Review Copyright Cassandra Henry, 2003

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"Staying alive is as good as it gets." -- Selena CASS' CLIP (WARNING: **spoilers below**) Imagine if you will, waking up after watching an old episode of The Twilight Zone. You're still a bit groggy, but you notice that you're connected to tubes and needles. When you look around and realize that you're in a hospital, and your screams for help go unanswered, you have no other choice but to find out why. When you survey your surroundings, then wander down the corridors, you discover that the hospital is EMPTY, and there's not a soul in sight. [Damn, what kind of drugs did they give you to make you hallucinate like this?] Seems strange, but that's just the beginning of an even stranger day or life ahead. Okay, so what happened? Twenty-eight days earlier, animal rights activists broke into a primate testing facility to rescue caged monkeys. What these activists didn't know is that these experimental chimps are infected with a contagious "Rage" virus, for which scientists are trying to find a cure. [Rage is an emotion innate in humans]. As animal rights activists do, while releasing one of the chimps, a scientist yells that the monkeys are infected. Of course, it's too late because the monkeys freak out, and unleash their rage and attack the activists. Within 20 seconds of being attacked, anyone infected with this virus will turn into zombie-like creatures, who then spread this virus to the uninfected humans. Twenty-eight days later, Jim (Cillian Murphy), awakes from a coma. Disoriented, Jim soon finds out that he's alone in a London hospital. When he ventures out to find out why, not only does he discover that the hospital is empty, but the entire city is in ruins and seemingly desolate. There are a handful of uninfected folks -- Selena (Naomie Harris), Mark (Noah Huntley), Frank (Brendan Gleeson), and his teenage daughter Hannah (Megan Burns). Selena and Mark try to piece together for Jim what happened while he was in a coma for 28 days. "Ok, Jim," Mark says, "I've got some bad news." In order to survive, they find a safe place to live -- zombie-free, of course. Meanwhile, Major Henry West (Christopher Eccleston), the officer in charge of a rogue Army unit, is transmitting a radio broadcast that anyone looking for shelter should join them at an army facility in Manchester. Jim, Selena and the others, hear this radio transmission and decide to join these survivors broadcasting hope. What they encounter at this supposed safe haven is scarier than the zombies, and this is where 28 Days Later really starts to piss me off. DA 411 I was really looking forward to seeing Alex Garland and Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later. There have only been two movies that made me jump out of my seat -- Hitchcock's The Birds, and Tim Robbins, in Jacob's Ladder. As for 28 Days Later, my Scare-O-Meter registered 0. The fast pace camera work and the scenes of London's desolate streets are what initially work in this movie. In spite of the script, Naomie Harris gives a strong performance. If zombies ever chase me, this is one no-nonsense sistah I want on my side. Cillian Murphy did a decent job of making me almost care about what ultimately happens to his character. Even though I didn't find 28 Days Later scary, I started to accept the plot until the last half of the movie. Since there were several elements I found to be offensive, I asked a movie-goer, Helen B, her opinion to gauge if I was being overly sensitive. It turns out that we shared the same point of view. Cass: Did you think this movie was scary? Helen: Absolutely not. In fact, I was waiting to be scared. Cass: Were you offended by the racial and subliminal connotations this movie depicted? Helen: Offended? Hell Yeah!!! The fact that a Black soldier (Private Mailer/Marvin Campbell) was chained up like an animal and used as a test subject, reminded me of the government testing the side effects of syphilis on unsuspecting Black men. Cass: When Major West made the statement that he promised his soldiers women, who did you think the soldiers would chose between Selena or Hannah? Helen: The white teenage virgin, Hannah. This way, they can repopulate their race, if in fact that was the Major's intention. Cass: When one of the soldiers said, "I'm gonna have the black one and make her squirm," what did you make of that? Helen: First, Selena and Hannah weren't willing participants. Second, what upset me the most is that white men still get a thrill out of raping Black women. [Thanks Helen B. for your candid comments]. The realm of possibility that this "Rage" virus could be genetically created, is what makes this post-apocalyptic movie scarier than it really is. Since that is the movie's premise, instead of giving us zombies that look like rejects from Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video, Garland and Boyle simply could have intensified man's every day rages and explored the ultimate outcome. CASS' CONCLUSION Folks will either love or hate 28 Days Later. I was somewhere in the middle until the end. 28 DAYS LATER:   Yellow for the first 45 minutes... ...then Red Light for the rest of the movie. back to top Copyright Cassandra Henry, 2003 EMAIL: cass@3blackchicks.com