Warning: I thoroughly spoil this 5-year-old movie. If you like zombies, check out Lauren’s post featuring a rather lovely zombie song.
So, I finally got around to seeing 28 Days Later last night, so I know the backstory before seeing the new sequel 28 Weeks Later. (The sequel looks to be much more explicit in drawing parallels between the rage virus and the War on Terra.) Let me get this out of the way first—the fast-moving vs. slow-moving zombie debate (which is scarier?) is silly and distracts from the larger point of zombie movies. Great zombie movies address the underlying social tensions of the culture they’re portraying/lampooning. The properties of the zombies in any one movie are dependent on the general horror of cultural stupidity the director wants to portray. Night of the Living Dead is a counter-culture classic that indicts the mainstream culture for its deadening conformity, which leads to racism, patriarchal idiocies and other atrocities. (The film is pretty sexist, though, which Romero regretted openly when I saw him speak and which was corrected in the remake—it’s a big hole in your counter-cultural vision to forget to include women in it.) It wouldn’t do to have your conformist zombies move fast. Conformist mainstream culture isn’t fast or clever, but it’s slow and relentless and wears down your defenses, thus do the zombies in Night.
In contrast, 28 Days Later indicts the culture of violent machismo, thus the zombies move quickly and puke up blood and bile in an attempt to spew it all over their victims and infect them, too. Taken in context of the War on Terra , the symbolism is almost too obvious—rage and violence beget rage and violence and it continues to spin out of control, sucking everyone into it. Attacking Iraq in the name of fighting terror manages only to create more terrorists, as our violence and rage touches the lives of others and converts them into violent zombies like us.
28 Days Later follows the grand tradition of Night of the Living Dead by having a band of plucky survivors barricade themselves away from the zombie threat only to have the very thing the zombie threat represents tear them apart from the inside. This is when the movie gets really interesting. It starts off in London, when the hero Jim wakes up in a hospital all alone. He’s been in a coma for weeks and completely missed the past 28 days when zombies took over the city and killed everyone. (The director Danny Boyle does a remarkable job in portraying London as a ghost town.) He eventually finds a handful of other survivors, and they set out for Manchester, because they’ve heard a radio broadcast from there promising sanctuary in a military barricade. Mild-mannered Jim, a woman named Selena and a young teenager named Hannah make it inside the barricade, making them the only civilians inside.
The virus that’s infecting the population and turning them into zombies, however, is a manifestation of the boiling rage that spreads across the planet through routine violence, though, and as the military is ground zero in training people to be dehumanizing killing machines, it turns out the survivors are not as safe inside a military barricade as they’d like to think. This is when Boyle does something I actually didn’t expect and positions male dominance and violence towards women—inspired very literally by womb envy—as the ground zero point in creating senseless violence that will spin out of control. The soliders in the barricade are understandably excited to have young women in their midst, since a bunch of dudes can hardly rebuild civilization all by their lonesome. But rather than be happy and gracious towards the women, they instead reveal to Jim that they’re going to hold them captive and subject them to gang rape. The movie firmly rules against the idea that men are inherently thuggish and controlling towards women, since Jim and another male character don’t even have a moment’s thought towards harming any women just because they can get away with it. Instead, the macho culture of the military is held to account, having made these men so stupid and violent that they don’t even pause to consider that their plans of violence towards the women will only have the effect of poisoning their miniature society from the get-go. In an effort to stop the lunacy and set Selena and Hannah free, Jim runs rampant throughout the mansion in a sequence that I want to watch again, because there’s a lot going on there with the way he turns soldiers against zombies and lets the culture of violence do what it does for him.
One of the more subtle and interesting scenes in the movie comes when the commander for the barricade tells Jim that women represent hope, casting his soldiers’ desire to have some women to brutalize and dominate in a sentimental light to excuse what they’re planning to do. It exposes this patriarchal sentimentality for what it is, a way to dehumanize women nicely so you can do horrible things to them. Saying women symbolize hope so you can rape them reminded me in no small part of the way that motherhood is sentimentalized in order to force women to bear children against their will as punishment for fucking/being female. The movie also lampoons the paranoid fear that women, absent of male control, would simply refuse heterosexuality en masse—the soldiers assume straightaway that the only way sex and baby-making could possibly happen is by rape, but in the meantime, Jim and Selena are beginning to fall for each other, with the implied possibility of happy sex and baby-making in their future. Which means the movie does imply that men who have genuine fears that women won’t choose them are drawn to patriarchal violence, and real world experience would shore up this theory. But again, the machinations of the movie show how that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy—if you’re hateful to women, they won’t like you, reconfirming your fear that in order to get laid, you have to force women into submission.
Needless to say, I really enjoyed how salvation comes at the hands of a woman with a sewing machine. Crafting fans, take note. The sequel looks like an indictment of the U.S. and nation-building, so I hope it doesn’t suffer from bad sequel syndrome.
75 Responses to “Continuing in the series of reviewing stuff that’s been out awhile, zombie edition”
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I look forward to reading this but I have to see it first. Can’t wait to see Begbie fighting zombies.
While I know that zombie movies do the exact things you speak of in terms of metaphor, I hadn’t really thought about them in terms of this movie. It’s one of my favorite horror movies thus far, and now I think I love it more.
Christopher Eccleston in a crewcut…mmmm…(even if he is a bad guy).
FYI there is a graphic novel out that explains what the reseachers were doing in the lab and sets up the sequel in the last chapter.
You know, I had my higher brain functions turned off while seeing that movie (like how I watched 300), and now I’m going to have to re-watch it with them turned back on, instead of just basking in all the terror. I suppose that (and Children of Men) does a good job of putting the lie to the idea that movies have to be misogynist, or racist, or reactionary, or whatever, in order to be broadly appealing.
And now, since the fast-vs-slow zombie thing has been mentioned, I have to quote localroger’s definitive statement on the matter:
I liked 28 Days Later, but my main problem with it is in the screenshot posted above. The zombie silhouetted on the left is, even in that frame, slowing down. Can’t catch the getaway car. Rage… subsiding.
It’s very silly and implausible for a creature driven by pure rage to give up so easily.
I always thought that the social commentary aspect of “28 Days Later,” specifically the critique of the military, was sort of cheaply recycled from “Day of the Dead” — i.e., the female protagonist is sympathetic and her major problem comes not from the zombies but from all the super-masculine, sexist racist soldiers she’s surrounded by.
Then again, I’m one of the few people who thinks that “Day of the Dead” was a better film than “Night of the Living Dead.” Also, I was extremely dissappointed that Romero followed up a film which is openly and directly critical of the military mind-set, with a film (”Land of the Dead”) that just sort of went back to same-ol’ tradition of lazily glamorizing military culture (see also: “Aliens,” every other James Cameron movie, and most war-themed action movies made since “Aliens”)
jamesf, did we see the same Land of the Dead? I took its major theme to be class
divisions and class warfare. The rich in the tower paying for the privilege of being willfully oblivious, the 1st world poor living on the streets and kept from uprising against the rich by exploitative diversions and the promise of security from the zombies, and the zombies themselves the vilified 3rd world poor routinely raided by the macho lackeys of the rich. The zombies are the most sympathetic characters in the film. And the Dennis Hopper-John Leguizamo conflict is a nice subtheme about racism and classism.
Unfortunately, the sequel has a new pair of screenwriters (replacing Alex Garland,), a new director, and an entirely new cast. I don’t have high hopes at all. Also I’ve heard that it’s not shot in DV, which was part of what I loved about the first film - the utter grit.
Nice review, Amanda.
I actually caught a fair bit of that subtext myself the first time I saw that movie, but it’s facinating to hear the “Fast/Slow” zombie debate in terms of societal critique. 28 Days Later really is an incredible film, and I’ve been hoping that the sequel will continue to challenge as well as thrill.
Yes, true, but the real affront to the paranoid soldiers in the movie is that Selena is choosing a scrawny bicycle messenger over them. Jim’s status is what a lot of the antagonists in 28 Days Later disdain and the fact that he is connected more closely with Selena than they are is a final insult.
Also, when they take Jim away to be executed, the place they took him seemed to resemble an execution ground.. it looked as though (and I only got a glance at this scene) that Jim wasn’t the first person they wanted to kill for not going along with their plans.
Also, 28 Weeks Later was well done. It’s a good example of filmmakers who, when presented with a big budget to make a sequel, don’t screw it up. Many parts still seemed just as gritty as the original.
I haven’t seen it yet because I haven’t found anyone to see it with. I kinda love traditional zombie stuff because I fancy that I can probably win even though I had yet to win Resident Evil EVAR, but the whole, fast zombie thing? TOO scary, especially with the virus thing. It’s real that we’ll probably be taken in by another plague soon, though it won’t be something that cause us to be like the rage zombies in 28 Days later. What’s also real is that when DOOM goes down, people will panic and be even more cruel to each other. When society breaks down, well, look at Iraq now, it ain’t going to be women friendly.
- MG
This movie pissed me off.
Why the hell is Jim the hero? Selena taught him to survive post-zombie era. She is tough and capable and extremely competent - and as soon as she’s threatened by men instead of zombies, she turns all vulnerable and helpless and needs Jim to save her and the other girl.
WHAT THE FUCK
Why do movies always have to turn out that way?
Same thing with Children of Men. Here’s a movie that is doesn’t need a male protagonist in any way - so how is it that the main character is male? Why did they keep killing off all the main non-pregnant female characters? Sure, the guy died in the end, but he died a hero - the women were just senselessly killed or disappeared or too crazy to want to save their own lives. And the pregnant woman is apparenlty only important because she is pregnant. She doesn’t get to make any decisions or make any choices (other than to trust the hero over other guys). AUGH
I am so tired of movies that cast women as the helpless-victims-who-need-to-be-rescured. I’m looking at you too, Spiderman!
Deanna, I have to disagree with you on both films. Both Jim and Theo are characters that go through a major transformation that changes them from being just dudes into profeminist real men. In “28 Days Later” the point is that zombies are not as scary as the powerful dudes who are going to rape the women. That’s a radical claim. The soldiers are the real monsters. Jim could have used his gender privilege to hang out in the mansion and get protection and access to the women’s flesh just like the soldiers planned. He didn’t align himself with the patriarchy, he sided with women, and we could use more of that in film.
Same with Theo.
He put down the bottle and the self-pity/apathy in order to continue the work of pro-feminist revolutionaries. Julian was murdered by misogynist warriors who then wanted to control another woman and her child as mere symbol to their movement. Theo distinguished himself by working with and for women. The whole film was a cautionary tale about the way in which the patriarchy devalues and destroys life.
If it’s all about men anyway, let’s at least recognize when we see good male characters on film.
The horrible thing about Romero’s slow zombies is this: You are superior to them in every meaningful way. You are smarter and faster. You can kill them from a distance with a little practice. You have every advantage you could want, but as the movie unfolds you realize they are going to win anyway […]
Sounds to me like a pretty good metaphor for the Vietnam War.
The original NOTLD is one of my all-time favorite movies, despite the fact that I also find it utterly horrifying and revolting. (It’s also one of only two horror movies that ever gave me nightmares.) But I never had much interest in seeing the other ones in the series, nor am I all that interested in zombie movies in general. To me, Romero said everything that needed to be said on the subject back in 1968.
However, I’ve always wanted to see “28 Days Later”, because it was written by Alex Garland, who wrote “The Beach” (great book, though I’ve heard the film is crap). Unfortunately GF has already seen it, so on movie rental nights we always end up picking something else. And I don’t really like watching scary movies by myself…but maybe I’ll have to make an exception.
When watching, I always felt that Julian was the real hero of “Children of Men;” she’s the one who kept her faith and pushed for making the world a better place, even after the world did such terrible things to her.
Also, it’s made clear that Julian pulled Theo back in precisely because she knew he had connections and was good on his feet, but was too despairing to do anything but assist in a single event. She definitely died a hero’s death as well, to my mind. She just died first, and even more tragically.
The pregnant gal made a huge decision — she decided to reveal her state to Theo and trust him over the revolutionaries, and, again, this was due to Julian’s earlier efforts. I didn’t expect her to engage in many heroics; she’s 9 months pregnant, fergoodnesssake. Also, Theo was explicitly a hero, someone who could keep Julian’s attention, while the gal was explicitly just some person, in way over her head.
