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I think the movie's answer to this objection is that the "rage virus" did not evolve in the usual way, but was created through genetic manipulation in the Cambridge laboratory where the story begins. 10" in our minds at one crucial moment (b) it eliminates the standard story device where a character can keep his infection secret and (c) it requires the quick elimination of characters we like, dramatizing the merciless nature of the plague.ĭarwinians will observe that a virus that acts within 20 seconds will not be an efficient survivor the host population will soon be dead-and along with it, the virus. That 20-second limit serves three valuable story purposes: (a) It has us counting "12. (Mark: "OK, Jim, I've got some bad news.") Selena, a tough-minded black woman who is a realist, says the virus had spread to France and America before the news broadcasts ended if someone is infected, she explains, you have 20 seconds to kill them before they turn into a berserk, devouring zombie. Wandering London, shouting (unwisely) for anyone else, he eventually encounters Selena ( Naomie Harris) and Mark ( Noah Huntley), who have avoided infection and explain the situation. Jim is the everyman, a bicycle messenger whose nearly fatal traffic accident probably saves his life. Spend enough money on this story, and it would have the depth of " Armageddon." Alex Garland's screenplay develops characters who seem to have a reality apart from their role in the plot-whose personalities help decide what they do, and why. The audience wouldn't stand for everybody being dead at the end, even though that's the story's logical outcome.ĭirector Danny Boyle ("Train-spotting") shoots on video to give his film an immediate, documentary feel, and also no doubt to make it affordable a more expensive film would have had more standard action heroes, and less time to develop the quirky characters. I suppose movies like this have to end with the good and evil characters in a final struggle. The ending is disappointing-an action shoot-out, with characters chasing one another through the headquarters of a rogue Army unit-but for most of the way, it's a great ride. That's not a bad thing.So opens "28 Days Later," which begins as a great science fiction film and continues as an intriguing study of human nature. I was engaged the whole time, except when an attractive film critic gave me her zombie embrace out of sheer fright. It's a nail biter and organ orgy, with just enough scary false starts and stupid people. What I said about 28 Days Later shows what's missing in its sequel: "The eerie set design is appropriate without being overdone (Rod Serling would have approved its restraint), the characters are real without being overwrought (especially the women, who are usually sacrificed to too much emoting), and the subtexts about contemporary crises are clear without distracting from the science fiction genre itself." Correlations with HIV and Iraq are not as easy as they were with the original. But gore is to the fore, and that's just fine with those who first screamed at zombies in George Romero's Night of the Living Dead and laughed at them in Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead. That mysterious mise en scene keeps us from connecting with the principals as we did with Cillian Murphy's and Naomie Harris's characters in 28 Days Later. The dark passages and twisting camera, coupled with machine-gun rapid shots, make the movie frequently inscrutable, not a big deal to horror fans but a frustration to us commoners who think the premise has promise of showing human nature at its Darwinian worst if we can only figure out what's happening. Although the new director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo is more interested in special effects and quick cutting than the original's Danny Boyle, he does spare the outright revulsion should we ever see what cannibalism looks like up close, personal, and slow. Tough for me to advise anyone to leave the greatest town on earth, but the heroes need to go across the sea, getting there bloodier than ever. Get them the hell out of a London that in its griminess rivals the stunning cinematography and dark set design of Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men. The rage virus is back, and two kids may carry the antibody in their blood.

28 Weeks Later, the sequel to 28 Days Later, gamely carries on the tradition of intelligent zombie movies.