| Posted by: Writer Col at July 3, 2003, 10:37 pm | | Topic: Reviews: 28 Days Later Forum: JoBlo | | I have just returned from the cinema and felt the need to pay respects where they are do. Kudos to Mr. Boyle & Co. for making a film that was not merely terrifying, but extremely thought-provoking as well. I am a screenwriter and avid filmgoer, but as of late - it being summer, after all - there haven't been many films to see that provide much in the way of entertainment that doesn't insult or dull one's senses. The same may be said for films that get pigeonholed into a "genre," this one being "horror." Is 28 Days Later a horror film? Absolutely not. It is, however, the most frightening experience that I have ever had whilst sitting in a darkened movie theater. As special effects and such (i.e. morphing, mindless violence, innovative ways in which to kill people) have replaced films that truly dare to get under one's skin by not simply denigrating themselves to cheap gimmicks and gore, it is refreshing that the group here dared to make a film in the vein of such great past classics directed by the likes of Sir Hitchcock and Polanski. True, films meant to terrify need to get one's adrenaline pumping and flesh perspiring, but what of one's mind? What of thought? Of seeing a bleak and frightening situation in which one thinks, "Dear God, how might I have reacted?" 28 Days Later attempts - and succeeds - to question the nature of violence. Of rage. Of the horror of it, and, also (and this may be the film's most frightening aspect) of its pleasures. The film opens with documentary images of war, mobs, lynchings, and bodies being torched into raw, eruptive flame. What follows is a meditation on the very nature of those acts. Watch them duplicated throughout the picture with the same straightforward, unwavering, deadpan stare as those which initially greet us. The aim here, I think, is not to make us as an audience goggle at the spectacle (in fact, the manner in which the camera observes events strips it clean of any garishly false entertainment value), but to think about what it is we are actually seeing (and, perhaps, wonder why it is that we, as a society, often crave such images, whilst governments continue to declare war and conduct experiments as to how we may better annihilate ourselves). In most "'horror" films of late, the characters exist only to be killed. They're a stock collection of caricatures who have become so familiar to us that when they finally do meet their demise, it is of little shock or consequence. The characters in 28 Days Later behave as "human beings." This is, surely, the reason that the picture succeeds as well as it does. When was the last time one clearly "cared" about what happened to the characters in a "horror" film, instead of waiting for the next big bonanza of blood rife with bludgeonings and slicing weapons? There is nothing to fear, really, because we care only for those characters for whom we have been manipulated to care, and know that by the time the end credits roll, those characters will have prevailed. The characters in Mr. Boyle's picture think and say the things we might very well think and say ourselves, if caught in such a situation. The loss of loved ones; the selfish suffocation of compassion and courtesy; the numbing of emotions that are crushed for fear of creating hindrances in the quest for survival. Whilst the horror is there (Jim's visit home; a journey through an underground tunnel; a walk through a diner piled with bodies), it is the reactions of the characters - the bleak deducements of their thoughts; the overall hopelessness of humanity when still we dare to hope - with which the picture is truly interested. In Mr. Boyle's picture, simply because you are a good person, or because you have people who love you, does not mean that you are safely exempt from the danger which plagues you. At one point in the picture, such a thing happens, and I felt myself dreading it rather than thinking about dazzling set pieces or blood and carnage. It sickened me to my bones, as well it should have. How wonderful for a picture to reassure one of one's own humanity; of one's own ability to feel, even in the constraints of fiction. (A note on this last: Like any work of fiction worth its salt, this picture derives its elements from a place of truths; there is nothing in it where one might think: "This is impossible. Nothing like this could ever happen." If you doubt that, just pick up a newspaper or watch the evening news.) Now, mind you, I love to be entertained, and I was. However, when a picture such as this one manages to also engage your mind and emotions, whilst also ripping your nerves raw, it is quite an accomplishment indeed. Perhaps the people who didn't like this picture were too uncomfortable with its blunt depictions of a world that has embraced its animalistic impulses (recall the initial images on the screen which greet you; turn on that news or grab that paper), or of the manner in which it examined the rage of not only the "bad" guys, but the "good" guys as well (though, in this film, the lines are, as in life, erased). Or, perhaps they simply do not like to think whilst they are being entertained - surely one of the most frightening things in life, indeed. |
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