A Rundown of the 13 Best, Most Recent Horror Movies I’ve Seen
[5 of 13]
28 WEEKS LATER (May 2007)


In a world where zombie films are currently very much one of the horror sub-genres du jour, and where even the undisputed master’s fourth go-around lacked significant bite, 28 Weeks Later detonates at ground zero and quite decisively raises the stakes for the rest of the zombie lot to follow…

Read the entire review here.

(28 Weeks Later OS courtesy of postergeek.com.)

reVIEW (48)
RABID

Before today, I last saw David Cronenberg’s Rabid in the very early ‘80’s, on Beta. Beyond some key moments, my memory of the film had grown terribly fuzzy over the years.
Now, having seen it again after over two and a half decades, I can safely say it’s got the dodgiest acting I’ve seen in a Cronenberg film, and of all of them that I’ve seen, is the one that can benefit tremendously from a responsible redux (certainly more so than either The Brood or Scanners, both reportedly on the remake block).

In Cronenberg’s second feature film, porn star Marilyn Chambers stars as Rose, whose injuries from a motorcycle accident are treated to a revolutionary skin grafting technique by Dr. Daniel Keloid (Howard Ryshpan), whose Keloid Clinic, Inc. happens to be in close proximity to the accident site.
The surgery though will cause Rose to become a carrier for a rabies-like disease, whose vector was a bizarre, Cronenbergian bit that had never before been seen, and actually has also never been seen since, as far as I know.

The most noteworthy aspect of Rabid is quite possibly the fact that this film is the precursor for recent horror fare like Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, and, from everything I’ve heard about it, Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza’s [REC].
Here, we track the spread of the disease as the narrative follows the characters who have the terrible misfortune of crossing paths with Rose, whose newfound compulsions inadvertently cause the contagion to eventually reach civilized areas.

Scenes of armed security at the mall, and roving garbage trucks assigned to gather the infected and the dead, are just some of the chilling sights Rabid has to offer, scenarios which are arguably more troubling now than when the film was first released in 1977, what, in our post-millennial age of bird flu and SARS.

And, given the sexual trappings Cronenberg surrounds the manner by which Rose inadvertently spreads the disease, Rabid (as with Cronenberg’s debut feature, Shivers) can also be read as an eerily prescient portrait of AIDS.
As timely as Rabid is though, as I mentioned above, the acting leaves a whole lot to be desired. The original score is also rather horrific.* (Howard Shore, why must you still be two films away?)

All told though, Rabid still leaves an impression, in its depiction of the breakdown of civilization in the face of a virulent disease, and the disturbing visual of exactly how Rose spreads the contagion.

* It’s interesting to note that Ivan Reitman—yes, that Ivan Reitman—is an executive producer on Rabid, as well as Music Supervisor. (He also served in similar capacities on Shivers.)

Parting shot: Reviews of other Cronenberg films can be found in the Archive.

(Rabid DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.co.uk.)

(Thanx must go out to Jeb, for making this reunion with Rose possible.)

THE LIVING AND THE DEAD
(Review)

“The germ of the idea that became The Living and The Dead comes from the trauma of having to watch my mother die of cancer. She was diagnosed in December of 2001 and by March 2002 was dead (somewhat perversely she died on Mother's Day). It came completely out of the blue and happened three months after my father died of a heart attack so it was a tough time; not least because for the first couple of months there always seemed hope that she might make a recovery. Specifically, I remember looking at my aunt who was also caring for my mum but looked severely ill as well (she had sciatica—a backbone disorder) and thinking I was the living in the home of the dead.
“In true authorial fashion I immediately thought The Living in The Home of The Dead was a great title for a film and started writing something to try to distract me from the horrific reality of my life at that point. I failed dismally to do this, lacking the concentration and the will, but almost six months after my mum's death, felt it would be a good thing to focus on and so tried writing it again. As it was, it still took me four months to complete the first draft which is way longer than anything else I've ever written, but by the end of December, I at least had a script.”
-- Simon Rumley

Donald (Roger Lloyd-Pack, who played Barty Crouch in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) is actually the Lord Brocklebank, aristocracy who’s hit upon some hard times. He lives in the massive and rambling Longleigh House on the family estate with his ill, bedridden wife Nancy (Kate Fahy) and his mentally challenged son James (Leo Bill, Pvt. Jones from 28 Days Later).
Their filial routine is one of pills and injections, as Donald tries to keep from having to sell the manor, while James constantly tries to prove himself trustworthy and capable. Things go from bad to worse though when Donald needs to take a business trip, and leaves before Nurse Mary (Sarah Ball) arrives to take over.
What follows is a harrowing cinematic experience as James settles into his self-appointed role of Man of the House, while his da is away.

