28 Days Later

What with the coming end of the world when oil runs out and our blood boils inside our skins from global warming, whichever comes first, I've gotten into watching post-apocalyptic movies as a way of researching for the inevitable time when I can put to good use the wisdom that is imparted from those movies.

Since there are a bunch of mediocre sequels for movies out this summer, I thought I would personally revisit some of the better originals, especially 28 Days Later, the original for 28 Weeks Later. I remembered the original as a dark, at times completely horrifying movie that lost its fizzle at the end for me. But, when I watched it again last night, I was amazed at how much I had forgotten about what actually happens in the movie. I guess it's been five years and some missing brain cells since I saw the original in the theater.

The shots of a deserted London that occur in the beginning of the movie are fantastic, as powerful as they were when I first saw the movie. But, as I watched the movie again, I saw it as less of a horror movie and more of an action thriller that just has the infected zombie context of a horror movie. A lot of the gruesome material is left off the screen and only implied to, which is an effective way of making the violence all the more disturbing. Perhaps the most disturbing parts of the movie for me were the recollections from the various characters over what happened in London the first few days after the rage virus broke out, none of which the audience actually gets to see.

There are also a myriad of eerie shots throughout the movie that speak to either the overarching madness of the human race within the movie (a thirty-foot-tall fort of shopping carts that has replaced the landing for an apartment tower stairwell) or a return to the times before humans ever existed (a family of horses that have gone from stabled to wild). All in all, it was a lovely, although very dark, film the second time around, and the ending is actually more uplifting that what you would expect from a regular horror film.