Two former best friends reunite in a changed world, finally confronting the demons that ripped them apart.
Horror Short Sunday is here again, and this time we’re taking a look at Make the Call. A suspenseful horror short with some clever metaphors for domestic abuse.
Director: Chelsea Gonzalez
Writer: Sal Neslusan
Country & year: USA, 2024
Actors: Sal Neslusan, Camille Chen, Gunnar Anderson, Hazel Aubrey
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt16739504/
We start off by seeing Hal, a man who is the husband in a dysfunctional family. He’s a retro video game collector, and he receives a copy of a game called CURS>R. It’s supposed to be a classic text-based adventure game from the 80’s, but once Hal starts playing it he realizes that the choices the game gives him have a direct interaction with things in his own life. One of those choices he makes ends with some serious consequences. Then, we fast-forward to three months later, to the college student Kayla and her friend Isaac who is a computer geek. Kayla’s younger brother, Ricky, died a while back which turned her mother into a drug addict. On top of that, the rent collector is her supplier and forces Kayla’s mother into prostitution as an exchange to keep the apartment. So at this point we’ve already established at least one kill count we hope to see coming.
One day, Kayla visits Isaac and discovers the CURS>R game along with a phone number that’s offering a prize of $125,000. Just out of curiosity, she calls the number and then gets a recorded message from “The Terror Director“ (with the voice of none other than Robert Englund himself, and yes, even in the movie he is presented as Robert Englund which doesn’t really make a lick of sense, but whatever). The recording tells her to complete the game, and insert the number code she will get at the end of the game, and she will become the winner of all that money. Kayla starts playing it, and makes a deal with Isaac to share the money. Of course, just like we saw what happened to Hal in the beginning, Kayla soon finds out that the game intervenes with what happens in her real life, and the choices she must make often have deadly consequences.
Choose or Die (formerly titled CURS>R) is a Netflix horror film from 2022, directed by Toby Meakins as his feature directorial debut. It was originally planned to be a “short form“ series for the Quibi streaming service, which didn’t even last a year. So, over to Netflix as one of their originals then.
The premise itself, being a cursed video game from the 80s, sure does sound like some easily consumed fun. And it is. It is also very generic, and despite having the opportunity to set up a lot of very nasty situations, it has decided to play (no pun intended) everything pretty safe. There’s a scene where Kayla only sees how something is unfolding in her mother’s apartment through the game’s simple pixel graphics and MIDI music, and that’s the most exciting scene of them all as it leaves a lot to the imagination and also makes it slightly hilarious. I realize that what I just wrote there isn’t necessarily a good thing in a movie like this, though, but I actually enjoyed the setup for that scene. Now, regarding the Robert Englund cameo with the recording, it really didn’t make any sense, because he’s got fuck-all to do with the rest of movie. I was actually expecting him to show up for some kind of surprise role at the end but nah.
Despite its obvious flaws, though, I won’t lie: I found the movie to be fairly entertaining. It’s one of those simple dime-a-dozen “curse“ horror movies we’ve already seen so many variants of, but just like a cheap fast-food meal, it’s sometimes all you need. The performances are fine, and there’s a few moments that are effectively atmospheric and tense. Choose or Die, while suffering from being very generic and not going far enough with the kills, is still an okay movie to watch on a lazy day. Just turn down your expectations, and you might simply have a fun time!
Director: Toby Meakins
Writer: Simon Allen
Country & year: UK, 2022
Actors: Iola Evans, Asa Butterfield, Angela Griffin, Ryan Gage, Eddie Marsan, Kate Fleetwood, Pete MacHale, Kayleen Aires Fonseca, Caroline Loncq, Robert Englund
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11514780/
Clover’s sister Melanie has gone missing. Desperate for any answers or at least a clue, Clover goes on a trip in search of her missing sister and brings her ex-boyfriend Max, her friends Nina and Megan, and Nina’s boyfriend Abe. They try to retrace Melanie’s steps according to the last places she was seen, and ends up by the gas station where she had sent a message before going missing. When talking to the station attendant, he claims that people tend to go missing near the mining town called Glore Valley. Alright, there’s a pinpoint to check out. When they drive to this place, a heavy rainfall makes them seek shelter at a visitor center. There, they notice the heavy rain is…strangely local. Hmm. Inside the abandoned visitor center, they find a wall that’s filled with posters of missing people. No surprise that they also find Melanie’s photo there. Nina signs the guestbook just for the fun of it, and soon a masked assailant attacks and kills everyone. And that’s the start of a time loop where they will be brought back to the first night, having to sign their names in the guestbook once more and try to survive the night. If they die 13 times, however, they will end up missing just like the previous visitors…including Melanie.
