28 Days Later
December 2003 Reviewed by: Wes Phillips Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

28 Days Later is smart, witty, and visually compelling. It is also jarring, gory, and, in places, savagely violent. Don't even think about watching it if you are not ready to be made excruciatingly uncomfortable.

Of course, that is what horror movie fans do want. Yet they do not generally expect filmmaking this sharp and intelligent.

In 28 Days Later, radical pro-animal activists break into a research laboratory and free the experimental chimpanzees without realizing they have been infected with a virulent virus that induces mindless bloodlust within 20 seconds of contagion.

That plot device allows two crucial story elements to emerge. The first concerns the rapidity (within 28 days) with which London is reduced to an empty city, inhabited by marauding bands of the infected and a scant few survivors. The second sets our internal clocks to tick off the period between a character's exposure and his or her transformation. This is quite literally horrifying.

A bicycle messenger wakes from a coma in a deserted hospital. As he wanders through a ravished, empty London, he learns what has happened from a flying scrap of newspaper. He encounters a pack of the infected and is saved by two survivors, who quickly teach him new realities. Although they know what he will find, he insists on walking to his parents' house. Later, he hooks up with another pair of "normals" and they embark on an expedition to Manchester, inspired by a radio broadcast promising a "solution to everything."

In many ways, 28 Days Later is not that original. Its predecessors include such end-of-the-world films as On the Beach, The Omega Man, and, of course, the George Romero Living Dead trilogy -- director Danny Boyle is obviously aware of these, and pays due tribute to his sources. But few of them had 28 Days Later's lyrical interludes or moments of eerie calm. Yet Boyle is respectful of the conventions of the genre.

In some ways, too respectful. Much of the final half hour dissolves into a straight "worm turns" scenario that casts the hapless bike messenger as an avenging angel. Then there's that "optimistic" ending, which was apparently a matter of debate up to (and beyond) the opening of the film. A month or so into the film's release, a "what if" second ending was added to the film. The DVD even offers a third alternate ending.

28 Days Later was filmed with digital video technology, which gives it a direct grittiness that highlights the edginess of the storyline. It also made it simpler to add in the film's special effects (like subtracting all the people from London, or setting Manchester so beautifully ablaze -- something many Britons have been itching to do for years).

28 Days Later is not an easy film to watch. We hope its pessimistic view of man's fate is wrong, but it feels right, if unpalatable. There are decent people in the film -- part of its edginess comes from the extent to which we are terrified by the discovery that their decency does not keep them from being violated.

There are some lovely touches of humor along the way. When the pilgrims stop for an impromptu shopping expedition in a deserted market, one pile of apples shines pristinely among the rest of the rotting fruit. "Humph," says Frank. "Must be irradiated."

But largely, 28 Days Later seems a tract on the philosophy expressed as "eat or be eaten." As much as we want to disbelieve Naomi Harris's Selena when she says, "staying alive is as good as it gets," by the film's end, we see it as a huge victory.

Perhaps even an impossible one.

The transfer to DVD is superb. No, the movie does not have the glow of film, but the look of DV is used very effectively and has to be considered a crucial component of the film's visual vocabulary. The surround effects are enveloping, effective, and terrifying. If your home-theater audience can take it, this is a reference-quality surround demo disc. And the extra features, especially the deleted scenes and commentary track, are first-rate.

28 Days Later has a lot going for it -- but if you are not into graphic gore and ultimate terror, perhaps you should give it a miss.

But I dare you to watch it.

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