This is topic 28 Days Later in forum Film Handlers' Movie Reviews at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.
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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 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.
Posted by Dave Williams (Member # 299) on 05-30-2003, 05:50 PM:
Fox searchlight is releasing this in the US June 27, 2003. I wonder if they are going to do a better film transfer this time around?
http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox_searchlight/28_days_later/
Dave
Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 06-02-2003, 08:26 AM:
Well they certainly can't produce anything worse than was inflicted on us. If they haven't been junked already I'd imagine that they'll simply import the used UK release prints, clean 'em up and add the US distributor's logo to the front. Maybe that was why the US release was planned for after the film had been and gone from UK cinemas, to allow for re-use of the prints.
Posted by Andy Muirhead (Member # 712) on 06-02-2003, 06:59 PM:
I'm not sure the transfer was to blame in this case. The look seems to fit the subject matter.
A quote from Danny Boyle, Director "One thing that is important to note is that if we wanted this to look like film we would have shot on film, but this DV-to-film has a look of its own and is beautiful in its own way."
I agree!
Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 06-03-2003, 04:41 AM:
Hmm... that's not what he was said in interviews before it was released (i.e. in a long feature in Sight and Sound), which was that he wanted to use Super 16 but that the logistics of filming the locations in the way the script called for were just too expensive.
In any case what struck me was the extent to which mainstream press (i.e. newspapers, not trade press or film-related mags) reviews - which normally do not mention any technical issues whatsoever - commented on how bad the video looked. Consciously going for aesthetic effect is all very well, but if such a high proportion of your audience misses the point you have to ask yourself whether it worked...
Posted by Jonathan Worthing (Member # 803) on 06-03-2003, 06:15 PM:
Liked the film a lot. A very well made low budget flick.
Posted by David Rigby (Member # 1301) on 06-14-2003, 01:27 PM:
I really don't understand why folks rate this derivative drivel. When I saw it at the cinema it was hard not to shout out the names of the myriad genre films this stinker rips off. The whole thing plays like a soggy BBC TV end-of-the-world drama a la 'The Last Train' (or whatever it's called). The digital 'cinematography' looks like crap too. If you don't know one end of a 70s sci-fi or horror movie from another then maybe you'd like it; anyone with any genre knowledge and a modicum of good sense should steer clear or watch it purely to be appalled.
David
Posted by Greg Mueller (Member # 17) on 06-28-2003, 09:33 PM:
Just saw this at the local AMC 8 plex in Silverdale WA.
Not near as bad as I was fearing. There were definitely a lot of borrowings from other films mostly Triffids and Omega Man. The "video filming" was quite noticeable.
Spoilers.... kind of
I kept wondering why they didn't get a car or bicycles sooner than they did? And why in god's name didn't they pick up some guns at the check point on the occasions they had the opportunity to?
I would have driven the car on the flat.
I recommend seeing it but at the cheap matinee
Posted by Dave Macaulay (Member # 813) on 06-29-2003, 12:11 PM:
Greg: Nothing has to make sense in movies. Why does every character on foot, when realizing he's being chased down by a car, run straight down the middle of the road? Why does everyone who gets chased into a building always head for the only certain dead end, up the stairs? Why do cars stop for helicopters hovering close by? Why do flimsy walls stop bullets? Why does the hero never miss, and the hundred bad guys shooting at him always miss?
Posted by Dave Williams (Member # 299) on 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
Posted by Michael Gonzalez (Member # 593) on 06-30-2003, 08:16 PM:
I saw the movie last night myself and enjoyed it also. One of the best aspects of this movie is that the audience cares about the characters and what happens to them. Half the audience was dismayed (in a good way, a lot of verbal OH NOO's) as to the accidential infection of one of the characters. Like stated eariler, I really enjoyed the movie, some of the visuals, but thought that it could have been just a little more. I think that an American remake like what was done with The Ring might have done a little better job (not to mention a bigger budget to boot) espically making some of the deserted landmark visuals more personal (like a deserted Time Square or something), but I am sure that there will be a number of American rip-offs and that Resident Evil 2 will borrow the 60 mph zombie concept.
Posted by Aldo Baez (Member # 790) on 07-03-2003, 08:10 PM:
I loved this movie. It was a nice change of pace from alot of recent movies. I love how it kept the onscreen zombie action to a minimum so when the zombies were actually on screen you were really interested.
Posted by Neil Klocker (Member # 1647) on 07-16-2003, 05:06 PM:
I enjoyed the movie. Boyle kept the gritty feel that made 'Trainspotting' so good, and the graininess of the film helped.
He certainly borrowed from other sources, but he did well with keeping the good stuff, and losing a lot of the drabble available in the genre.
Posted by Scott D. Neff (Member # 185) on 07-16-2003, 05:56 PM:
I liked the movie. It was everything I expected it to be.
Friends of mine said they had a hard time suspending their disbelief. I don't understand HOW they couldn't... it's a movie about rabid monkeys biting people and turning them into zombies.
It reminded me of Night of the Comet except there weren't shoes everywhere full of evaporated people. ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Posted by Paul Linfesty (Member # 214) on 07-17-2003, 01:01 AM: