Anyone seen 28 Days Later?

Cafe Society
#1

I went to the fifth annual Zombiedance Film Festival in Austin the other day, and they showed a trailer for this movie 28 Days Later. It came out in Britain about a year ago, but so far, it doesn’t look like it will be hitting the states anytime soon. A real shame, though, because it looks damn good. I’ve watched all the little thingies on the website, and it just looks better and better.

Any of you Brits out there see it? And if so, what’d you think (feel free to use spoilers, it may be a while till I see it myself).

#2

It’s coming to U.S theaters on August 1, according to the Recent Releases page at IMDB. The trailer can be viewed here. It’s directed by Danny Boyle (Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, The Beach) and has a mostly unknown cast, except for Brendan Gleeson (The General, Gangs of New York) and Christopher Eccleston (Shallow Grave, Elizabeth, The Others). It’s sort of a British combination of The Omega Man and Dawn of the Dead in which a man wakes up after a month-long coma to find that he is alone in a deserted, ravaged London. . .

#3

The reputation it gained over here was as a very stylish, very bleak, very, very violent film. Critics loved the atmosphere, the scenes of a deserted London, but disliked the violence and the cop-out ending. It was heavily publicised but I don’t remember it doing vastly well at the box office.

#4

Wow, when I first saw the title of this thread, I thought it was some sort of sequel to that awful, awful Sandra Bullock movie.

#5

I haven’t read any reviews of it, but i did go to see it. I’d agree with most of what Crusoe said, but i wouldn’t say its overly violent. It is violent, but i think it has to be. The end bits of the film are quite clever, i would go into more detail, but i don’t want to spoil it for you! The last minute or two of the film show a happy ending type of scene, which i guess you could call a cop-out (given the bleakness of the film) but its not a big deal.

I normally don’t like horror films at all, but i really enjoyed it, so i’d definately recommend it.

#6

I also enjoyed it. It was splendidly nasty, as a good horror film should be, and the style is perfectly judged: dark, grainy film, a wobbly camera and rapid, disjointed editing in the tense scenes giving the viewer a feeling of disorientation. I would certainly recommend it.

#7

I loved it!

Yes, it was violent - but not gory. It kinda cut away from the “nasty” stuff you’d expect to see in a zombie-movie.

It was definately more stylish than your regular horror fare. Plus it has some lovely scenes that paid homage to George Romero.

#8

You are not alone. Does that mean they aren’t making a sequel to that?

#9

I thought the Sandra Bullock movie was awesome. It is a favorite amongst AA’s, at least the ones I know. I’m no longer clean and sober, but the movie is still pretty good.

#10

I got a VHS of it off of Ebay (one of those “screener copy” thingees") and checked it out.

It’s pretty good and definately paid homage to the zombie films of Romero (and the more obscure Italian rip-offs). I believe it was shot on DV and it looks pretty jagged but that fits the style of the piece.

I’ll definately check it out again when it hits theatres. Curious to see how many theatres it opens in and how they attempt to sell it, cause I don’t see it going down too well with the usual teenybopper horror fan.