![]() ![]() His understandable confusion is matched by our own as he finds the once-bustling London seemingly deserted. That Jim might have survived unattended all this time, then awake in virtually perfect health at this point seems very unlikely in a literal sense, of course, but it’s the classic science fiction trope of “the sleeper wakes,” and it functions perfectly well to set up the main narrative of the film, as Jim initially tries to get his bearings and to negotiate his way through this new postapocalyptic world into which he has awakened. The film proper then begins as Jim (Cillian Murphy), a bicycle messenger who has been hospitalized in a coma after a traffic accident, awakens to find the hospital deserted. They are then attacked by the animals, leading to mayhem as the scene ends, cutting to a moment that an on-screen graphic identifies as occurring “28 Days Later.” Then a group of well-meaning animal-right activists breaks into the facility in order to try to release the animals, not realizing that they have been infected with this dangerous virus. Many of the experimental subjects seem to have been intentionally infected with a “Rage” virus designed to intensify their responses to various stimuli, including a never-ending stream of video images of real-world violence, somewhat in the mode of the stream of such images to which Alex DeLarge (Malcolm McDowell) is subjected in Stanley Kubrick’s classic 1971 dystopian film A Clockwork Orange. This notion is then particularly reinforced in this prologue by the fact that much of the research in this facility seems to be oriented toward an investigation of the human proclivity for and fascination with violence. And, of course, this opening scene raises a number of important questions about the ethics of using live animals in research. In particular, this initial scene is set in a London research laboratory where horrific and inhumane research is being performed on primates, reminding us of the kinds of cruel and selfish behavior of which humans are so often guilty but to which so many of us contentedly turn a blind eye. ![]() And, finally, the film has been widely noted for its technical achievements, breaking new ground in the use of digital video to produce impressive-looking special effects on a relatively low budget.Ģ8 Days Later begins with a sort of prologue that explains the beginnings of its zombie apocalypse. ![]() In addition, it contains some of the same kind of strong social and political commentary for which Romero’s zombie films are so well known. 28 Days Later is also notable for its visual presentation of a postapocalyptic London as a blighted and abandoned wasteland. It helped to trigger an energetic renaissance in the zombie subgenre as a whole, mostly because of the effectiveness of its ultra-fast, ultra-violent zombies. Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later was only a moderate commercial success, but it received widespread critical acclaim and is recognized as one of the most influential zombie films of all time. ![]()
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