28 Days Later was a very good movie. The first five minutes were very scary and the rest was pretty good, too. I liked the twist at the end, where you have to root for the zombie to kill the bad military guys. I am looking forward to the sequel. A good parody of this movie was Shaun of the Dead.
Deanna, I know what you mean, but it’s not quite that cut-and-dry. I was cheered mightily by the fact that the leader of the bad soldiers is killed by a teenage girl. Selena was portrayed as the hardass who Jim had to use as a role model, which is not nothing.
Ben, i don’t have time to go into details, but there were some clear (head over the mallet levels of clear) nods to the american government and iraq.
Needless to say, I really enjoyed how salvation comes at the hands of a woman with a sewing machine.
In the version I saw
*SPOILER*
the alternative ending played after the credits, with the clear implication that the happy ending was Jim’s fantasy as he was dying.
*ENDSPOILER*
Incidentally, I look forward to your sympathy for the noble soldiers in “Dog Soldiers”, led to their doom by a conniving and bestial woman…
Also, I was extremely dissappointed that Romero followed up a film which is openly and directly critical of the military mind-set, with a film (�Land of the Dead�) that just sort of went back to same-ol’ tradition of lazily glamorizing military culture (see also: “Aliens,� every other James Cameron movie, and most war-themed action movies made since “Aliens�)
Wait what? Aliens? Aliens glamorizes military culture? Let’s count the ways:
1. Bill Paxton’s character. (LOL)
2. The fact that the three heroes at the end are a female child, a civilian woman and an android - no military personel. (Unless you count Bishop)
3. The Alien infestation of the colony is purposely allowed to happen by the Government so that the aliens can be used for military purposes.
I don’t know how you missed this but the theme of all the movies past the first is that the Military-Industrial Complex wants to use the Aliens as weapons. And did you miss how the marines are incredibly gung-ho and arrogant, then get sliced and diced? Ripley tells them that this is serious and they just laugh her off.
The military as a whole comes off poorly in Aliens. The individual marines are mixed bag, just as they are in real life. What did you want? Every single marine to be a rapist?
Not to mention the fact that Aliens is one of the greatest feminist movies ever made. Every single female character in it both kicks ass and is a rejection of common stereotypes.
Great reading, Amanda.
And it’s too early in my morning and my coffee too new in my system for me to be more eloquent. So, uh, you go!
The thing I found interesting in “Night of the Living Dead” and “28 Days Later” was the mechanism of zombiefication. Back in the day radiation was the big scary evil thing, so cosmic rays were the mechanism. Today disease is the big scary evil thing, so it was a virus.
I haven’t see “28 Weeks Later” yet. However, I keep hoping for a zombie movie where the protagonists obey the #1 rule of zombie plague survival: behead your dead.
Don’t forget that the movie’s soundtrack featured both Godspeed you Black Emperor AND Grandaddy. That on it’s own is reason enough to watch.
The movies pissed me off because they set me up.
They started out with strong female characters like Selene and Jillian, and then killed them off or turned them into victims. Sure, you could argue that at least the male heros are feminists - yes, that’s a good thing and I don’t disagree on that point - but I keep thinking “Will this be the one? Will the strong competant capable women be the real hero of the story without being a hot psycho killer from Kill Bill?” I sit through the movie going “yes…yes… yes…yes OH DENIED!”
Well, at least I’ll always have “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”.
Children of Men - Why was the character of Jim necessary at all? His part could have easily been done by Jillian or the midwife - but no! The hero of the story has to be a guy! I don’t blame the pregnant woman for needing help in the movie, lord no, but they essentially infantilized her. She was a woman in her 20’s but she was treated like a pregnant 13 yr old with no agency of her own. The only thing she got to do was choose to trust Jim. The rest of the time she was just the precious object everybody was fighting over. A vase could have played her part.
Deanna, what about when Theo asks Kee who the father is and she deadpans that she’s a virgin and he is visibly shocked?
Funny!
She got to make decisions in the film whether to stay at the farm or to trust Theo and try to meet the Human Project. I didn’t read her character as being a powerless child at all.
She gave birth to a female political messiah to save the human race. She survives the dehumanizing connotations of being a fugee.
SPOILER ALERT!
I LUUURVED 28 days later. I really liked 28 weeks later. In the 28DL, I didn’t think Selena and Hannah were being passive- but rather, doing what they could to survive. I think it was great in showing how women had no safe place in this world, that safety is an illusion easily shattered. I also liked seeing the transformation of Jim, and how learning to survive does not mean becoming completely immoral. Selene is cast as very hard woman, but her complexity and compassion is revealed very well, and I like that it’s revealed through her compassion towards Hannah. It wasn’t Jim’s studliness that helped Selene open up- it was her feelings for Hannah. It was nice to see women working together, women caring for each other, rather than fighting for Jim’s or a male’s attention. The female bond is shown well in the alternate endings on the DVD- the women are doing very well without a male presence. I really enjoyed that there was a very strong feminist message- in all the main characters, in the men as well as the women. I never felt that Frank or Jim was ever dismissive of the women, and everyone treated each other like peers. Frank had a paternal edge, but I felt it was more because of his position as the oldest person and his role/experience as a father, rather than being the “man” and calling the shots because of it. Selene was the glue that held everyone together- she had the coolest head, and if I had to pick anyone as the “hero” - it would have been Selene.
As for the Jim’s character being the “savior”… I didn’t see it that way. I saw him and the Sgt that gets killed as people doing what they could to survive mentally and emotionally through the horror. Jim needed Selena and Hannah, and he didn’t see them as property but as his equal peer. Selene saved his ass, and this was his opportunity to pull his weight.
Amanda, I had a similar reaction when I saw the film and I don’t usually watch zombie movies or war movies–I was on a Cillian Murphy kick. I should see it again now that I’ve see Children of God.
I just watched Trainspotting last night, which is also a zombie movie in its way.
I suspect people who think the new movie is going to be in anyway coherently or stylistically related to 28 Days are going to be disappointed.
Catty, well said!
