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28 Days Later follows much the same concept. Jim, a London bicycle courier, is hit by a car and wakes up from a coma, you guessed it, 28 days later in an empty hospital. While he's been out, a genetically-engineered virus called Rage has gotten loose and infected almost the entire British populace, turning them into, yup, murderous zombies. Jim wanders through the eerily empty London streets trying to figure out where everyone has gone when he is first attacked by "The Infected" and then narrowly saved by a small group of other survivors. Together they must improvise ways to keep themselves safe, and then eventually leave the city in the hope of finding more survivors at a nearby military base.

Does Boyle "reinvent" the genre? Not really, but 28 Days Later is an enormously fun horror picture that certainly at least revives it. It is smartly scripted and tensely directed, which isn't to say that there aren't a few "Don't go in there, you idiot!" moments, but the movie does at least stay true to its convictions and the logic of the rules that it lays down, even if the ending is something of a cop-out.

Boyle manages to bring a few nice new spins to the old formula, including his use of handheld digital video to tell the story with a newfound sense of immediacy. The speed and ferocity of the "Infected" are even quite shocking. These aren't your father's lumbering zombies, slowly lurching forward towards their victims; these bastards will rush right in and tear you to pieces before you can even begin to react. Boyle also adds an intriguing twist in that once their blood is exposed to the virus it is only a matter of seconds before a person goes Romero and succumbs to the violent urges, leaving their friends with the need to make very quick decisions about how they will choose to survive. Are these new changes truly innovative or groundbreaking? Probably not, but they do keep the movie consistently interesting and suspenseful.

Like any story with a plague angle, the movie has a none-too-subtle subtext about human vulnerability to disease despite our advances in technology and culture. You can read into this a statement about AIDS, Anthrax, SARS, or what-have-you, depending on whatever new public health threat is featured on the news in a given week. I also appreciate that the characters in the movie give some thought as to how they should repopulate the Earth when, although this is never specifically spelled out, if you think about it that is exactly what the Infected have been trying to do. They don't eat their victims; the purpose of the virus seems to be to spread itself and reproduce.

Thankfully, Boyle plays off of these themes skillfully without going overboard or laying down some heavy-handed Message. 28 Days Later is at heart a good old-fashioned horror flick that'll have you spilling your popcorn as you jump out of your seat every 10 minutes or so. It may not be great art, but it is great fun.

Video: How Does The Disc Look?

Shot rather inexpensively on digital video, the movie has a deliberately grungy style that works to increase the sense of tension. The DVD very much has that distinctive video-to-film-back-to-video appearance, meaning that it does not have the artificially sharp and vivid appearance of something transferred directly from a video camera source, nor does it look anything like film. It is an intentionally processed image, with colors and other picture attributes manipulated digitally when necessary. It looks neither "realistic", nor does it look like a glossy film production. It is its own thing, and for what it is, the 1.85:1 anamorphically-enhanced picture on the DVD is transferred accurately.

My only possible complaint is the presence of some edge enhancement, visible as halos ringing around objects. However, this is not the fault of the video transfer; the artifact was introduced by the DV cameras used and was present in the theatrical prints was well. However, along with some jaggies and other video-source defects, the edge enhancement is not necessarily out of place in such a deliberately artificial-looking image.
As near as I can tell, the Region 1 DVD looks almost identical to the UK Region 2 release reviewed previously. That import disc was slightly sharper, owing to its PAL video resolution, and runs 4% faster, but other picture attributes look the same to my eye.

Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?

Be warned, the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack has enormous dynamic range. The quiet parts of the movie are very quiet, to the point where you'll want to crank up your volume to hear the whispered dialogue, but the loud parts of the movie are very, very loud and, like the zombies, come at you suddenly from out of nowhere. This one will have you jumping out of your seat more than a few times.

Directional effects are highly aggressive. The disc is not officially labeled a Dolby Digital EX mix but the rear soundstage decodes well into a center channel without collapsing from the other speakers. Deep bass, as expected, can really rock the house. This is a great, fun horror movie soundtrack.

French and Spanish dub tracks are available in Dolby 2.0 Surround. Also provided are optional subtitles either in English for the Hearing Impaired or Spanish. Unfortunately, the disc loses the English subtitles for the audio commentary track that were found on the Region 2 release, which is too bad as that feature was a pretty good idea.

Supplements: What Goodies Are There?

This new Region 1 DVD is for the most part a direct copy of the Region 2 edition released several months earlier, right down to the menus.

The screen-specific audio commentary by director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland is a good listen. They relay a lot of useful information about the film's production and their intentions for the story, and at least give small hints as to why they chose the ending that they did.

Speaking of which, three different versions of the film's last scene are available as Alternate Endings. The bleak "Alternative Theatrical Ending" was attached to theater prints after the end credits and would have made a much more fitting conclusion for the picture than what the filmmakers ultimately chose. I really wish the DVD producers had authored the disc to seamlessly branch this scene in with the picture so that viewers could decide which version to go with. Sadly, this was not to be. On the other hand, on this Region 1 DVD the scene has been fully post-produced with a completed sound mix, and is a significant improvement over the rough condition of the footage on the Region 2 edition. The next "Alternative Ending" is honestly is not all that different from the theatrical version. Finally, there is the "Radical Alternative Ending," presented in storyboard format, which is indeed a radical departure from the direction the movie took. This last one is located on a second page of the Alternate Endings menu and could be easily overlooked if you didn't know it was there (in fact, I completely missed it when I reviewed the Region 2 release, but it is on that copy as well). After this is a selection of 6 Deleted Scenes. Boyle and Garland continue their commentary over each of these scenes and alternate endings, informing the viewer of why each was ultimately cut or changed. The choice to listen to the commentary is optional, except on the Radical Alternative Ending where it is mandatory.

Normally I tire quickly of still galleries in DVD supplements, but here the presentation is different enough to have kept me interested. The Production Gallery and Polaroid Gallery are both formatted as automated slide-show featurettes (18 min. and 4 min. respectively) with their own audio commentaries from Boyle. I would not have guessed this to be interesting, but really it is very informative about the process for keeping movie continuity and the importance of having a publicity photographer on set for as long as possible.

In the Marketing section of the disc we get two theatrical trailers, a presentation of animated storyboards from the movie's official website that basically amounts to another trailer, and a music video by Jacknife Lee. That last part is actually rather cool, not so much a music video as a condensation of the entire movie from start to finish into 6 minutes underscored by a hard-driving beat. This is fun, but it quite literally contains footage from every single important scene in the movie (ending and all) and is only to be watched after you've seen the film.

Now we get to the most frustrating supplement, the 24-minute EPK documentary, Pure Rage: The Making of 28 Days Later, which disingenuously tries to play up the plausibility of the story's disease angle as if it were really a threat (questionable medical science "experts" intone about the inevitability of a worldwide super-virus). I'm sure the producers would like you to believe that a major virus is on its way right now and the only way to survive would be to watch their movie for tips. I find this reprehensible.

DVD-ROM Exclusives: What do you get when you pop the disc in your PC?

No ROM extras have been included.

Parting Thoughts