One of the variant promotional art used for the film (on the DVD cover)

(6) 28 DAYS LATER (2002 – PRESENT)

Yes, I’m counting the franchise through 28 Weeks Later through to 28 Years Later (as there was no 28 Months Later) but the first film remains the best, arguably the most definitive modern zombie horror film after Romero and Russo – certainly bringing new life (heh) to the fast zombie trope.

It helped to bring the fast zombie trope up to speed (heh) that the zombies aren’t actually dead but virally infected, reduced to mindlessness but for the titular rage of the virus – with no purpose but to attack uninfected people. The virus is the true terror, terrifyingly contagious both in its speed and ease of infection through bodily fluids.

Of course, this undermines the apocalyptic premise if you think about it, like zombie apocalypse films in general but perhaps even more so given that the infected are still alive but without any cognitive ability to preserve their life. Forget the starvation that is proposed as the “cure” – I’m pretty sure dehydration would get them before that, particularly given the copious amounts of blood they tend to vomit up when infected, not to mention a few other things that I anticipate would get them as well.

For that matter, the spread of the virus would be limited in that it is transmitted only by infected bodily fluids – typically on contact from an infected attacking you – and has an almost instantaneous transmission period. Yes – that makes it more terrifying if you get an infected pop up in a population center but essentially it spreads like a human relay race, passing the bloody baton (if the person receiving it survives the attack). It’s not airborne and has no gestation period that would allow it to spread by anything less obvious than an infected person attacking you or over any distance (since infected people seem to be dormant or hibernate if no one is in their sensory range).

Also, like other zombie apocalypse films, the real enemy is not so much the zombies as one’s fellow humans – here it’s animal rights activists (and children in the sequel film 28 Weeks Later). Okay, fine – it’s also mad horny soldiers (and sheer military ineptitude on the same level of having a button marked push for zombies in the sequel 28 Weeks Later).

But seriously, animal rights activists are to blame for the release of the virus in the first place. In fairness, I also blame the scientist for obtusely telling them the laboratory chimpanzees are infected with “rage” rather than a lethally contagious disease that can spread in seconds. It practically begs the skeptical response – “Yeah, I’d be pretty angry too!”

Nitpicking aside, there’s no denying the sheer impact of the first film, including the fast zombie action that might be described as frenetic or kinetic – indeed one reviewer described the film as “kinetically directed”.

The second film – not directed by Danny Boyle but by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo – maintained this impact in its fantastic opening scene (which also introduces children as the real villains of the film) but fell off after that, preferring to make some sort of point about US military ineptitude (I think) but fumbling even that as it only does so through contriving that same ineptitude to stupidity beyond suspension of disbelief.

The third film returns to the form (and visual direction) of the first film, not surprisingly as Danny Boyle returned as director, at least in its first act or so. After that, your mileage may vary.

RATING:

A-TIER (TOP TIER)