By the way the makers hate it when you call them zombies. For some reason they refuse to admit that their movies are obviously zombie movies. It’s kind of silly really. THEY AREN’T ZOMBIES THEY ARE INFECTED BY A RAGE VIRUS THAT IS OBVIOUSLY TOTALLY DIFFERENT SOMEHOW!!!
Ben-
Yes, the commentary on class struggle was definitely present in “Land,” however in all the scenes with Leguizamo’s character I’m pretty sure the filmmakers want you to think that he and his crew are total bad-asses; considering I had just watched “Day” the week before I saw “Land,” I was totally shocked by the contrast in how the Dudes With Guns were portrayed.
Bizarro-
I’m not buying it. Yes, the movie does try to make all those claims, but that movie is 90% about being excited by marines with big awesome guns blowing up and getting blown up by bug-aliens. In all of Cameron’s movies, the only way women can be acceptable protagonists is if they’re intensely masculinized (see also: T2) Cameron wants to have his cake and eat it too. His idea of a “strong female character” is a hot girl with a bazooka. Not exactly feminism, in my book.
One of the great things about the zombie genre is that the only hope for survival is for the group to stay calm and work together to hold off the zombies. The problem is that inevitably the petty jealousies and self-interests of the characters interfere, tearing the group apart, leading to their deaths.
It’s simultaneously an optimistic/pessimistic genre. Optimistic because it glorifies the everyman as the hero. Suddenly the local sheriff, the salesman, or the bank teller is leading the fight for survival successfully. At the same time, humanity proves itself not up to the task and can’t put aside their flaws to survive against an enemy without those same flaws.
If you don’t want entertainment that features guns, you can always watch the “Charlie’s Angels” movies and play the Nintendo Wii. I, personally, want to see things blown up every now and again.
*** CHILDREN OF MEN SPOILER ***
Also, my favorite part of “Children of Men” was the genre violation– there seems to be a rule that any movie with foreign (particularly English) protagonists needs to be led by an American in order to appeal to the American film audience. CoM is set in Britain, introduces the American hero who’s the leader of the English rebels, and then they kill her off. It was brilliant. I kind of wish they had done the same thing with the chicken voiced by Mel Gibson in “Chicken Run.”
*** END CHILDREN OF MEN SPOILER ***
jamesf,
I would have to disagree. I HATE J Cameron- he’s an asshole supreme, but I loved the Director’s Cut for Aliens. I agree that there’s gun-lust in the movie, but I never saw the movie as Military = badass, but military = dumbass because of the arrogance of the soldiers and the bad, bad management and planning of the guy in charge. In fact, they ignore Ripley and pay, pay, pay out their chest cavity. I liked that they really didn’t sex up Ripley’s character- I never saw her as masculine in Aliens, I saw her more as a very practical and sensible woman. Cameron is no feminist, but I don’t have a lot of issues with the portrayal of Ripley in Aliens.
Also, the director’s cut shows Ripley as a woman trying to cope with the death of her daughter, and adds an element to the Ripley/Newt relationship.
“I would have to disagree. I HATE J Cameron- he’s an asshole supreme, but I loved the Director’s Cut for Aliens.”
Very minor, and off topic comment:
One of my favorite (tiny) scenes in Aliens is when the crew of “space marines” wakes up from stasis.
They’re all clean, well scrubbed - almost clinical - wearing their undies and tee shirts, men and women together.
The Sargent gets up, talks about how he loves being in the Corp, and then lights up a cigar…
I think the contrast between the sterile stasis pods, the clean design of the ship - and then the guy lights up - fascinating…
28DL rocked. There are way too few good horror movies. Most of them are simply voodoo bullshit (i.g. anything by Shyamalan). You don’t need to create a whole world of supernatural weirdness to make a good movie. Asking the audience to keep upping the altitude on their suspension of disbelief is raw hackery. Get the main counterfactual over with early and just let things unfold on their own.
PittoR wrote: Incidentally, I look forward to your sympathy for the noble soldiers in “Dog Soldiers�, led to their doom by a conniving and bestial woman…
On the chance that you were kidding on the square, that’s not how I saw the movie. I think Captain Ryan puts the kibosh on the “noble soldiers” aspect.
I don’t think “conniving” is the right word for Megan. She’s not particularly on board with the soldiers, but given why they’re there she’s got no reason to be.
Definitely an underappreciated movie, but also rather a tangent.
Back on topic, I thought the political viewpoint on fast vs. slow zombies was illuminating.
BizarroSuperman: “Not to mention the fact that Aliens is one of the greatest feminist movies ever made.”
An essay I once read suggested that Ripley blowing the alien out of the airlock (twice in a row) is symbolic of expulsive power of the uterus.
For the record, Cameron took ALIENS in military direction partly because he was already writing Rambo when he was hired. Which is why it turned out to be Vietnam in space.
Jeez, it took until just this moment for me to connect Bishop’s rescue at the end with the famous image of the helicopter evacuating the Saigon embassy.
There are way too few good horror movies. Most of them are simply voodoo bullshit (i.g. anything by Shyamalan). You don’t need to create a whole world of supernatural weirdness to make a good movie.
This is my problem with most horror and sci-fi genre films. I’m willing to go there, but not if I’m rolling my eyes all the way.
Shit, just because I love the song so much, I’ll offer it for download here: Zombie Killer.
re: slow zombies vs fast zombies and the west.
There were no such thing as Good Old Days unless you are white male and middle or upper class, but the middle class used to be bigger? Which made sense according to Karl Marx?
In the old days, the problems, to the protagonists, usually the white/male/middleclass since the default YOU is them, is slow and but creeping. Walk pass the urchins, walk pass the streetwalkers, gossip about the cousin of a cousin who was disgraced after a man ‘introduced’ himself to her. Violence is systematic but contained, delivered from the top down. The society is rotten, but it could still stand.
You ignore the first few zombies, there are more, now it’s harder to outrun them, because they are everywhere, they might as well be fast because when you outrun the group in zone 1, the group in zone 2 is already beside you and zone 3 zombies are ahead.
