28 Days Later

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The Cambridge Primate Research Center, just outside London. A group of animal advocates break in to free the test subjects. They let loose more than they bargained for. The apes are infected with a "rage" virus and are highly contagious. Their release may mark the end of the world.

Then, twenty-eight days later....

Horror films have generally gone for blood and guts the last few decades, slasher flicks with high slaughter counts and low IQs. The idea behind most modern entries in the genre seems to be to shock rather than to scare, and only a few recent exceptions like "The Others" and "The Ring" have broken the mold. Director Danny Boyle's 2002's thriller "28 Days Later" has it both ways. The movie gives us plenty of blood and gore and the highest possible body count, yet it does so within the context of a quietly eerie and mostly tension-filled story.

"28 Days Later" will not please every horror fan. It's all too realistic and all too logical for that, thanks to Boyle's sensible direction and writer Alex Garland's no-nonsense script. It's also more relentlessly downbeat than most horror stories, while being intelligent and sometimes darkly witty as well. It's "Night of the Living Dead" meets "Apocalypse Now," and for most of its running time it works, without making one turn away thinking it's just more silly hokum.

So, twenty-eight days after the infected apes are set loose, a young man, Jim (Cillian Murphy), awakens naked and alone in a hospital room. He's been unconscious the past month after an accident and doesn't know what's been going on outside. London is deserted, and Jim is dazed. Slowly and methodically, we learn what Jim learns, that the infection has spread fast and that most of the world as Jim knew it is gone, replaced by roaming bands of polluted zombies intent on attacking and corrupting everyone around them. With the exception of a few scattered survivors like Jim, there is nothing: No government, no police, no army, no electricity, no running water, no TV, no radio.

The movie is not so much the suspense-filled horror extravaganza one might expect as it is a thoughtful action-horror adventure, with several allusions to serious social problems. The themes of war, AIDS, and urban rancor are touched upon though never fully developed, and it's only the central premise itself, the rapid dissemination of the "rage" virus and its murderous effects on people, that may be hard to accept. The consequences of the virus for those folks it does not directly befoul, however, lead to more intrinsic themes than the ones mentioned above, suggesting that seemingly "good" people can be as harmful and perverse in their own way as the more obviously "evil" people of the world. Just read your daily newspaper.

Anyway, Jim wanders into the London streets, which are empty and quiet and make any sudden movement or noise all the more frightening. Presently, he encounters Mark and Selena (Noah Huntley and Naomie Harris), the first non-contaminated people he finds; then Frank and his teenage daughter Hannah (Brendan Gleeson and Megan Burns); and lastly Major Henry West (Christopher Eccleston) and his small but loyal band of followers.

As in so many of these English-made films, the acting is uniformly excellent (Naomi Harris is especially strong and believable), although true to moviemaking tradition the principal characters are invariably young and attractive. I think it's paragraph seven, sub-clause three of the filmmaker's bible that declares that unless your name is Humphrey Bogart thou shalt be a beautiful leading person. Live with it; movie actors have to be easy on the eyes.

Selena, unusually pragmatic but despairing, too, announces at one point, "Plans are pointless. Staying alive's as good as it gets." Observing this particular thread of the movie's plot unfold makes it most intriguing. After all, where does one go when there is nowhere left to go? How does one behave when there are no longer any moral codes to follow? By the last third of the film, the story's twists and turns lead us to much more, ultimately forcing us to ask the question I suggested above: Which of us are worse, the infected or the uninfected, the good guys or the bad guys? It's a film that makes us question our own conduct, as individuals and as a society. How many horror films can do that and still maintain an appropriate body count?

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