28 Days Later

Released 2002
Stars Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Noah Huntley, Brendan Gleeson, Megan Burns, Christopher Eccleston
Directed by Danny Boyle

A killer virus (it turns those it infects into homicidal maniacs) is accidentally released from a British research facility. Carried by animals and humans, the virus is impossible to contain and spreads across the entire planet. Twenty-eight days later, a small group of London survivors are caught in a desperate struggle to protect themselves from the infected.

Summary by www.netflix.com

This is a good character-driven, post-apocalyptic thriller, which convincingly creates its terrifying world. The beginning is interesting as Jim (Cillian Murphy) wanders the empty London streets wondering what the heck happened to his society. I had to wonder where all the dead bodies were since the infected weren't going to clean them up, but I understand the logistics of this movie. They shot on location, and it's quite amazing how they were able to create this empty world in modern England. There's a lot of atmosphere due to the absence of people, electricity, traffic and noise. I always think it's funny in these situations how there's no electricity or clean water, because no one knows how to make these things work. We know so much as a society but so little individually that all the infrastructure would quickly fall apart, and we saw this with the big blackout in the northeast this year.

This kind of movie always has logic holes, but I was impressed with how few there were here. The biggest one was how the infected didn't attack each other, but it didn't bother me much. Since nothing was known about the virus except that it was man-made, it's conceivable that this was one of the virus' features. One of the features I liked about the virus was how it took effect in less than 20 seconds, because it was refreshing to not have to wonder who was secretly infected and waiting to explode.

While I greatly enjoyed the first half of the film, I was disappointed with the second half. It's a rule in these movies that the place of salvation, the army base in this case, will actually be the characters' demise, but this movie is awfully cynical in its view of humanity. Jim and Frank (Brendan Gleeson) are optimistic characters, but it only took one month for the soldiers to decide they needed to set a trap to capture sexual slaves. This plot turn was much more disturbing than blood-vomiting zombies--especially since Hannah (Megan Burns) was only 14. I wish it had gone in a different direction, because it all led to Jim becoming a superman who defeated the band of nine highly trained soldiers with a little help from Mailer (was there any doubt he was going to be killing soldiers?). It was an intelligent, engaging thriller up to this point, and then it devolved into an action bloodbath. I still highly recommend this movie, however, because the rest of it's so very good. Please let this film serve as a cautionary tale to animal activists everywhere. Don't release animals from testing centers without knowing what's being tested. --Bill Alward, November 2, 2003