Until Dawn is a horror film directed by David F. Sandberg, and written by Gary Dauberman and Blair Butler. It’s loosely based on the 2015 PlayStation video game by the same name, where the movie is using the same universe while featuring an original standalone story.
Movies based on horror games do not, unfortunately, have many home-runs to brag about. Most of them are either underwhelming, straying too far from the source material and thus alienating the game’s fanbase, and sometimes they’re just outright awful. Sure, there are some exceptions, but they’re few and far between, and of course there’s also a few that could end up in the fun-bad category. So, where does Until Dawn belong? While I have not played the PlayStation game and have no way to compare the game to the movie, I have noticed that many have placed it in the category of movies that strays too far away from the source material. So if you’re a fan of the game, I guess it’s a safe bet that this movie would be a disappointment. All in all, I have to admit we didn’t have high expectations when watching it, but as we more or less just watched it without any comparisons in mind it actually turned out to be….fairly okay? By no means any masterpiece, but it was entertaining enough with some decent atmosphere and visuals. The pacing is fine, the deaths are sometimes quite gory, and there’s a mystery that keeps you engaged. In no way does the movie rely on you having any prior knowledge of its source material, making it a movie where you can go in completely blind.
So overall, Until Dawn didn’t turn out to be the disaster we more or less expected. It’s a pretty fine supernatural horror film, works fine on its own and gave us a decent ride. Yeah, I’m certain our opinions might have been completely different if we had played the game and were devoted fans of it. Personally, I have rarely seen a movie based on a book where I’ve read the book first and actually fully enjoyed the movie version, for example. That’s just the way it works for most people, the level of depth and engagement you use when reading a book or playing a video game will always be considerably different from a movie.
Director: David F. Sandberg
Writers: Gary Dauberman, Blair Butler
Country & year: USA/ Hunagry, 2025
Actors: Ella Rubin, Michael Cimino, Odessa A’zion, Ji-young Yoo, Belmont Cameli, Maia Mitchell, Peter Stormare, Tibor Szauervein, Lotta Losten, Mariann Hermányi, Willem van der Vegt, Zsófia Temesvári
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt30955489/
Andrew, a young cinephile, watches a horror film from the 80s that he criticizes incessantly. The film’s iconic killer becomes mysteriously aware of Andrew’s incessant comments. He crosses the screen between them and throws Andrew inside, challenging him to outdo him in killing the remaining victims. Andrew, now a prisoner of the film, is convinced he can meet the challenge without difficulty. But can he really outdo the killer?
Horror Short Sunday again, and this time we’re taking a look at an ESMA (a French animation school) animated horror short called Claw. Fun and energetic, with one twist after the other!
Director: Lucas Ferrer, Ayoub Chaibi, Marianne Dautheville, Chloe Ferrus, Thomas Petroni, Melissa Saba, Dylan Sayagh, Alizée Valenzuela and Florian Wagner.
Year: 2023
Actors: Roberto Joliffe, Mark Kaczmarek, Victoria Mackay
Cady is an 8-year old girl whose parents are killed in a car accident, where she is the only survivor. The girl is sent to live with her aunt Gemma, an eccentric woman who is a roboticist at a high-tech Seattle toy company called Funki. Without the company’s consent, she’s been using their resources in order to develop a highly advanced humanoid robot doll, simply named M3GAN (model 3 generative android). Things go horribly wrong during the first presentation test in the lab, where the boss orders her to discontinue any work on M3GAN. So on top of that failure, Gemma is also struggling with connecting to her niece Cady, until the girl discovers Gemma’s old motion capture robot Bruce. An old project Gemma created back at college. When she watches how Cady plays with Bruce, she becomes motivated to get rid of M3GAN’s bugs and complete her anyway. And so she does.
