28 Days Later (2002)

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Zombie movies have been a part of our culture for decades. They can be traced back as early as 1919 with the French film 'J'accuse,' in which the concept is presented more symbolically. However, most would attribute the zombies we know and love to 1932's 'White Zombie.' After that, if you look closely enough, you'll notice that they've just kept going since then, albeit largely underground, aside from basically anything George A. Romero made. I mean, if the title didn't have "... of the Dead," it didn't seem to count.

Here's where I'm gonna remind people that I was about as far away from being a horror fan as one could get back through my life in the '80s and '90s, so my biggest links to zombie horror at the time were things like Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' video, and a loose familiarity with Romero's stuff without having seen any of it. Therefore, it could be said, even to my disbelief, that '28 Days Later' may very well have been the first zombie horror movie I saw. It's a peculiar thing to consider, but it's worth noting. It's no wonder I've always been drawn to the concept of fast zombies.

Now, there will be readers who will argue that these aren't zombies based on a technicality. The film opens with a group of animal rights activists breaking into a lab where they see experiments being done on chimpanzees involving a "Rage Virus," which is highly contagious through any bodily fluid and acts fast. One of the activists unleashes a chimp, which immediately attacks, and thus, the spread begins. In just under a month, the virus spreads rapidly, collapsing society as we know it.

Twenty-eight days later, at St Thomas' Hospital in London, a bicycle courier named Jim (Cillian Murphy) awakens from a coma he fell into after an accident. Not only does he find the hospital to be abandoned entirely, but it seems that all of London is as well. After a while of wandering, Jim discovers the true nightmare as to why there has been a mass exodus - a whole bunch of people who have been infected with a rage virus, making them angry, violent, aggressive, mindless "zombies." However, unlike your traditional zombie, these aren't SO hung up on the "meat" so much as just attacking and maiming as quickly and brutally as possible.

After a while, he finds Selena (Naomie Harris), whom he teams up with to survive in this new world. Eventually, the two of them find refuge with a guy named Frank (Brendan Gleeson) and his daughter, Hannah (Megan Burns), and as most of these types of movies go, they all end up seeking refuge miles and miles away, having to venture there through masses of rage-filled "zombies." I won't say much beyond that, but what must be pointed out is the way the film ends takes the viewer by surprise, becoming less of a zombie movie and much more about "man vs man," and the last half-hour or so of this movie is a bad-ass time!

This film deserves much more recognition for what it represents in the zombie genre, as it is one of the first zombie titles I can think of that focuses more on the people involved in the situation than on the situation itself. It further impresses me with its themes of violence and rage, questioning whether the real monsters are the mindless zombies running around who have no choice in what they're doing or us people who have our options. Still, it's about whether our choices make us better or worse than the monsters out there, all done in a movie that existed one year before the first publication of 'The Walking Dead!'

Considering everything that exists in the zombie subgenre now (yes, I'm still calling them "zombies" for all intents and purposes), this might not pack the punch it once did upon its release, but it's still worth going back and checking out if you haven't seen it yet. It's very much like 'The Walking Dead' in the way it's executed, but I'd argue that it's probably a little better - even a little deeper when you step back to take a look at it. It may prove a little slow-moving for some, but it's all well worth the wait for the film's climactic sequence. In my books, it's among the better non-Romero zombie horrors out there.

4/5

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