You can’t contain the violence you breed, it spills out, and you take it home with you. Soldiers and businessmen who indulged their sadistic appetite overseas comes home, and doesn’t stop. Soldiers and businessmen who used to be sane, used to see all people as equal, now, ‘know differently’ when they’ve been to a place where all at their mercy is game and people can be brought and sold. This adds to what is already back home, anger of the oppressed, which includes the children of the oppressor though to lesser extents; the children were oppressed by their parents the oppressors, their fathers, and they were brought up to believe they have a right to oppress, to deliver violence down. When they were growing up they oppress their peers, they lash out at each other. …and Before You Knew it, violence, the zombies, are everywhere.
Now, you are surrounded by /something/ you can’t understand, something fast and violent and infectious and /mad/.
- MG
“By the way the makers hate it when you call them zombies. For some reason they refuse to admit that their movies are obviously zombie movies. It’s kind of silly really. THEY AREN’T ZOMBIES THEY ARE INFECTED BY A RAGE VIRUS THAT IS OBVIOUSLY TOTALLY DIFFERENT SOMEHOW!!!”
Meh. I’ve seen a lot of zombie purists totally lose it over the 28 Days Later ‘zombies’ not being dead. I can kind of see the point, from a thematic perspective. It sets the characters’ predicament apart from that of characters in even other fast-zombie movies.
If the 28 Days Later crew can just survive for x many months, then theoretically they could be okay. There’s a ton of them, and they’re fast and vicious and utterly dedicated to killing people, but they will eventually die without anybody needing to kill them. If they can just hole up and ride it out and not fall victim to any of the numerous hazards, they might make it. They also kicked around the idea of being able to cure the rage-zombies enough to shoot an alternate ending, and infection-zombification didn’t necessarily obliterate a person’s mental capacity, so that might play into it.
The characters in the Dawn remake, on the other hand, are looking at a storm that simply can’t be ridden out. Their enemies aren’t going anywhere. They’re already dead. Even rotting to the point of immobility doesn’t neutralize them as a threat; one half-assed chomp, and the victim is doomed. The only way to get rid of them is to kill them, and there are too many for that to be effective. Infected people didn’t become a problem until post-mortem, and there’s no suggestion of any of the zombies having any sort of brain function higher than what might be chalked up to muscle memory.
Of course, you do get to a point where you’re debating over whether it’s really a rush if zerglings weren’t involved.
“Ed: Any zombies out there?
Shaun: Don’t say that!
Ed: What?
Shaun: That!
Ed: What?
Shaun: The zed-word. Don’t say it!
Ed: Why not?
Shaun: Because it’s ridiculous!
Ed: Alright… are there any out there though? “
** Here Be Spoilers **
Also, my favorite part of “Children of Men� was the genre violation– there seems to be a rule that any movie with foreign (particularly English) protagonists needs to be led by an American in order to appeal to the American film audience. CoM is set in Britain, introduces the American hero who’s the leader of the English rebels, and then they kill her off. It was brilliant.
That was the great thing about the otherwise forgettable movie “Deep Blue”. The only name actor of the whole bunch was Samuel L Jackson; just when things start turning to custard, he stands up and gives the big “let’s stick together and win one for the Gipper” speech - and then he gets chomped. The only big actor of the lot - and they killed him off halfway through the movie.
Nymphalidae:
RESIDENT EVIL. They’re flat out told that breaking the neck or a shot to the head is all that will kill the infected. And Milla Jovovich kicks some serious neck.
Nah, I disagree. I think it’s the idea that although individuals would never think of enslaving women et al, a group mentality can lead to horrible horrible ideologies. (Group mentality isn’t the phrase I’m looking for, but I’m sure you know what I mean.)
My impression was that they killed any survivors who turned up and who wasn’t female. There really wasn’t any use for them.
Re: “Deep Blue”
I liked it for the Ben Affleck abs, and the other genre violation AND parody. I didn’t notice it before, probably cause I’m not black, but a few years ago I stumble across this site:
Unfair Racial Cliche Alert:
http://www.feoamante.com/Movies/Racial/racial_1990.html
I seriously didn’t notice that the token black people ALWAYS gets kiledl before, in the horror movies I watched, one of the classic being The Shining, so he died sorta a hero, but he died going to save the white kid, so it’s another, black people are here to die for white people thing? Kinda like the mame cliche? The other being, more recent, Frequency? That uber lame thievery of The Ring and other earlier horror movies, where somehow, some things, crosses over at points where there is electronic wire stuff, and sucks the will to live out of people. There were like, two black people, Stone and Izzie? A guy and a girl who was also part of the main cast sorta, of the four (the fourth being that white guy Dexter with the weird computer and the white girl Mattie with the dead boyfriend met up with). None of the black people made it.
Review for Deep Blue Sea:
http://www.feoamante.com/Movies/DEF/dbsea.html
[ One thing I did enjoy regarding Mr. Cool J: he makes the comment,
“Brothers never make it out of these situations alive. Never!� ]
Mr.Cool J made it! Out alive!
- MG
Medbh, I think Deanna’s main point is that the main character or main protagonist of these films are generally always male; it’s important not only the plot lessons a film contains but also the perspective from which it’s told. Audience identification is tremendously important, I think equally import as plot content. But that’s a general point that can be made for movies in general.
28 Days Later in particular may have had some anti-militaristic themes but it was a pretty forgettable movie overall. I really didn’t notice any overall political bent. My memory is getting foggy, but in the beginning it’s the “animal rights crusaders” who try to rescue the gorilla and end up inadvertently spreading the virus, no? So could this not be taken as a warning to liberals that in your attempts to help others you may be hurting yourself? This movie simply didn’t seem to be particularly political, and the entertainment was mediocre, though it’s a good way to kill a couple hours.
Chimpanzee not gorilla. Read the graphic novel that explains the origin of the virus. It doesn’t turn someone into a zombie. The virus was a mutated variant of ebola that originally was meant to turn off someone’s violent impulses. Since it was virus it mutated further into the rage virus. It explains why they had the chimp watching all the tv screens showing violence with the chimp wired to various devices. They wanted to monitor the brain functions as the creature was exposed to filmed violence.
The graphic novel also explains why the Animal Liberation Front was informed about the facility.
Correction Animal Freedom Front but you can clearly tell who it was modeled after.
