A man wakes up in an abandoned hospital, to realize that the world has been taken over by zombies.Well that’s a story we all know? Just turn on the TV and of you go with the Walking Dead. However, 28 days later was released in 2002, it plays in London, and even though everybody is absolutely positive about it being a Zombie movie, it is actually never said they are Zombies. In contrary, we don’t have living deads, or walkers or what you want to call them, but actually an epidemic! Scientists searched for a cure for range (which as the prolog to the movie reveals leads to our typical destructive behavior, such as riots, fighting, looting, etc. However something goes wrong and instead we get a Virus that enhances rage in a way that the being is transferred into a state of full, pure, unconditional and extremely enhanced rage that makes the being irrational and let them lust for blood and flesh. And by being bitten you get infected too - so yeah, basically Zombies. But the focus lies on the Virus that is in the blood, so even a drop of blood into any body opening and you get infected too, in just seconds.
We start with nearly soundless scenes, the quietness is depressing and horrifying, the camera has a number of cuts to show in different perspectives the vast emptiness and loneliness of this situation. We then get to see the empty London, the totally abandoned and our main character making sense of it. Even with this entry scene we get a sense of how ingenious this movie is - the great camera work consisting of many cuts from the same scene that give us the feeling of being lost, the fast pace, the great pictures and the absolutely fabulous use of great music - from starting soundless, to a very slow and quiet music that nearly is just a beat, to the build up that is somewhat absolutely dramatic and hits when it hints the main character of what has actually happened. We get a number of these, and even though we are reminded all the time that this actually is a low budget movie by the quality, you also get a feel that here someone is making a movie that knows what he is doing and that creates great thrilling scenes and enthralling story lines regardless of the money.
Also the actors are great - we have the till then unknown actor Cillian Murphy who has his break-through and will later be seen in high-profile movies such as Christopher Nolans Dark Knight Trilogy, as well as Inception, Transcendence and lately Free Fire and Dunkirk. Naomie Harris as the female lead was also unknown till then and also her career skyrocketed afterwards, with roles such as two Pirates of the Caribbean-Movies, as well as in the new James Bond movies (Skyfall and Spectre), Southpaw, Moonlight and the coming Jungle Book. Other actors chose different career paths, such as Megan Burns who is now the lead of a rock band. However even she does great in the movie. And a few stars could also be acquired, such as Brendan Gleeson. So all in all we have a great cast of unknown actors who did so well that afterwards they where considered for all the big movies in Hollywood. So great music, great camera, great actors - what about the style and story? You would probably file this movie under horror. However, it has elements of a lot of different subgenres - there is the apocalyptic movie aspect, there is a road movie aspect, and then we have something of an revenge thriller at the end. Further more interesting, we have different aspects of the rage idea - on the one hand we have the zombies who are the extreme regarding rage - on the other hand we have our main character, who is actually a pretty decent guy - the one that comes back for you even if it means to risk his own life, and who in doubt would always help. On the other hand, we have the female lead who is full of rage and heartlessly butchers everyone down even for the slightest doubt of him being effected. And we have that turning point, where she gains hope while in the same time he gains rage (the revenge part of the movie) and this is important because otherwise the group would have been lost. So if you want, you can start asking philosophical questions (and yes, there are scientists who did and who quote this movie for their assessments) about whether and to what degrees rage is good or bad.
So in the end considering all the aspects, this movie is ingeniously great and this is actually a low budget flick; for me this is a 9/10
Review by pygospaVIP 3BlockedParent2017-06-07T01:06:13Z
A man wakes up in an abandoned hospital, to realize that the world has been taken over by zombies.Well that’s a story we all know? Just turn on the TV and of you go with the Walking Dead. However, 28 days later was released in 2002, it plays in London, and even though everybody is absolutely positive about it being a Zombie movie, it is actually never said they are Zombies. In contrary, we don’t have living deads, or walkers or what you want to call them, but actually an epidemic! Scientists searched for a cure for range (which as the prolog to the movie reveals leads to our typical destructive behavior, such as riots, fighting, looting, etc. However something goes wrong and instead we get a Virus that enhances rage in a way that the being is transferred into a state of full, pure, unconditional and extremely enhanced rage that makes the being irrational and let them lust for blood and flesh. And by being bitten you get infected too - so yeah, basically Zombies. But the focus lies on the Virus that is in the blood, so even a drop of blood into any body opening and you get infected too, in just seconds.
We start with nearly soundless scenes, the quietness is depressing and horrifying, the camera has a number of cuts to show in different perspectives the vast emptiness and loneliness of this situation. We then get to see the empty London, the totally abandoned and our main character making sense of it. Even with this entry scene we get a sense of how ingenious this movie is - the great camera work consisting of many cuts from the same scene that give us the feeling of being lost, the fast pace, the great pictures and the absolutely fabulous use of great music - from starting soundless, to a very slow and quiet music that nearly is just a beat, to the build up that is somewhat absolutely dramatic and hits when it hints the main character of what has actually happened. We get a number of these, and even though we are reminded all the time that this actually is a low budget movie by the quality, you also get a feel that here someone is making a movie that knows what he is doing and that creates great thrilling scenes and enthralling story lines regardless of the money.
Also the actors are great - we have the till then unknown actor Cillian Murphy who has his break-through and will later be seen in high-profile movies such as Christopher Nolans Dark Knight Trilogy, as well as Inception, Transcendence and lately Free Fire and Dunkirk. Naomie Harris as the female lead was also unknown till then and also her career skyrocketed afterwards, with roles such as two Pirates of the Caribbean-Movies, as well as in the new James Bond movies (Skyfall and Spectre), Southpaw, Moonlight and the coming Jungle Book. Other actors chose different career paths, such as Megan Burns who is now the lead of a rock band. However even she does great in the movie. And a few stars could also be acquired, such as Brendan Gleeson. So all in all we have a great cast of unknown actors who did so well that afterwards they where considered for all the big movies in Hollywood.
So great music, great camera, great actors - what about the style and story? You would probably file this movie under horror. However, it has elements of a lot of different subgenres - there is the apocalyptic movie aspect, there is a road movie aspect, and then we have something of an revenge thriller at the end. Further more interesting, we have different aspects of the rage idea - on the one hand we have the zombies who are the extreme regarding rage - on the other hand we have our main character, who is actually a pretty decent guy - the one that comes back for you even if it means to risk his own life, and who in doubt would always help. On the other hand, we have the female lead who is full of rage and heartlessly butchers everyone down even for the slightest doubt of him being effected. And we have that turning point, where she gains hope while in the same time he gains rage (the revenge part of the movie) and this is important because otherwise the group would have been lost. So if you want, you can start asking philosophical questions (and yes, there are scientists who did and who quote this movie for their assessments) about whether and to what degrees rage is good or bad.
So in the end considering all the aspects, this movie is ingeniously great and this is actually a low budget flick; for me this is a 9/10