show this style, they are much clearer than they appear in the movie.
The cast are all capable, but mostly unknown British actors. The suspense is superb and masterfully done. At the beginning of the film as Jim wanders the empty and silent streets of London he accidentally sets off a car alarm. The anticipation is so well set up that even this normal occurrence caused the audience to jump. The first half of the movie in London is definitely the best portion of the film and the creepiest.
A great movie and one that is destined to become a classic of the genre, or at least a cult one.