The virus in 28 Days Later was indeed released by eco-terrorists, so sure of the moral superiority of their own position that they broke into a research facility and ‘freed’ the infected chimpanzees, even though the researcher they were menacing TOLD them that it was infected with something nasty and very spreadable. At least it was implied that the virus was developed as a way to study violence and anger, rather than as weapons development. It’s a nice parallel to later when the military dudes are so certain of their own position that no other option even presents itself to them than to start ‘repopulating’ by capturing civilian females. The message is that fantics are fanatics, and whatever their particular fanatacism, they can justify acting in ways detrimental to society as a whole because their own viewpoint/belief is more important than the beliefs of any other.
As for Children of Men, the I enjoyed the movie. However, there were a few details that struck me as odd. That the infertility of the human race was ALL the women’s fault. Women stopped being able to carry the babies to term, then eventually stopped concieving children at all, or at least miscarrying early enough so as to not make a difference. When I took a look at the original book, the premise made a bit more sense, that men were creating dud sperm. Since men constantly create new sperm, but women’s eggs are finite and already created even before they themselves are born, I had an easier time believing that a man could spontaneously become fertile again. Unfortunately, looks like the book was a much more male dominated enterprise than the movie, with lots of grunting and chest beating about political leadership.
As for those of you bemoaning the Jim and Theo were the ‘heroes’ of these movies, they were the protagonists. There is a difference. They were the character who’s viewpoint we followed, and we the audience interacted with the film world through the limitations of their experiences. That does not make them Spiderman. When a story is told in this way, it’s not uncommon for the protagonist to be somewhat passive. If the kick ass femmes Julian or Selena were the movies’ protagonists, these would have been very different films with entirely different messages.
I come late to this thread but any of you who likes zombie movies should really get a book called World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie Apocalypse by Max Brooks. It’s one of those brilliant ideas that had me saying “Damn, why didn’t I think of this?” and yet even tho the author could have coasted on the brilliance of the idea alone and phoned in the narrative, the book is very cleverly written and actually moving in parts.
Late too as usual, and also I saw 28DL some years ago, about when it first became available on DVD (for rent, so I can’t review it now, having come into truly dire economic straits) and I find I can’t remember the plot sequence all that well nor visualize the characters.
I can’t say then that the sociopolitical subtext was screamingly obvious to me then, and I usually look for that kind of thing in any movie I watch. But I thought it was a good, fun, sensible movie of the type and it wasn’t sociopathic. (In general, with horror movies, I like to think that anything really squicky–not in the shock sense but in terms of social subtext–is some kind of ironic commentary and that one reason horror movies are good is that they are subversive, but I find quite a reactionary, or perhaps more aptly named “conservative,” subtext in many of them–not this one though).
Re NotLD:
And an even better metaphor for the evolution of mainstream US/global capitalist society toward its omega point of market-worship and the associated triumph of reactionary mediocrity. It doesn’t matter how blatantly stupid our policy-makers are, no automatic magic of the political marketplace improves them and their every temporarily apparent triumph is ballyhooed as the victory of maturity and common-sense over pointy-headed intellectual elitism, while the drastic and accumulating failures have their causes stuffed down the memory hole and their ongoing miseries dismissed with a “get over it, life is tough.”
‘Nam specifically, (from a US POV, and who in this country ever considers that mess from a Southeast Asian one?) was part of that collision of imperial ideology with reality, of course. So it may have been more forward in Romero’s thought processes than the deeper issue, but then again by the time he filmed it we were getting out (or out already–don’t know when in the ’70s he made it) of Vietnam, whereas I think the Nixon era completely validated all the deep social criticism the New Left and hippies generally were all about, and any hope that the Carter years might have been the dawning of a better time (which was faint and elusive from the POV of deep-thinking radicals even at the time) were pretty well dashed.
I long ago figured that in Star Trek terms, we are on the timeline leading to the Mirror, Mirror Empire.
that just sort of went back to same-ol’ tradition of lazily glamorizing military culture (see also: “Aliens,� every other James Cameron movie, and most war-themed action movies made since “Aliens�)
I’m with BizzaroSuperman on this one- if you walked away from Aliens thinking that it glamorized the military, I think we must have seen two different movies called Aliens. Does the movie want you to be excited by the action sequences? Well, of course. That’s why Aliens is an action movie. That doesn’t mean that it’s glamorizing, though- if you don’t leave Aliens thinking “Wow, those soldiers were stupid” then I think you might have missed the point. They’re arrogant, macho, morons who ignore the one person who had experience with the aliens, and got their asses handed to them as a result.
I’m not buying it. Yes, the movie does try to make all those claims, but that movie is 90% about being excited by marines with big awesome guns blowing up and getting blown up by bug-aliens.
Eh. I think that’s like complaining “28 Days later is 90% about running from, killing, or getting killed by monsters!” Yeah, when you reduce it like that, it’s true, but just because the movie wants you to create tension and excitement, and uses guns to do so, doesn’t mean that it’s about glamorizing the military.
In all of Cameron’s movies, the only way women can be acceptable protagonists is if they’re intensely masculinized (see also: T2) Cameron wants to have his cake and eat it too. His idea of a “strong female character� is a hot girl with a bazooka. Not exactly feminism, in my book.
I’m not sure whether Cameron is a feminist or not, but I don’t think it’s true that all of his women protagonists are masculinized. I’m not buying that Ripley is super masculine. Is she in charge? Yes. Is she macho? No. She’s a woman in charge of a ship, and she wants to do her job. And I really object to the “hot girl with a bazooka” snark. You think that the women in Alien and T2 are sexualized? When?
Cameron isn’t perfect, for sure, but I think he’s better about having powerful women in his movies than a lot of other people. He directed Aliens and T2, and he wrote and produced Strange Days- all of which have powerful, strong women in them. Women who are, I think, stronger characters than the men in those movies.
Also, I second World War Z, by Mel Brooks. He also wrote The Zombie Survival Guide, which is pretty damned awesome.
Felagund,
World War Z is a brilliant book. It’s going to be a movie, which worries me a bit. Will it be like a Ken Burns film or a Military Channel documentary? However they do it, I just hope it’s done well.