Now, while that set-up makes no mention whatever of psycho slashers or vengeful contortionist ghosts, make no mistake, Simon Rumley’s The Living and The Dead is a horror movie (or at the very least, can certainly be taken as one). It just trades in the gore and the modern-day curses for the all-too real terrors of mental and physical infirmity.
It’s an 83-minute immersion into a world where the burden of caregiver is a crushing, overwhelming weight, made all the more considerable in light of Donald’s sense of pride and denial regarding his situation. Entombed in a vast, empty manor, with sheeted furniture and peeling wallpaper, the only link to the outside world, a ratty old rotary telephone, Donald goes about the day-to-day with a stoic manner that seems to be oblivious to the fact that this is an accident just waiting to happen.
And when things go wrong in this film, they just go horribly, horribly awry.

With an 18-day shooting schedule, and a weighty script that rests firmly on the shoulders of three principals, who take up some 90% of the film’s screen time, skilled and able thespians are required for the heavy lifting, and thankfully, Lloyd-Pack, Fahy, and Bill are more than up to the task.
And while Bill is undoubtedly the actor most lauded in this production, given his portrayal of the troubled James, Lloyd-Pack‘s and Fahy‘s contributions are no less significant, and just as agonizing to view.
They are the three citizens of this tortured kingdom, the audience’s companions in a land where all will end in betrayal, where nothing can be trusted or depended upon, not even your body or your mind.

If it hasn’t already become painfully obvious, The Living and The Dead is not an easy film to watch. It’s disquieting and uncomfortable, two of the things horror is supposed to be.
I could say that cinematographer Milton Kam makes the most of the single location, heightening the sense of emptiness and abandonment with just the right angles and framing. I could say that Benjamin Putland‘s editing also heightens the pervasive sense of sanity trickling away from all involved in this domestic tableau gone to hell. I could also say that writer/director Rumley has crafted a powerful tale of tragedy and madness, and is definitely a name to watch for in the future.
I could say all of that, and I wouldn’t be lying.

But I’d need to say this too, if only to make it clear just what you’re about to get into, if you do decide to brave this one.
If The Living and The Dead is to be taken as a horror movie, it’s certainly not an entertaining horror movie (and there are those, even when they have substantial and significant subtext in the midst of all the scares and the grue); I don’t think it was meant to be one.
It prickles and rankles, and doesn’t offer much in the way of grace notes. It’s also relentless. Not in the Hollywood octane action thriller sense of the word, but in a locked-in-a-house-with-a-madman-where’s-the-key-oh-no-it’s-in-his-pocket sense of the word.
And it just makes it all the worse that the madman in question isn’t some sick psycho intruder, but a family member who just wants to be normal.

So, yes, The Living and The Dead is a brilliant movie, horror or otherwise.
It’s just not for everyone.

Parting shot: The quote which kicks off this review is part of Rumley’s extensive notes for The Living and The Dead, which can be found in their entirety at his website, simonrumley.com.

(The Living and The Dead OS courtesy of imagination-llc.com; images courtesy of simonrumley.com, except image 4, courtesy of TLA Releasing and nytimes.com.)

REVELATIONS

(Getting at the Truths of Apocalypse Cinema)

The man coughing violently in a darkened theater, spewing unseen plague into the cool air. A rain of fiery meteors falling from a blood red sky. The ravenous zombie pounding at the bolted door. The finger hovering over the red button.
Just a handful of images from the gallery of apocalypse cinema, the collective term used to encompass films chronicling end of the world scenarios, with civilization in dire jeopardy from threats natural and man-made, extraterrestrial and supernatural, biological and mechanical.

Apocalypse cinema has always been, more often than not, profitable at the box office, as if movie-going audiences yearn to witness the destruction of society from one safe remove, as if we are all, every single one of us, willing—and eager—voyeurs to ruination.
David J. Skal, in his excellent book The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, observes, "Cataclysmic junctures in history usually stir up strong images in the collective mind..." And cinema is one of the repositories of these images.

