2. 28 Days Later (Danny Boyle, 2002)
While Blair Witch may hold claim to the most disturbing ending to any horror film, 28 Days Later without question possesses the most terrifying introduction. With a brief prologue succinctly setting the scene – a group of animal rights activists releasing infected animals from a laboratory unknowingly unleash a highly contagious virus – the film proper begins with our protagonist Jim (superbly portrayed by Cillian Murphy) waking from a coma 28 days after the aforementioned incident. Finding his hospital entirely abandoned, he sets out into a truly unnerving environment. The sense of isolation and apocalyptic dread reaches immeasurable heights as Jim wanders the streets of a deserted London, desperately trying to assess, as are we the audience, just what has happened while he was sleeping.
This chilling opening sequence bleeds into the main narrative as we realise that the virus has spread throughout the country, and that only the infected remain. To label these antagonists as “zombies” would perhaps be unjust. A far cry from Romero’s shambling hordes of the reanimated dead, Boyle’s nightmarish vision reimagines zombies as super-fast, utterly relentless killing machines. While Romero’s rotting corpses hobbling around shopping malls may stand as clever metaphors for hot topics such as consumerism and nuclear warfare, the monsters in 28 Days represent something much simpler and much more terrifying. They capture that primal fear of society breaking down and of the total isolation that stems from this notion. And within a post-9/11 world, such fears when envisioned as effectively as Boyle manages to achieve, become all the more horrific.
Indeed, it is the concept and the way it is established within the opening frames of 28 Days Later that is the film’s greatest strength. Inevitably, it somewhat loses steam in the narrative’s second half, when the threat shifts from the vicious infected to the cunning inhabitants of a fortified army base. Nevertheless, nothing can undermine the true terror of the first half which contains some of the most chilling scenes ever committed to the big screen; be it the empty London streets littered with bank notes; the creaky church with the message “the end is extremely fucking nigh” scrawled on its walls; or the plague of rats fleeing the encroaching hordes of infected.
Through such visceral, mortifying images, 28 Days Later stands as an example of complete, unrestrained horror, born from originality and brilliant directing. No colourful masked villains; no clichéd set pieces or hammy performances, Boyle’s film is quite simply a nightmare of unimaginably horrific proportions brought to life with remarkable believability and ruthless brutality. Utterly terrifying.
While Blair Witch may hold claim to the most disturbing ending to any horror film, 28 Days Later without question possesses the most terrifying introduction. With a brief prologue succinctly setting the scene – a group of animal rights activists releasing infected animals from a laboratory unknowingly unleash a highly contagious virus – the film proper begins with our protagonist Jim (superbly portrayed by Cillian Murphy) waking from a coma 28 days after the aforementioned incident. Finding his hospital entirely abandoned, he sets out into a truly unnerving environment. The sense of isolation and apocalyptic dread reaches immeasurable heights as Jim wanders the streets of a deserted London, desperately trying to assess, as are we the audience, just what has happened while he was sleeping.
This chilling opening sequence bleeds into the main narrative as we realise that the virus has spread throughout the country, and that only the infected remain. To label these antagonists as “zombies” would perhaps be unjust. A far cry from Romero’s shambling hordes of the reanimated dead, Boyle’s nightmarish vision reimagines zombies as super-fast, utterly relentless killing machines. While Romero’s rotting corpses hobbling around shopping malls may stand as clever metaphors for hot topics such as consumerism and nuclear warfare, the monsters in 28 Days represent something much simpler and much more terrifying. They capture that primal fear of society breaking down and of the total isolation that stems from this notion. And within a post-9/11 world, such fears when envisioned as effectively as Boyle manages to achieve, become all the more horrific.
Indeed, it is the concept and the way it is established within the opening frames of 28 Days Later that is the film’s greatest strength. Inevitably, it somewhat loses steam in the narrative’s second half, when the threat shifts from the vicious infected to the cunning inhabitants of a fortified army base. Nevertheless, nothing can undermine the true terror of the first half which contains some of the most chilling scenes ever committed to the big screen; be it the empty London streets littered with bank notes; the creaky church with the message “the end is extremely fucking nigh” scrawled on its walls; or the plague of rats fleeing the encroaching hordes of infected.
Through such visceral, mortifying images, 28 Days Later stands as an example of complete, unrestrained horror, born from originality and brilliant directing. No colourful masked villains; no clichéd set pieces or hammy performances, Boyle’s film is quite simply a nightmare of unimaginably horrific proportions brought to life with remarkable believability and ruthless brutality. Utterly terrifying.
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