The finished M3GAN then ends up getting paired with Cady, and this time the presentation goes way better than the first one. M3GAN totally exceeds expectations, and even though a mass-production of her would result in a rather steep price, most children would never want another “toy“ again anyway. M3GAN proves to offer everything to a child: she can be a friend, a playmate, a therapist, a teacher…and a parent. Which, all in all, isn’t necessarily a good thing. Cady’s therapist, Lydia, mentions that she finds it worrisome that Cady appears to be developing an unhealthy attachment to M3GAN, but that’s not even the biggest problem. The problem is M3GAN herself, who appears to become more and more protective over Cady, to the point where everything that can be considered a threat to Cady’s well-being is considered something that must be eliminated…
M3GAN (or simply Megan) is a sci-fi horror film from 2022, directed by Gerard Johnstone (who also directed Housebound from 2014) with screenplay from Akela Cooper, and based on a story by Cooper and James Wan, Allison Williams and Violet McGraw. The film grossed over $181 million against a budget of $12 million, so a big success without a doubt. The sequel M3GAN 2.0. is hitting the theaters soon, and a spin-off called SOULM8TE (yes, playing around with numbers in the titles seems to be a thing here) is set to be released in 2026.
The idea for this film came when James Wan’s production company Atomic Monster was brainstorming ideas and chose to go for one with a killer doll, and going for a concept about embracing technology too much and letting it run amok. Wan said “it’s a commentary on the world we live in and it feels relevant“. It sure does, and now more than ever. An animatronic puppet version of M3GAN was used for dialogue and close-up scenes, plus stunt versions that were not puppeteered (yes, that famous dance scene would have been hard to pull off otherwise). And overall, the killer robot actually looks pretty good. They managed to give her just the right amount of realistic movements mixed with obvious robotic motions, which gives her a perfectly uncanny expression.
The movie is generally fast-paced, and mixes humour and horror in a lighthearted way which gives it a fun and campy feel. As expected it never goes very far with the kill scenes, despite there being several opportunities for it to have done so. They had to make some changes and cut down certain scenes in order to get the desired PG-13 rating for the theatrical release. Thus, the unrated release teased “more blood, more violence and more M3GAN“, so naturally we wanted to see that version! We expected to get some additional nasty and gory scenes, and what we got, was…well…barely anything at all. To be honest, it was surprisingly lackluster with very little additional meat to the bone, and I guess the most major difference was a few extra f-bombs. I guess it’s fun for the most eager fans to see the small differences, but this was so far from what we’re used to seeing in an uncut version of a movie that it felt a bit pointless. Oh well.
Overall though, M3GAN is a fun A.I. robot slasher film which works as a fine entry into the robot-killers genre. Never taking itself too seriously, never being too bloody (and yes, that goes for the unrated version as well), it’s a fine campy popcorn-flick for a lazy evening.
Additional note: the sequel M3GAN 2.0 (which we recently watched at the theaters) unfortunately ended up being quite the disappointment. While I can see how they tried to go for a “M3GAN Impossible“ version here, all horror elements are completely gone. The theme in this movie is also largely focused on what can be best described as pure pro-AI propaganda trash, which comes off as rather bad-tasting after Blumhouse’s “I H8 AI” blunder from last year. Blergh.
Director: Gerard Johnstone
Writers: Akela Cooper, James Wan
Country & year: USA/ New Zealand, 2022
Actors: Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Ronny Chieng, Amie Donald, Jenna Davis, Brian Jordan Alvarez, Jen Van Epps, Stephane Garneau-Monten, Lori Dungey, Amy Usherwood, Jack Cassidy
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8760708/
28 Years Later starts 28 years earlier with an opening sequence somewhere over the hills and far away in the countryside of the Scottish Highlands. The rage virus has spread across the country and a group of kids have been locked inside a living room with the Teletubbies on TV to be kept calm and safe, which doesn’t last long. One of the kids are Jimmy, who escapes from the home as the freshly infected are raging their way in while Jimmy’s dad, a priest, has gone completely insane as he’s on his knees at the church, welcoming the apocalypse to kill him and the rest of humanity. Because the Bible says so. Amen. Jimmy escapes, followed by a childhood that we only can imagine as a traumatic hellride that will segway itself into a fine and stable adulthood. Ha-ha. And no, this is not the first and last we see of Jimmy. He will be important later, you can be sure of that.
