28 Days Later is a violent, scary and deeply troubling movie. It’s also smart, philosophical and entertaining. Director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Shallow Grave) does an excellent job of redefining the modern horror genre by keeping the movie’s focus on humanity’s sink into the primal morass held within the context of a very literal sinking by way of a genetically engineered virus accidentally introduced to the outside world by animal rights activists. Set in modern-day Britain, the movie plays as a morality tale about human nature, both its veneer and its truer station.
As I said earlier, there is violence in this film, shockingly so in one gruesome scene near the beginning. Yet besides that one scene, which in fact mirrors certain events in the world (think Rwanda), the rest of the violence in this movie is non-gratuitous and always used to illuminate philosophical points. One of the most interesting things about 28 Days Later is that a majority of the movie was filmed in DV, using miniDV format and 9 Canon XL1 cameras. It lends an even more visceral effect to the movie through DV’s effect on color and motion. Just goes to show you that it’s the story, and not how the movie is filmed, that matters. Recommended viewing.
