Robert Lewis Professor Lynda Haas Writing 37 10/17/2013

28 Days Later: Revival of the Zombie Genre The critically acclaimed film 28 Days Later revolves around the destruction of British civilization after the release of an extremely contagious Rage virus. The majority of the film follows Jim, Selena, Hannah, and Frank. 28 Days Later was directed by Academy Award winning Danny Boyle who is best known for his work in Slumdog Millionaire; it was released in the United Kingdom in November of 2002 and later released in the United States in June of 2003. This low budget film received a review rating of 7.3/10 on Rotten Tomatoes and made $82M worldwide in the Box Office. Peter Travers of The Rolling Stone writes, Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland plumb the violence of the mind with slashing wit and shocking gravity. Happy nightmares. Peter Rainer of New York Magazine calls 28 Days Later A first-rate zombie movie. The best tribute I can offer is that it makes you want to go out directly afterward and down some expensive single-malt scotch. 28 Days Later is a text that can be categorized as belonging to several genres: for example, it is a thriller because of its use of suspense, but also horror because of the anxiety, fright, and distress it conveys to its audience. IMDb has also classified this text under the sci-fi genre because of the scientific testing that creates the Rage virus. By looking at the conventions seen in the text such as the apocalypse and the resulting societal collapse as well as the danger of humans in comparison with zombies, we can determine that this movie also falls into the zombie genre. In Dead Man Still Walking: Explaining the Zombie Renaissance, Kyle Bishop, a literary

scholar and expert on the zombie genre states, These genre protocols include not only the zombies and the imminent threat of violent deaths, but also a post-apocalyptic backdrop, the collapse of societal infrastructures, the indulgence of survivalist fantasies, and the fear of other surviving humans (20). By analyzing scenes of the text, it is obvious that 28 Days Later follows these classic genre protocols, and by introducing the newly combative zombies, Boyle compares the destructiveness of these zombies with other survivors the film; bringing new developments to the zombie genre. The post-apocalyptic back drop and societal collapse Bishop refers to is a convention found in the zombie genre. Furthermore, the zombie genre often uses the narrative of the apocalypse as a reflection of modern cultural anxieties. The opening scene follows a group of animal activists breaking into the Cambridge primate research facility. A scientist pleads with activists to not open any of the cages, declaring that animals are infected. The activists ignore the scientist and proceed to release one of the apes. When the cage door opens, the camera is angled to be a first person shot in the perspective of the primate gazing towards the open door. This is used by the rhetor to make the audience feel relieved that the imprisoned animals will now be free. The camera then quickly moves towards the exit of the cage indicating that the ape is running towards the activist. The perspective switches to third person as the ape jumps at the activist. Suddenly a film technique known as overlap editing, which takes one action and shows it from a variety of angles quickly, is used to convey a sense of confusion and shock to the audience. Low key lighting is also used as crimson warning lights go off in the laboratory. A research laboratory would normally be well lit for the scientists however, in this scene the low key lighting is being used to convey a sense of hopelessness as the apocalypse is about to unfold. The lab is then quickly is overrun by the infected and the scene ends with one of the infected apes pounding on its prison. The effect of the zombie apocalypse is a complete societal breakdown. This collapse of civilization caused by an extremist group is one theme of 28 Days Later. Although filming took place before the 9/11 attacks, there is an eerie similarity between the two. According to 911memorial.org, Al

Qaeda attacked the world trade center to support their political and religious goals in the Middle East and Muslim World. In the same way, the extremists in 28 Days Later were supporting their own goals to make a statement. The result of both of these events was widespread chaos and societal breakdown. This fear of terrorist attacks resulting in an apocalypse is a current cultural anxiety in the United States making the convention of a post-apocalyptic backdrop representing cultural anxieties obvious in 28 Days Later. In 28 Days Later we can see that the breakdown of civilization has caused humans react to other humans in the same way they react to zombies. Furthermore, humans prove to be more dangerous than the zombies. Noel Carroll, one of the leading figures in contemporary art philosophy, specifies that what appears to distinguish the horror story from mere stories with monsters, such as fairy tales, is the attitude of characters in the story to the monsters they chance upon. In works of horror, the human regards the monsters that they encounter as abnormal, as disturbances of the natural order (52). In 28 Days Later a group of soldiers send out a radio message offering the answer to infection. The first half of this movie follows Jim, Selena, Frank, and Hannah as they search for the source of this message. When the protagonists make it to the military blockade in Manchester, they discover that the soldiers answer to the infection is not what they thought it was going to be. As civilians we look to trained soldiers for protection and guidance especially in crisis situations. When the protagonists find their expectations of these guardians to be wrong, they become concerned about the situation. The soldiers believed that the answer to infection is to wait for the infected to starve to death and, in order to rebuild the society that was lost, the soldiers wanted to insure the success of the human race by repopulating. This is when Jim discovers that it is the soldiers intentions to rape Hannah and Selena. He tries to escape the compound with them but is subdued and is brought to the forest to be killed. Not only have the protagonists expectations for the military been wrong, they have found that the people who are meant to serve and protect them are now attempting to cause them harm. After escaping

capture, Jim returns to the mansion to rescue Selena and Hannah. During this time a third person perspective is used to show the chaos of the situation all around Jim. Low key lighting is used as on the setting around Jim in combination with a storm showing conflict and foreshadows the coming events. Jim starts his rescue by releasing a captured zombie to wreak havoc on the soldiers. This is an unconventional tactic not seen in any other zombie movie and shows the brutality of Jim as he attempts to kill soldiers. These vicious acts of the soldiers and Jim both reflect on the fact that the humans are just as dangerous as the zombies in this motion picture. After Romeros Day of the Dead in 1985, the zombie genre had deteriorated. This decay lasted until 2002 when 28 Days Later regenerated the zombie genre. This is similar to the way audiences raved over The Dark Night series (2005, 2008, and 2012) after the release of the poorly received Batman & Robin (1997). In the same way The Dark Knight appealed to audiences by transforming Batman into a more gritty and realistic hero. 28 Days Later revolutionized the zombie genre by making the conflict between the protagonists, other humans, and the extremely aggressive zombies more realistic than it had ever been before. These belligerent zombies in 28 Days Later which question the established conventions of the classic zombie, cause the film to fall into the revisionist stage of development in genre theory.

Works Cited

"28 Days Later (2003)." 28 Days Later. Rotten Tomatoes, n.d. Web. 29 Oct. 2013. "28 Days Later..." IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 29 Oct. 2013. Bishop, Kyle. Dead Man Still Walking: Explaining the Zombie Renaissance. Journal of Popular Film & Television 37. 2009. Print. FAQ about 9/11. 9/11 Memorial. National September 11 Memorial & Museum, n.d. Web. 29 Oct. 2013. Noel Carroll. The Nature of Horror. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 46. (1):51-59. 1987. Print.