Then we take the huge leap of 28 years later where parts of Britain are still in full quarantine, after the rage virus has been wiped out from the rest of Europe. So maybe the last ten seconds of 28 Weeks Later happened after all in the lost tapes of 28 Months Later. We’re in a small community of survivors on the island of Lindisfarne off the northeast coast of England that is connected to the mainland through a causeway. Here they have their own fortified Animal Crossing village where the modern technology that we once knew is a faded memory. No smartphones, no internet, no telly, no cars and no botox. Most kids today wouldn’t even survive a day without their daily dose of Guess My Fart on TikTok. We meet the twelve-year-old boy Spike (Alfie Williams), his dad Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and the bedridden mum Isla (Jodie Comer), who’s suffering from an unknown disease. And since there are no doctors on the island to examine her, there’s only to hope for the best.
But today is a big special day when Jamie takes Spike outside of the village to the open world mainland for the very first time, to teach him to scavenge and protect himself with bow and arrows. Because the infected is still roaming, which has since mutated into new variants. Now there’s not just the regular infected to be aware of, but also the Alphas, this film’s version of the Volatiles (yes, another Dying Light reference). These giants are not sensitive to light though, and once they spot you, it’s Game Over, unless you’ve unlocked the skill to run like Tom Cruise. And all the infected are buck naked, and if you’ve never seen tits before and especially dicks, you may get traumatized. Just a friendly warning/sarcasm. Another new type of species we may stumble upon is the fat slobs (jabbas) that mostly crawl deep in the forest and slurps worms like noodles. Maybe that explains why all the jabbas are… Asians. I still have questions.
It’s all quite a surreal and eerie experience for Spike, and we feel it too, as the soundtrack is mixed with disturbing chants from the poem Boots by Rudyard Kipling, while we have some grainy war clips from the middle-ages to set up the mesmerizing mood. As Spike lets The Breath of the Wild sink in, he and Jamie enter an abandoned house where they find an infected that is hanging from his feet from the ceiling. The name Jim is carved on his chest. Huh. The infected is still alive and Jamie orders Spike to give him an arrow to his skull to make him his first kill. The trip escalates into getting chased by an Alpha all the way to the village gate. Safe and mission accomplished.
The village celebrates Spike’s coming-of-manhood quest with a big party where Spike witnesses Jamie cheating on his wife. At the same time, Spike has a little chat with his grandad (if I remember correctly), who mentions Dr. Kelson (Ralph Voldemort Fiennes), a mysterious hermit who lives some hills and forests away from the island. And Jamie is very aware of this doctor. Spike confronts Jamie the next morning and understandably gets angry at him when it’s obvious that Jamie just wants Isla to die so he can be with his new mistress. After Jamie slaps him, like the first-class scumbag that he actually is, Spike tells Jamie to fuck off and later sneaks out of the village with Isla to get her to this Dr. Kelson. Who’d know that Spike has bigger bollocks than the Alphas. Balls with Spikes, if you will.
Spike and Isla also come across a Swedish Nato patrol soldier, Erik (Erik Sundqvist), who’s been stranded in Britain after his unit patrol boat got destroyed. Since he has got nothing better to do, he joins the quest for Dr. Kelson. He also has this thing called a smartphone, something that Spike has never seen before. Erik proudly shows a picture of his girlfriend, a standard botox doll with duckface and all. You know, the regular stuff. Spike then asks what’s wrong with her face. Ooof… the comedy writes itself.
