The most likable character, Gleeson’s cabby, unfortunately inhabits only the middle stretch thereafter, it’s left to a decidedly lesser bunch of thesps - Murphy, bland as Jim Harris, not fulfilling her initially strong promise as Selena and Burns, amateurish as Hannah - to carry auds’ interest through the final military seg.
But they’re hooked to a screenplay which has no idea how to develop its characters in interesting ways and doesn’t provide enough background to involve the viewer at any level beyond the superficial. With its “shuttered” editing for the zombies’ attacks, the film delivers enough shocks and gore to please undiscriminating auds. Here, it’s not just the packs of roaming zombies that Jim & Co.
Henry West (Christopher Eccleston) in an abandoned stately manor. Following a journey through idyllic countryside, the group reaches the source of the broadcasts - a bunch of unruly soldiers commanded by Maj. After hooking up with fellow survivors Frank (Brendan Gleeson, in colorful form) and his teen daughter, Hannah (Megan Burns), the foursome sets off northward in Frank’s black cab, to a spot northeast of Manchester where a dim radio broadcast promises military help. So far, so good, but by the fourth reel Garland’s script starts coughing blood. “Staying alive is as good as it gets,” she growls to an appropriately shell-shocked Jim. During another sudden attack by crazed zombies, Mark gets bitten, so Selena immediately hacks off his head with her machete. Jim insists on visiting his parents’ house, where, to “Abide With Me” on the soundtrack - the first of several effective uses of devotional music - Jim confirms he is very much alone. Seems Paris and New York may also be out for the count, and it’s only safe to move around during daytime. Amid rapid editing, he’s rescued by two tough warriors, Mark (Noah Huntley) and Selena (Naomie Harris), who fill him in on what happened and rules of survival. Jim stumbles on a church where he gets his first taste of being chased by bloodthirsty zombies. Subsequent entry of low-level music on the soundtrack, however, is a misjudgment, breaking the special mood. With Dogme vet Anthony Dod Mantle’s lensing of orange-fingered dawn in the city, there’s an eerily beautiful stillness to the scenes of Jim (Cillian Murphy) walking through the streets, where amid the trash lie newspapers proclaiming “Evacuation” in their old headlines. Twenty-eight days later, a naked man wakes in a hospital room to find he could be the only person left in London. Animal rights activists break into the lab and, amid the chaos and medical gobbledygook, an enraged chimp breaks loose and makes spaghetti bolognese out of one of the do-gooders. One has only to compare rival Working Title’s genre outings - “Long Time Dead” and “My Little Eye,” both of which seem at least well thought through - to see the difference.įew of the weaknesses, however, are apparent in the movie’s first half-hour, which starts mysteriously (sans any credits) and builds to a lovely visual surprise in a top-secret Primate Research Center, somewhere in Britain. Lotto-backed DNA Films (“Beautiful Creatures,” “Heartlands”). It’s one of many examples in the film that highlight the recurring problem of poorly worked scripts in pics by U.K. pissed and murderous), except that here they run rather than lumber. but the zombies don’t behave differently from zombies in any other horror pic (i.e. Not only is there a serious shortage of info in the script about the virus’ m.o.
While (a) provides the opportunity for fun with deserted London landmarks - plus a few jokes that only natives of the city will get - (b) is more problematic. Garland and Boyle’s extra twists are (a) to set the story in London and central England, (b) to make the virus unleash human rage rather than cause a disease, and (c)…uh, that’s about it. Central idea is an unabashed genre item, distilled from a long line of previous works, from Richard Matheson’s novel “I Am Legend” to George Romero’s no-budget classic “Night of the Living Dead” and the more recent “Resident Evil” computer games.