From the atomic monster films of the 50's—produced in the wake of the bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki—where irradiated creatures grew to gargantuan size and went on real estate rampages from the United States to Japan, through the Irwin Allen disaster movies of the 70's, through the peak of zombie cinema (the late 70's to early 80's), all the way up to pre-millennial films like Armageddon and Deep Impact, the threat of our society's destruction has been a staple of cinema for a long time now.
One would think though, that after the calendar hit January 1 2000, that the millennium fever that always strikes at that sort of pivotal transition, would pass, and we'd be free from visions of the screaming populace of ruined cities, at least for a while.
Apparently not so.

It's only 2004, and we've already seen a remake of George Romero's classic Dawn of the Dead, and Roland Emmerich's latest CGI-popcorn offering, The Day After Tomorrow, while last year gave us The Core, Eli Roth's Cabin Fever and the year before that, Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later.
Now, within the confines of apocalypse cinema, I will cop to a preference for the flesh-eating zombies overrun the world scenario (and its variations) as opposed to the global disaster scenario of The Core and The Day After Tomorrow.
While zombies walking the streets is a very visceral, in-your-face threat, the CGI-generated catastrophes of films like Tomorrow seem a bit impersonal to me. (So much so that some movies of this persuasion feel compelled to pile sequence after sequence of "characterization" on our laps, till we're all but gnashing our teeth in aggravated boredom, waiting for the final ten minutes of eye-popping CGI devastation. See: Deep Impact.)
Additionally, in movies like this, you seem to have to be a brainy scientist to stand a chance of survival. (Either that, or be Bruce Willis.) If you're a regular schmoe who doesn't know anything about meterology or geology or some other -ology, you may as well just lie down and wait for the tsunami/asteroid/red hot magma to put you out of your misery.
I prefer films that give sedentary writer guys like me a fair shake.
Thus, my three films of choice for this article: Cabin Fever, 28 Days Later, and this year's remake of Dawn of the Dead.


“You look a little peaked…”

Though the effects of the flesh-eating virus in Cabin Fever are, for the length of the film, confined to a contained area (a remote cabin and the surrounding woods), it’s the first title on our list since it captures societal breakdown on a microcosmic level, as the bonds that hold a group of friends together decay and fester, much like their infected flesh does.

Directed by David Lynch protégé Eli Roth, Cabin Fever is a low-budget surprise, by turns funny and disturbing. It is also an interesting variation on the zombie film, where the infected should, by all rights, become objects of compassion and sympathy, but instead, become objects of revulsion, pariahs to their friends and lovers.
Part The Evil Dead, part Outbreak, part 28 Days Later, Cabin Fever deals out the proceedings with dollops of very black humor, and very visceral, unnerving shots of tainted blood spraying and gouting every which way. (There are also a number of shudder-worthy sequences here that are hard to forget: the leg-shaving scene is probably tops on that list.)

But above and beyond the gut shock, is the ugly, brutal reality of how friends can turn on each other when it becomes every man for himself, how tenuous the bonds of society and community can be when faced with the cold, inhuman workings of a highly infectious disease.
In the end, it is the onscreen corrosion of these interpersonal dynamics that is the lasting impression of Cabin Fever that remains alongside the blood and grue, an insightful and excellent metaphor for the disease of egocentrism, which is perhaps the greatest enemy of the societal body.


“Sorry about The Beach…”

Almost as if in abject apology for the Leo-starrer (adapted from the Alex Garland novel and directed by Danny Boyle of Trainspotting fame), director and writer teamed up again for 28 Days Later (directed by Boyle from a script written directly for the screen by Garland).
Another post-millennial variation on the zombie film, 28 Days Later begins with a prologue set in the Cambridge Primate Research Centre, where some animal activists unwittingly let loose a virus—called, appropriately enough, “Rage”—which causes the infected to go into a constant state of mindless, uncontrolled violence. Once infected by tainted blood or saliva, a person ceases being a person, and becomes nothing more than a wild, vicious beast; perhaps, the beast that lies in wait in all of us, free of the imposed restraints of ethics and morals and rational thought.
We then jump four weeks ahead—thus, the title—when Jim (Cillian Murphy) awakes in hospital (he was in an accident before the outbreak began), to find it empty and ransacked. (The scenes of Jim walking through a deserted London are far more haunting than Tom Cruise in an empty Times Square in Vanilla Sky.)