General Audience,
28 Days Later is a zombie movie whether it’s a virus, an extraterrestrial bug, or evil spirits. Zombie movies only need a bunch of brainless adversaries pursuing thinking protagonists. That’s all it takes. It’s really an update on the old war and western movies where countless Zulus, Apaches, WWI Germans, or whatever are after the few remaining “good guys”. In general, the good guys have some less-goods among them (who betray the group sometimes and themselves always,) but generally come through okay in the end (except in Zulu Dawn, which was probably the case only because history demanded it.)
Wow, I really wish I’d read this post before my film studies exam last wednesday where I was asked to write extensively about genre theory.
*ahem* as a dyke lover, they were sexy to me. Just saying.
“My memory is getting foggy, but in the beginning it’s the “animal rights crusadersâ€? who try to rescue the gorilla and end up inadvertently spreading the virus, no? So could this not be taken as a warning to liberals that in your attempts to help others you may be hurting yourself?”
Not really. They go into a medical research facility with inaccurate assumptions about the situation, they’re warned that the animals are dangerous and infected, and they fail to adjust their goal in the face of this new knowledge. Their refusal to heed the warning of someone more knowledgeable is what dooms them.
“I really didn’t notice any overall political bent.”
I wasn’t really watching it for subtext, but I was struck by contrast between the cooperation of the civilians and the destructive desperation of the soldiers. Selena and Mark take Jim in despite the fact that he has little to offer and much to catch up on. Frank (a police officer, if memory serves) is putting himself and Hannah at some risk trying to attract survivors–any survivors, regardless of their supplies and skills–to a defensible position. There’s some amount of self-interest there, but he wants a mutually beneficial arrangement rather than to enslave.
The soldiers, on the other hand, have used their numbers, training, and equipment not to do their duty–to protect whoever’s left or at least try to respond to the threat–but to seize the trappings of the rich for themselves and use the promise of protection that they represented pre-outbreak to lure civilians in for the sole purpose of violent exploitation and murder. Their dereliction is so severe that it extends even to their own. They chain up an infected comrade to see how long it takes him to die of the virus, preferring to allow him to suffer a painful death while remaining an active threat rather than killing him humanely. They were fairly clearly what happens when a military group chooses to pursue its own ends without accountability or oversight rather than choosing to stick to the cherished ideal of heroism and self-sacrifice, and they were presented as far more dangerous to the survivors’ future than the chaos of a populace gone individually mad.
Damn. If I didn’t have an internet crush on Amanda already, the fact that she subjects zombie films to intense analysis did it.
Amanda, there is a great track on an old edition of the Mars Hill Audio Journal where they discuss the humor element of Ladykillers (the remake, with Tom Hanks). The guy with Irritable Bowel Syndrome is funny because he is “mechanized” by his affliction–he is no longer human, just a plot device, a wind-up toy who goes to his merry end.
Do you think the same concept is at work with the zombies? In any of the movies, you have elements of society that turn us from thinking, feeling human beings into robots–consumer culture, rage, etc.
I have to say that regarding Roy’s discussion about Aliens that I agree–it’s all about glamourizing the military up until the point where they all get eaten. Most male macho behavior (chest thumping, etc.) is an alternative to actual violence and killing (see On Killing by Dave Grossman) whereas Ripley engages in none of this. She is rarely violent but uses force often in calculated ways; so when she fights the Queen, she is not beating it into submission, she is buying time to blow it out the airlock. She is a strong women precisely because she is not militarized, ever–whereas, say, Vasquez is simply a dude with a vagina.
I seriously didn’t notice that the token black people ALWAYS gets kiledl before, in the horror movies I watched, one of the classic being The Shining, so he died sorta a hero, but he died going to save the white kid, so it’s another, black people are here to die for white people thing?
I’ve read that before, but in this case it doesn’t ring true. Jackson’s character wasn’t a token - he was the “big bad plutocrat”. Thematically, you’d expect him to kark it due to his own greed sometime just before the big showdown (think, for example, Boone in “Aliens”). And Jackson wasn’t a throwaway second-stringer (like, well, everyone else) - as I’ve said, he was the only name actor.
I really don’t think it was a black/white thing. I think they deliberately went out to get an single well-known action star and deliberately expended his character to wake people up. It would have worked just as well with Bruce Willis or John Travolta or Sigourney Weaver…
Correction:
The lame movie with the racial cliche wasn’t Frequency, I haven’t seen Frequency before, it was Pulse (2006), I remembered it as Frequency because frequencies was repeatedly mentioned, whereas Pulse made no sense.
There was the whole, white woman had to hang onto a strong white man to survive element, because she totally lost her brain in the end.
The remake of Pulse is f***ing pathetic. I much prefer the original Japanese version. F**k, I hate the remake so much that even thinking about it gives me the heebie geebies.
Jon: worry thee not; it’s being written by no less a light than J. Michael Straczynski himself. Here’s his notes on the subject:
In all of Cameron’s movies, the only way women can be acceptable protagonists is if they’re intensely masculinized (see also: T2) Cameron wants to have his cake and eat it too. His idea of a “strong female character� is a hot girl with a bazooka. Not exactly feminism, in my book.
They are fighting fucking Aliens, what do you want, Ripley to start some sort of sing-along and entrance them with a My Little Pony puppet show?
There is a huge contrast between Vasquez (the chick with the big gun) and Ripley. Vasquez is very masculine, Ripley is not. Vaquez even makes a comment to that effect when they first wake up, dismissively calling Ripley a cute girl. (Or something like that - Spanish) Ripley is not gung-ho about violence and has strong motherly impulses.
I find it hard to understand what you are asking for. It seems to me that a woman who can kick ass as well as any man is a strong statement. You seem to be of the opinion that men and women are fundamentally extremely different and that women, rather than using guns, should rely on their Nancy Drew skillz and female intuition to save the day.
Seriously what do you want? “This gun is too heavy and isn’t pink enough - can’t I get some laser pom-poms intead?”
Also I didn’t see a “hot girl with a bazooka” anywhere in Aliens. None of the characters is particularly hot or sexed up or sexually available and none of them has a bazooka.
They are fighting fucking Aliens, what do you want, Ripley to start some sort of sing-along and entrance them with a My Little Pony puppet show?
It’s also worth noting that:
(i) There’s another strong female character who is anything OTHER than masculine - the Alien Queen.
