Jim: That was longer than a heartbeat. "The Days Are Numbered."When watching a zombie film there are things you expect. You expect it to be gruesome, disgusting, violent, dark, and depressing. That's the genre. With 28 Days Later, Danny Boyle made a "zombie" film that is everything I just described the genre to be.
Somehow though, it seems different from other movies like it. It's more gruesome and much more bleak. A lot of that has to do with Boyle's incredible direction and the gritty way the film is shot. 28 Days Later follows Jim, who has just awoken from a coma 28 days after an infection has swept across England. Animals and humans are infected and there aren't many people left uninfected. Jim manages to run into a few survivors who are trying to find somewhere safe to go, in a time where there is nowhere safe to go. Few horror films have affected me, and no zombie movie ever has. That still hasn't changed, but I have to say that 28 Days Later is the creepiest zombie movie I have ever seen. Hardcore Romero fans will argue that this is cheap and goes against everything that has been established in the genre. The infected are running, and guess what I find that scarier. Something about flesh hungry runners make them scarier than the lumbering of a flesh hungry Romero zombie. It might be that these can actually catch you.This has a raw feeling and atmosphere that 95% of zombie movies and horror movies period, lack. It has a dirty, grisly feeling to it, that is unmatched in this dirty, grisly genre. This is definitely going to be a genre classic for years to come, along with Night and Dawn of the Dead. This is what the genre is made of.
March 4, 2012
Top Critic
