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Topic: 28 Days Later
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 11-04-2002 02:20 AM
A clever and entertaining low-budget sci-fi 'film'. In the prologue, animal rights activists release dogs from a lab which are infected with the deadly 'rage' virus: this turns anyone who is infected into homicidal maniacs within seconds and kills them soon after. The story then resumes 28 days later, when the lead character wakes up in a deserted hospital, where he has been unconscious for the intervening period following a road accident (a plot twist blatently lifted from The Day of the Triffids).The rest of it then focuses on a small group of uninfected survivors attempting to establish contact with a larger colony which has been set up by the Army. The script is very imaginitive, though it does borrow heavily from existing British sci-fi literature and film. In particular I thought that E.M. Forster's short story The Machine Stops and John Christopher's novel The Death of Grass (neither of which, AFAIK, have been filmed) were very strong influences. The cast is a clever combination of unknowns (e.g. Cillan Murphy and Naomie Harris as the two leads) and established faces, most notably Christopher Eccleston as the ruthlessly pragmatic Army commander. The tensions between him and the men under his command came through very effectively, especially in then aftermath of the zombie attack scenes. If you can imagine a George A. Romero bloodfest with elements of the English class system, it will give you a good idea of the feel of this 'film'. What lets this down is a totally dreadful video-to-film transfer. The director, Danny Boyle, has said that he made the decision to shoot on DV because this made it easier to shoot the deserted London scenes, which had to be done during the hour or so around dawn when the city centre is largely empty. However the picture quality of the whole production is just so bad that you can't help noticing it. It's fuzzy, grainy, pixellated and artifacted throughout. Interestingly, all the press reviews I've seen commented on this, whereas with many previous films originated on video, this passed without comment. I can think of many video-to-film jobs where the picture looks so much better - Festen, Blair Witch Project, Dancer in the Dark (which was actually DV to 'scope and still a damn sight better than this offering, in 1:1.85), East Side Story, Buena Vista Social Club and Into the Arms of Strangers all spring to mind as examples. So either the original photography was done badly, or the lab which made the film master did a bad job, or both.
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Dave Williams
Wet nipple scene
Posts: 1836
From: Salt Lake City, UT, USA
Registered: Jan 2000
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posted 06-30-2003 07:41 PM
David,
I do have quite an extensive knowledge of 70's horror and sci-fi everything, and I enjoyed this film. Yes of course it has remnants of many other films, most films do. I have said this so many times in the past, and it holds water here too, that there are only so many finite original concepts, and everything else is a copy. In fact, the simple usage of this keyboard typing in a message has been done by someone else before, so by simple reasoning I am in fact nothing but a copy of someone elses insight.
I like to hold each movie on its own accord, and on its own merits, this film is fun to watch. And by the numbers from limited release in the US, nearly 10 million, and fourth place in its first week if limited wide release, and nearly NO ADVERTISING BUDGET compared to films such as FULL THROTTLE, it did remarkably well.
And from the audience response when I saw it yesterday afternoon, I would say that either the majority of them enjoyed it, or the majority of americans are just plain idiots, myself included.
Or maybe I just had fun.
Hard to say.
Dave
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