(ii) Ripley takes on the Queen directly not by using a nice phallic gun, but by strapping technology to herself and using it to take the creature down face to face. Actually, come to think of it, when she *does* use guns, she modifies them herself, possibly to deemphasize their phallic nature.
She’s a technologist - women *are* physically inferior to men, but technology more than compensates.
Amanda, I’d love to hear your opinion of Romero’s Day of the Dead. It’s by far the most pro-feminist horror movie I’ve ever seen, and serves as a good apology for NOTLD’s many stereotypes.
Now I think about it, the scariest thing about 28DL was that you couldn’t really tell the difference between the zombies and everyone else.
For example, when Frank gets infected, it’s quite unclear when he is a zombie and when he’s just panicking; and when Jim goes nuts and kills the soldiers even Hannah thinks he’s infected. In the anecdote by what’s-his-name who Serina kills, he tells Jim how his father and sisters were killed in a mob, and emphasises the confusion over who was infected. He says you couldn’t tell in the madness who was really mad.
Like the soldiers say in the beginning, uncontrolled rage existed before the virus, and I think that was the really scary part.
I concur w/all the snarking against Deanna’s views– trying to make an action movie under all her apparent constraints would pretty much be impossible.
If I’m wrong, well shit, then get to work. Your arms busted or something?
I never thought of Selena as having been saved by Jim. I saw it more as a partnership between two equals. Jim begins the process by unchaining infected Private Mailer, knowing that Mailer was going to go into the house and kill/infect some/all of the armed guards.
Jim knows that Selena and Hannah are no longer armed and may be restrained. Jim respects Selena and her strength and her intelligence so much that his entire plan hinges on her being able to keep herself and Hannah alive while he is essentially jumping from rooftop to rooftop trying to keep himself alive until he can reunite with them (and I would argue, he uses this time to formulate his revenge against the two soldiers who were going to execute him).
I saw the two soldiers that he personally killed in this sequence as being part of Jim’s revenge on those two specific soldiers - not as a means to save the women or even keep them alive. Those soldiers were the same exact soldiers that were supposed to be his executioners in the wood. He didn’t need to kill either of them to keep the women alive; the last solider states that he is going to get Selena out of there so that they can set up house and he can rape her.
It was shown over and over again in the film that Selena can kick butt in one-to-one combat (a skill that Jim can only claim as being somewhat proficient in because he seems to need the element of surprise on his side in order to win just about any fight), so I have no doubt that she could have eventually taken the soldier out even if Jim had never shown up. But that wouldn’t have allowed for Jim’s revenge/rage sequence, which I also think was very important to the overall theme(s) of the movie.
Off topic, but I’d be very interested to get people’s opinions on the more recent horror flick, “The Descent,” if anyone has seen it. Not a male in sight - does it matter?
BizarroSuperman: I, too, am an Aliens fan. I prefer the Director’s cut as well, as it provides some much-needed background as to certain decisions. And I personally feel this is a *VERY* feminist movie. Even Hollywood must have seen something in it, since Weaver was actually nominated for Best Actress for her role as Ripley in a SEQUEL. A SCI-FI sequel, no less.
I’m sure I’m getting some of “who said what” mixed up in here, so please accept my apologies for responding to whatever you did not say.
Vasquez is not a “dude with a vagina.” Based on her behavior, I’d be willing to bet she’s a “barrio girl” who joined the military as a way out that did not involve prison. Having watched this movie about 100 times, pay attention to the background action where the Marines are suiting up onboard the Sulacco. It’s obvious that Drake and Vasquez are in a sexual relationship of some sort. She’s saying something to him which I believe is “watch yourself” (very hard to hear) and his response is “Okay, babe.” Or when Drake gets Hudson back for insulting Vasquez (’Have you ever been mistaken for a man?’ Vasquez’s response: “No. Have you?” Luv it!) by having Bishop do his knife trick. This is a wonderful subtext going on, because it’s obvious Drake respects her strength and ability to take care of herself.
And does anybody have anything to say about the green officer they send to lead this mission? That right there states that it’s not being taken as a serious threat - just enough to get the boy some command experience. How would it have turned out if an experienced officer had led the mission?
Okay, now on to Ripley. I was so impressed by Weaver in this role, because she played Ripley *perfectly*. Here’s a woman who survived a situation which killed the rest of the crew (the original cut of Alien shows her killing Dallas to spare him the chestburster), spends the next 57 years in hypersleep so EVERYTHING she’s familiar with is gone, and finally gets dicked by the company (surprise, surprise. Bet they’re Republicans.). She is scared clean to the bone, but she goes back when she finds out that the coloney (with *families*) may be infested. She is obviously scared spitless practically the whole movie, but she does not let her fear stop her from doing whatever has to be done. If the character of Ripley was male, would we even be commenting on it? Of course not! And the battle between the two mothers for the survival of their children … Magnificent! Ripley going after Newt is the descent into the underworld to retrieve the lost child (Mabinogion, anyone?)
Erg. Sorry, I’ll shut up now. I haven’t actually seen 28 Days Later, but the posts here are making me seriously reconsider (zombie movies usually aren’t my thing).
Deanna - I’m not sure Selena does get set up as a victim at the end of 28 days later. She is calm and collected in the face of her torment and there is very clear indication that most of the torment she undergoes at the hands of the military men is something which she could deal with if it were just her own well-being she was thinking about, but she opts to stay with Hannah and protect her, help her through it.
That, I think, makes her a hero, albeit one of a more matronly sort than her pre-established shoot-first ask questions later sort.
We could argue that Selena’s passage from taking care of number one to actually caring about what becomes of the man and child in her presence being portrayed as a good thing reinforces the expectation that women are caregivers and men are action people, but that’s a completely different argument. And one that I’d poke holes in, too, I think.
In terms of the initial rage/zombie metaphore, we see Selena move further away from zombification in choosing to form attatchments to those around her.
[…] So, Amanda reviewed 28 Days Later (including a lovely spoiler warning, that really shouldn’t be necessary), and there was an interesting discussion about movies in general that followed. It got me thinking. I’m going to be doing a series of reviews, I think, about action movies that I think have some interesting progressive statements in them. […]
[…] Anyway, as I said, this was prompted by a series of comments in the thread at Pandagon where Amanda reviewed 28 Days Later. […]