28 Years Later, where director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland returns to the franchise since the first one, was not exactly as expected. I’d say that. What we basically have here is a very spiritual coming-of-age film where the subject of death is explored in such a raw and honest way, but at the same time, with an empathic, somber and unpretentious approach which I can’t remember to have seen in any horror film. I especially like the whole concept of the bone temple, without going more into that. It’s beautiful, emotional, and it’s been eons since I actually got teared-up in a movie theater. And I’m not that easy to manipulate. And yeah, there is action and several wild and brutal scenes here as the threat of the infected looms everywhere, even though the weather in Britain is better than ever. The gore doesn’t hold back, which is all good old practical.
While the ground story itself is nothing new, the execution is quite something else. The cinematography, the use of the idyllic summer landscapes with the blue sky and all, makes a stark contrast to the morbid and ugly, almost like a dreamlike paradox. There are some really haunting images here and some brilliant use of silhouettes while the kinetic camerawork amps up the intensity. That this thing was shot on iPhones with a budget of 60 million dollars and looks more crisp, lively and just overall way more vibrant and epic than a 200 million Disney film is just hilarious. The acting is top-tier and the newcomer Alfie Williams has a bright future ahead as he manages to carry the whole film. Jodie Comer is fantastic as the more and more sick and disorientated mother, and Ralph Voldemort Fiennes as Dr. Kelson is an eccentric oddball I’d like to see more of. Also say hello to Cillian Murphy’s long-lost twin brother. So yeah, I was highly impressed with this one, how it explored some themes in a new, fresh way, the world building and the overall vibe and atmosphere. It all just clicked.
28 Years Later is the first part of a trilogy. The second one, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, was shot back-to-back and is directed by Nia DaCosta. And I won’t deny that the director choice has given me some mixed feelings. I just hope for the sweet love of Belzebob that this trilogy is, at the very least, carefully planned with a clear roadmap so we don’t end up with another slow and embarrassing car crash incident like The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker …
And then we have the quite special and super-non-controversial ending, which connects some elements from the opening scene in the most British way that I actually found to be pure genius. It comes straight from the blue with the zany apocalyptic madness that we’re most used to in Mad Max and Dead Rising. No spoilers here, but some of the clothing choices of these individuals that pop up in the last minutes have made people on the internet completely lose their collective minds, as the one and only thing they now see is The Great Satan himself, Jimmy Savile! Yes, the former best buddy of King Charles and the once protected golden pedophile of the BBC (not big black cock). Some NPC’s are programmed to see only what they wanna see with zero ability to pick up any nuances and the several additional layers here. During the rewatch they’ll maybe also spot Epstein, Pootin and the double chin of Dan Schneider. That being said, have a cold one, smell some flowers, have sex, enjoy the summer and Memento Mori.
Director: Danny Boyle
Writer: Alex Garland
Country & year: UK/USA, 2025
Actors: Alfie Williams, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Christopher Fulford, Jodie Comer, Ralph Fiennes, Edvin Ryding, Chris Gregory, Celi Crossland, Rocco Haynes
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10548174/
Prequels:
– 28 Weeks Later (2007)
– 28 Days Later (2002)
A NES cartridge lands in your hands on Christmas. Playing it could cost you your life.
Horror Short Sunday is here again, and this time we’re taking a look at Player 1. A fun horror short about a guy who starts playing a mysterious NES game that he got for Christmas..
Director: Mariano Cattaneo
Country & year: Argentina, 2023
We’re not so far after the events of the first film where the rage virus is still fresh and spreading like wildfire. While we just have to hope for the best for Jim and his girlfriend, we’re introduced to some new characters, which starts at a barricaded, cozy cottage in the countryside of England. Yes, we’re still in England, and I don’t mind. Their tea is something else. Anyway, Don (Robert Carlyle), his wife Alice (Catherine McCormack) and some other survivors are getting ready for dinner. Then someone knocks on the door, a boy who’s been chased by his freshly-infected family. And he’s frightened. Of course he is. As Alice lets him in, we see a glimpse of how heavily barricaded the house is as the sun shines through like laser beams.
