28 Days Later
Horror films throughout history have seemed to struggle in three core areas: grounding the story in a realm within the bounds of both normalcy and the bizarre to emphasize the potential, no matter how unlikely, for a given scenario to envelop seemingly average people; crafting characters worthy of empathy and investment who are not shallow, one-dimensional stock personalities who mainly act as interchangeable fodder for the antagonist; and filming the movie in a way that appropriately invokes horror and dread in audience members.
The advent of shaky cinematography like the style found in "The Blair Witch Project" and "Cloverfield" seemed to be a move in the right direction toward the latter element. It restricted audience knowledge to the protagonist's perspective, emphasizing atmosphere over gore or effects. However, other than making the film seem like it was shot by an inattentive 5-year-old running away from bees while on the world's most spastic sugar-high, this method did little to advance horror films closer to achieving either of the two former goals.
Thankfully, "28 Days Later" managed to achieve all three elements with a stripped-down approach that puts both big-budget splatter-fests and low budget schlock to shame.
The film is set in the post-apocalyptic present day. After a troupe of well-meaning but thick environmentalists release a monkey contaminated with a zombie-inducing contagion known simply as "Rage," the city of London is reduced to a depopulated wasteland in less time than it takes February to pass. A comatose bicycle courier, Jim (Cillian Murphy, in a great performance that elevated him to international stardom), awakes after the titular 28 days to find the serene world he once knew teeming with the blood-thirsty undead.
Fortunately, he finds he is not alone. There are other uninfected individuals, who spend their days scouring the burned-out city for supplies and their nights nestled uncomfortably in any available structure to ward off zombie attacks until the following morning. Jim, still aghast at all that has happened in his four weeks of unconsciousness, teams with three other survivors to ensure his survival in this strange new world.
The interactions between Jim and his allies, Selena (Naomie Harris), Frank (Brendan Gleeson) and Hannah (Megan Burns), feel authentic and unforced. This can be attributed to British novelist/screenwriter Alex Garland's solid screenplay, which truly explores each character's motivations and emotions without dipping into over-the-top theatrics or maudlin manipulation. The absence of any "I'm-in-charge-here!" hierarchy discussions marring so many other horror films is also a refreshing change of pace. The characters don't spend time debating abstract issues like civilization and anarchy ? they remain predominantly concerned with staying alive throughout the film's entirety, leaving any philosophizing confined to the viewer's mind.
Director Danny Boyle achieves the perfect mix of pacing and atmosphere with "Later," allowing the protagonists ample breathing room while never flagging from the dread-saturated tone of the film. He achieves this by filming many of the most frantic zombie-attack scenes with hand-held cameras. Thankfully, this is not the seizure-inducing gimmicky camera work found in "Blair Witch." Instead, it relies on gritty realism over frantic trick photography, making each encounter seem as potentially deadly as it would likely be if a zombie-apocalypse actually occurred.
Even as "Later" approaches its remarkable climax, and the film begins retreating from its realistic approach, it never strays far enough from the realm of believability to appear ridiculous. When the survivors meet up with an enclave of stranded soldiers promising a cure for "Rage," it's not hard to believe an actual military organization would use similarly morally ambiguous tactics to combat both human and zombie. And though Jim's transformation from untested wallflower to unstoppable hero in the film's third act may seem unlikely, it's exactly Jim's passiveness that makes his actions shocking and the remainder of the movie impossible to predict.
Boyle's penchant for juxtaposing everyday events and surroundings with surrealism and abject horror comes in handy in "Later," casting familiar sights of London and the surrounding countryside in a new, frightening light. A typically bustling metropolis completely devoid of people and windmill-style power generators spinning even as electricity has become obsolete craft an unshakeable sense of psychological horror to coincide with the characters' fears of being ripped apart by zombies. The plausibility of the ending does suffer a bit from a deus ex machina-style conclusion, grounding the characters in an unlikely reality, but it is ambiguous enough not to harm the film's overall integrity. Boyle, who directed the 1996 drug fantasia, "Trainspotting," manages once again to bridge the world between the possible and the implausible with the advent of a truly wicked, unstoppable force.