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28 Days Later
- favourite film

Director Danny Boyle is a rarity in mainstream cinema, having retained and even honed his creative instincts rather than fallen into formulae. His credits include The Beach; Trainspotting; Sunshine; and Slumdog Millionaire. And his creativity translates into box-office success, as his take on the zombie genre, 28 Days Later, clearly showed – its earnings more than 10 times its budget.
The story by regular Boyle collaborator Alex Garland is a grim one, its parallels with the AIDS epidemic clear to see, even referencing the idea that AIDS crossed over from apes to humans: in the film a sickness called Rage is passed through blood-to-blood contact, those infected losing all control in their desire to attack anyone free of the disease. One man-made horror spawns another as Christopher Eccleston ’s Major West determines that forcing surviving women to be brood-mares is the only way mankind can recover, though it does appear that the madness may be limited to Britain.
Some striking scenes occur early in the movie, with its hero emerging from hospital to wander London ’s emptied streets alone, that stillness providing a stark contrast to the zombie-like violence that follows, the threat of attack a constant. As a horror film there are naturally plenty of shocks and setbacks, but it manages to avoid the obvious as even the ending is allowed to remain ambiguous.

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