Then, suddenly, all hell explodes as one of the infected that chased the boy manages to punch through the walls, which weren’t so heavily barricaded after all, bites Alice and we have one of the most intense opening sequences in a zombie film since the singaia scene in Braindead. It’s full non-stop chaos where even the cameraman really struggles not to get attacked. It all escalates to Don sliding out of the top-floor window and leaving his wife behind, and his last memory of her will be her screaming for help from a window while being trapped. I couldn’t have lived with myself after a situation like that, but that’s maybe just me. Because the big question here is why she hasn’t already been turned into a red-eyed zombie, since we’ve already learned that the virus only takes seconds to strike. Huh. Yeah, you can say.
If Don couldn’t, or wouldn’t, save his wife, because he’s maybe a cowardly narcissist, he meets the next level of Mission Impossible – to run away from a horde of infected Tom Cruises to the river so he can escape on a boat. Don(e).
And just to have a quick summary, we get a text timeline of the events:
15 days later: Mainland Britain is quarantined
28 days later: Mainland Britain has been destroyed by the rage virus
5 weeks later: The infected have died of starvation
11 weeks later: An American-led Nato force enters London
18 weeks later: Mainland Britain is declared free of infection
24 weeks later: Reconstructions begins
Then we are 28 weeks later. And god knows how many timeline texts we’ll get in 28 Years Later!
So, what we’ve learned now, there’s no more threat from the rage virus. The society starts to come together, families reunite, postman Pat can finally deliver mail in Greendale again, and maybe we can celebrate the next Christmas. Empathy is back… for now. London is split into the secure zone District One, heavily guarded with the help of the US military. Since the first film was such a huge success in the states, the producer probably thought that mixing the film with American actors would please them even more. It didn’t seem to work as the film earned 20 million less than the first one. But it made a big profit nevertheless. Here we have a relatively unknown Jeremy Renner, way before his Marvel days, as Doyle the sniper. Harold Perrineau, always most known for sitting in a wheelchair and speaking in metaphors in the TV show Oz, as a chopper pilot. Rose Byrne is Scarlett, the medical chief who tests and approves people to enter the secure zone. You know, just in case someone should just be too unlucky to have some of the virus in their bloodstream, as it can be spread by dogs and rats. And there’s no vaccine yet.
Don, the one who we saw in the opening scene, reunites with his two kids, Andy (Mackintosh Muggleton) and Tammy (Imogen Poots) as they arrive at District One. They were out of the country when the outbreak happened. But where’s mum? Yeah, where the fuck is Alice, Don? Don does what a narcissist does by lying and saying that he tried to save her while he fakes some crocodile tears. Tammy and Andy sneak out of the safe zone to go for some open world exploring with a scooter in the big, empty and desolated London. Because why the hell not. Yeah, there are some really questionable and logical issues here, but whatever. They stop by their former home, where they, to their big surprise, stumble into their mum, Alice! She’s a bit shaky and disorientated, but very alive and not infected, despite that she got bitten. She gets taken back to the safe zone to get examined by Scarlett, who believes that Alice’s immunity could be a source of a vaccine. And Don has some explaining to do. At the same time, he seems genuinely happy to see that Alice is alive. So it’s not always too easy to read that man. He enters her medical room, when no one is holding guard. Don and Alice have a reunion where “The Kiss of Death“ couldn’t be more literal.
Yes – Don, the airhead that he is, kisses her fully contagious wife straight on the mouth with the tongue and all. Yuck. He turns immediately into a raving infected, gauges her eyes before he spreads chaos and panic in heartbeats. A bittersweet karma for Don. Just too bad that the rest of the world had to go down with him. It’s time to escape the big city – again! But now it’s Code Red, which means that all soldiers are ordered to shoot and kill everyone, and that also includes the uninfected. The difficulty level is now set on nightmare mode as we follow Andy and Tammy running and using their stealth skills through a minefield of snipers, while also avoiding the infected. One life, one hit-death, no continues.
So there’s the sprint start 28 Weeks Later, more or less. This time directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo while Danny Boyle and Alex Garland is put on the sideline as producers. While the first one focused more on the psychological aspects with a more bleak and somber tone, this one goes straight to the jugular, with more blood, more gore, more rage and more action. One of the highlights involves a messy zombie massacre by using the blades of a helicopter, a very similar gag we also saw in Planet Terror, which came out the same year. Not much new on the surface here, and not much more to learn than we already know. It’s overall a fine and entertaining sequel that at least manages to keep up with the same energy and adrenaline as the first one, rich on locations with some more nice set-pieces of a deserted London to spice up the apocalyptic surroundings.
