The series got a threequel this year, so I thought I'd finally give the original a go. Had I known that Danny Boyle was directing, I'd've braced for more grossness, but whew, there's no excrement scene herein.
Animal rights zealots release a chimp from a lab, ignoring a warning that it's "infected with rage." After the titular period, courier Jim (Cillian Murphy, younger than I'd ever seen before) awakens from a coma induced by a bicycle accident to find that the hospital and, indeed, London are almost completely abandoned. The first people he meets have the rage plague, but holdouts Selena (Naomie Harris) and Mark (Noah Huntley) rescue him. Later connections include Frank (Brendan Gleeson) and his teen daughter, Hannah (Megan Burns), who relay a report of a military outpost. It exists, but whether it's the salvation they need is another question.
Oh, the base hasn't been overrun yet. In the second half, oddly enough, the infected cease to be the main antagonists. Most of the soldiers under Major West (Christopher Eccleston), desperate for something to live for, have dishonorable intentions toward uninfected female humans and will kill any man who stands in their way.
Mercifully, the soldiers are so far from successful in their rape attempts that I decline to add a sex tag. The R rating is mostly for violence and swearing. We also get several completely unnecessary, unsexy, and unsexual nude scenes. Great, Boyle.
Nobody says "zombie," and for once, we might be right to abstain. Not only do the infected move fast and not appear to return from death, but they're just as vulnerable as regular people. That said, their tendency to cough up blood increases their likelihood of infecting others. The filmmakers themselves didn't think of the infected as zombies; the point was to comment on the modern pattern of rage, which is no less relevant today.
For horror, there's a pretty strong focus on emotions besides fear. When we meet Selena, she has lost all hope of anything more than day-to-day survival. She has become quite hardened to using lethal violence against anyone infected, no matter how close to her, even if they haven't lost their minds yet. Jim helps rekindle her soft side, even as he comes to grips with his own hardening.
Credible? To a point. You can tell the movie had a pretty low budget for the early 2000s -- not Paranormal Activity low, but I'd expect to see more bodies, living or dead, under the circumstances. There aren't even points of urban vehicle road blocks. Also, how easily can you believe in a courier running circles around trained soldiers?
What does make sense is the difficulty in finding non-junk food. I wonder, tho: Did Pepsi pay top dollar, or are the frequent references to it free advertising? I sure wouldn't want any product of mine associated with a dystopia.
28DL might be the best post-apocalyptic movie I've seen all month. That doesn't make it my jam.
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