watching movies one cup at a time

Zombies movies these days are very cliché. Zombie culture since George Romero first created the contemporary vision of the living dead has gotten so oversaturated that the movie-going is getting numb to the whole idea and we are now seeing movies making fun of the clichés (like the brilliant Shawn Of The Dead). It’s almost as bad as vampires. So what makes 28 Days Later interesting is the fact that in essence it is a zombie movie, yet there isn’t one zombie in the whole thing.

In the film, the main character Jim wakes up in a hospital 28 days after an extremely contagious virus has ripped through England wiping out the majority of the population and leaving a horde of “infected” who have been reduced to subhuman killing machines intent on destroying any living thing they can get their hands on. The viral disease that has been released came from a presumed military lab where experiments were being done on monkeys. A PETA-like group of activists break in to free the monkeys from the experiments being done on them. But they soon learn that the monkeys carry a nasty disease that spreads almost instantaneously through blood/saliva contact and turns the victim into rage-filled homicidal lunatics who can only think about one thing - killing you ASAP. Jim finds other survivors and they make it to a military stronghold looking for help. But the soldiers there are more interested in exploiting Jim and his friends for their own selfish needs. Of course all hell breaks loose and the infected consume the base, with Jim and crew barely making it out. Eventually the infected starve to death (rage-filled homicidal lunatics can’t make a sandwich I guess) and Jim gets rescued.

The word zombie is never mentioned in the entire movie. And the infected are not dead at all. They are still very much alive. They can be killed like a normal person and there is nothing supernatural at all about their abilities or weaknesses. Yet they still possess all the traits we commonly associate with zombies. Their behavior has been reduced to subhuman level, incapable of any resemblence of their former lives pre-infection. They are intent on seemingly one thing only - ripping you to pieces. I guess it’s like when someone bumps into you at the bus stop and doesn’t say excuse me or anything and you just want to beat the mess out of them right there with your umbrella - just magnified by 1000.

Add the whole angle on viral outbreak to the plot and you have a very contemporary story. People are losing it more and more every day. There was a school shooting here in Illinois just last week where someone went nuts with a gun at a local college. And with the bird flu scare, AIDS, mad cow, etc. people are very fearful of a cataclysmic pandemic.

Cillian Murphy was excellent in this movie. He naturally gives off an “everyman” vibe that is very human and relatable. And his cunning toward the end shows he is a survivor and despite the world falling apart. Christopher Eccelston also does his usual excellent job. I have never seen him do a bad performance. Why did he leave Doctor Who? He was perfect.

One question I had about the infected though is why they only went after NON-infected people? I would imagine if you are filled with blind rage, you don’t care who you kill - infected or not. Yet the infected travel in packs together and are always making non-infected their number one target. And do they eat, drink, or sleep at all? It seems like if they were cranked up on adrenaline and rage, they wouldn’t do any of those things and would consequently die in just a few days, maybe a week at most. But I will meet them half-way and just say that we don’t know those answers just as the characters do not know them in the context of the movie.

Overall this is a very well done and origianl movie that does pack a lot of scares without the usual cliche zombie trappings.