There’s not much of a spoiler to say that there’s no happy ending here, as we have now finally reached the big milestone of 28 Years Later. This one ended with a cliffhanger, or a sort of, where the virus has been able to spread itself outside the UK to France, with a quick teaser that the next installment would take place in Paris. And that film never happened, nor did 28 Months Later. So in that case, it’s maybe about time to re-watch the French action/zombie flick La Horde (2009), which, as I remember, could as well work as a spinoff.
Director: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
Writers: Rowan Joffe, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, Enrique López Lavigne, Jesús Olmo
Country & year: UK/Spain/USA, 2007
Actors: Robert Carlyle, Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner, Harold Perrineau, Catherine McCormack, Idris Elba, Imogen Poots, Mackintosh Muggleton, Amanda Walker
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0463854/
Prequel:
– 28 Days Later (2002)
Sequel:
– 28 Years Later (2025)
This British and relatively low-budget zombie film was a hUUUUUUge success when it came back in 2002 and is today, 23 Years Later, regarded as one of the big, fat zombie classics that more or less reinvented the whole zombie sub-genre after a decade of almost overdosing on Zoloft. Strong British tea seemed to do the trick. Director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland were actually surprised over the giant success of the film, especially how it blew up in the US. They were just making a small zombie film, after all, with (at the time) no-name actors. A classic case of lightning in a bottle, I guess. It gave the genre the same resurgence as Scream did for slashers in the 90’s and opened the doors for George Romero to finally make his first zombie film under a Hollywood studio with Land of the Dead. And, of course, we have another British classic, that is Shaun of the Dead, and tons of other shitty zombie films that got sharted out at full speed in step with the shark films during the early 2000s (and still going strong). We Norwegians finally got our first zombie fest with Dead Snow plus an even better sequel, and I’m still hoping for a third one.
Then came the mega-hit TV show The Walking Dead and the whole planet was in full-blown zombie mania. It was a fun ride as long as it lasted, until the show fell completely on its arse, and we were forced to forgive Negan. B o l l o c k s. I digress.
A group of activists break into a lab to save some monkeys used in experiments. And these monkeys are not to be messed with as they’ve been injected with this so-called rage virus. As soon as they release the monkeys, they get attacked, bitten and turned into zombies within seconds. Sorry, I meant “infested“, as this virus turns them into red-eyed flesh-eaters with a non-stop rage psychosis that also gives them the skill-upgrade to run like Tom Cruise. What a great combination. And no, this rage virus wasn’t coughed out from some shady lab in China, but at Cambridge University. Yes, in Cambridge, England, of all places. God save the Queen. Then we skip to some days later, 28, to be precise, where sheriff Mick Graves wakes up in a hospital… uhm, sorry, wrong universe. The first issue of the comic book series The Walking Dead was released one year after the release of this film, by the way. A young lad named Jim (played by an unknown Cillian Murphy) wakes up in a hospital bed after being in a coma, to quickly discover that he’s the only one in the building. It’s eerie, quiet and a bit spooky. What the hell happened. Is he the Last Man on Earth? Huh…
From here on, we follow the footsteps of a confused, hazy and disoriented Jim as he walks into a deserted London, like an open-world game where all the NPCs have been glitched away. Then we have the classic scene which the film is most known for where he walks through an empty and trash-filled London Bridge with Big Ben in the background with not a single soul to spot. This scene was shot very early in the morning, a hangover Sunday morning I’d guess, where they had to shoot in a big hurry before a car would enter the frame. Jim enters a church filled with bodies where he has his first encounter with “the infected“, among them a creepy priest. Athletes were used as the running zombies. Makes sense, but I find it a bit funny at the same time, since Britain has its fair share of obesity. Although jabbas have their physical limitations, they sure can be angry too. Anyway – he manages to get away, and pays his mum and dad a visit, which he finds in their bed, rotting away after committing suicide during the outbreak. A horrific sight where you actually can smell it. This scene made me think of the poor guy in Dying Light who shot himself in front of a photo of his cat. Jim eventually meets some other survivors, the young chick Selena (Naomie Harris), Frank (Brendan Gleeson) and her younger daughter Hannah (Megan Burns). With Frank’s car, they join forces, looting a grocery store before escaping London and driving to Manchester. And instead of a nice sunrise on the horizon, they only see a city in flames. More shit and bumps in the road (to say it mildly) happens, but then they meet the military. Thank goodness! Finally safe. Oh, well…
So the big question is: does the film still hold up? Has it survived (no pun intended) the test of time and all that? I recently rewatched this, and the sequel, 28 Weeks Later, for the first time in two decades, and I’d say yeah. That is much thanks to the grounded story and the rock-solid acting by everyone involved. 28 Days Later focuses way more on the fight-or-flight mode and getting the hell out of the big city and hoping for the best, rather than action and gore and collecting skill points. There are gory moments here, but that aspect is not the main focus. The first two acts of the film is more of an escape journey where we get more of a sense of the apocalyptic surroundings and the overall grimy atmosphere of sheer hopelessness as they stumble from A to B… and eventually to C. They have a terrifying moment in a tunnel where they have to change a tire while we hear the infected screaming in the distance as they come closer and closer. Then we see their running shadows, and it’s time to change that damn tire! A simple but very effective scene. It all builds up to a more intense and action-packed third act where we see some clear parallels to George Romero’s films, and, of course, to mention The Walking Dead for the third time, where humans are as much a threat as the zombies/infected, and how we flush all forms of basic moral sense in the toilet as the society collapses.
Without spoiling, Cillian Murphy gradually reaches the breaking point and goes in full shirtless Rambo mode, Ramboheimer, if you will. The deeper meaning behind his mental development is obvious where the last thirty minutes or so could as well be something from a war film. Makes more sense now in the wake of Alex Garland’s last two films, Civil War (2024) and this year’s Warfare. The subject of war is clearly his thing. Garland and Boyle were clearly on the same page here as they took a lot of ideas from real events to put in the script to not just make it as another zombie film. The Rwanda and Sierra Leone war were some of the inspirations for the piling bodies in the church. The rage virus was inspired by the scares of anthrax (not the band), bio-terrorism and the spread of mad cow disease in the 1980’s. So yeah, 28 Days Later has aged pretty well – because humans will always be humans, for the better, but mostly for the much, much worse. The soundtrack is also outstanding, where the tunes of In the House, in a Heartbeat by John Murphy capture the eerie emptiness, the sadness and the overall bleak atmosphere perfectly.
The one and only gripe I have here, is that damn low-resolution image quality. And I’m not the only one. The answer is short and simple: 28 Days Later is one of the very first films that was shot digitally, with a Canon XL1, which doesn’t allow it to be remastered to 4K. That’s why the film has the overall image quality like an old YouTube video from 2007, and also why the Blu-ray looks the same as the DVD. Director Danny Boyle wanted to give the film a more gritty and authentic look, aside from being shot like a documentary. Sometimes it works, but for the most part it just looks outdated. Bummer, but it is what it is, so… Still a solid film though.
The film is reviewed from the Norwegian streaming site Viaplay, after our 20 plus years old DVD crashed.
Director: Danny Boyle
Writer: Alex Garland
Country & year: UK, 2002
Actors: Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Brendan Gleeson, Megan Burns, Luke Mably, Stuart McQuarrie, Ricci Harnett, Leo Bill, Junior Laniyan, Ray Panthaki, Christopher Eccleston, Toby Sedgwick
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289043/
Sequels:
– 28 Weeks Later (2007)
– 28 Years Later (2025)
When a single father hears his daughter come home late, he begins to question if the voice he’s hearing is really hers – or something else.
Another Horror Short Sunday is here, and this time we’re taking a look at Who’s There. A creepy horror short playing with our fears or someone (or something) mimicking our loved ones..
Director: Ryan Doris
Writer: Todd Spence, Zak White
Country & year: USA, 2024
Actors: Lizzy Kircher, Garland Scott, Kallie Tabor
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt31262966/