Thus, we are not witness to the actual breakdown of society, but rather—like Jim—suddenly thrust into some horrible New World (Dis)Order, where there is apparently no government, no police, no army, and a church is no longer a sanctuary.
So who do we turn to when all structures fail? We turn to one another.
Garland manages to avoid the clichés of this sort of film, where strangers are thrust upon one another in a bid to survive. He manages to write people; flawed, yes, but not necessarily good, not necessarily evil. (Some though, perhaps just horny and misguided.) It is a minor triumph of the film that we are not asked to endure the whiny self-important complainer whom the audience is just waiting to get offed in the next reel.
Reprisals and turn-arounds however, are sudden and brutal, and that mood is helped tremendously by the occasionally rapidfire, staccato editing of Chris Gill, working with excellent footage shot by Anthony Dod Mantle.

Generally a rather nihilistic film, 28 Days Later seems to say that in the face of such calamity, the tendency will be for little pockets of madness to bloom, merely echoing the insane society that’s just been eradicated. Garland seems to say that, in the end, man is his own worst enemy. (At least with the infected, there is no pretense of culture and civilization, while indulging in one’s basest desires.)
Which is not to say the film is all doom and gloom. There are surprisingly somber and melancholy notes struck in this dirge: Jim’s discovery of his parents’ fates; choral music playing during the taxi ride through the devastated and deserted city.
There is a strain of hope, however fleeting and ephemeral, that runs throughout the film, carrying us along with it, doing its best to raise us above the detritus and leavings of a society perhaps better off dead.


Dead Again

From the precious few moments of Ana’s (Sarah Polley) last night of normalcy, to her escape from a suburbia rapidly descending into chaos, to the quick-cut opening title montage set to Johnny Cash’s Revelations-tinged “The Man Comes Around” (with the credit letters scattering like blood in a high wind), it is immediately established that this is a slicker version of the original 1979 Dawn of the Dead.
What is also instantly obvious is that director Zack Snyder and his team seem to have taken a page from the rushing, rabid hordes of 28 Days Later; gone are the shambling, lethargic zombies of the original Dead trilogy. What we have here are strangely energetic and limber zombies, as if fresh from an aerobics class taught by an undead—though still horribly hyper—Richard Simmons.

What we also have here, in light of this article, is a curious paradox: What is possibly the most visceral and graphic of the three films we’re taking a look at, is also the most entertaining. “Entertaining” in that it pretty much sticks to audience expectations of what this sort of movie is supposed to deliver. (And yes, here we are asked to endure the whiny self-important complainer who we’re just waiting to get offed in the next reel. There is also the macho alpha male whom we at first hate, then find ourselves rooting for by film’s end.)

As with George Romero’s original vision, the exact reason for the zombie epidemic is left unstated (though the religious/supernatural reason is given a boost here by a televangelist who utters one of the best taglines in cinema history: “When there is no more room in Hell, the Dead will walk the earth”), and the mall setting—of which much has been said in the past by the more critically-minded of us gorehounds—is also left intact.
And although we do catch glimpses of societal breakdown, what we are more privy to here is the attempted rebuilding of society. Crossroads Mall becomes the stage for this new community, the idea of mall-as-Heaven, where everything you might possibly want can be found, an air-conditioned Paradise isolated from the Hell of Zombieville outside.
But what eventually comes to the fore is the fact that this is merely just another state of living death, mall-as-Limbo. (Though the indictment against mall culture is still present, it is perhaps not as overt as in the original.)
Again, as to be expected, the Paradise-turned-Limbo comes to an end, and the survivors are forced to flee once more, in the hopes of finding a more permanent surcease from the insatiable dead.

The 1979 original is considered a classic of horror cinema, described by David J. Skal as a “razor-edged social satire” and “an indelible image of consumerism gone mad.” Given that Snyder’s remake doesn’t add anything significant to the equation—and in some instances, actually mutes the anti-mall culture statement—it could very well be leveled with the accusation of being “unnecessary, but well-made,” as was the 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead.
Quite possibly. But at least it’s well-made.
And there is a cameo by special make-up effects guru Tom Savini (who directed the 1990 Night). And can anyone honestly say they’ve seen the brilliant Sarah Polley in a role like this before, kicking zombie butt?! I think not!

Last words

So at the end of it all, why are we fascinated by these films of death and destruction? Is it only here that we can secretly and comfortably acknowledge our own mortality, accepting the presence of the ever-hovering shadow on the doors of our own existence? Is it that we wish to witness societal breakdown, wondering how we would react in that situation, whether it would bring out the best, or worst, in us? Or is it because we delight in seeing others' misery? (Better them than us...)
Perhaps the answer lies in the term itself. The word "apocalypse," after all, contrary to popular belief, does not mean the end of the world. It comes from the Greek, apokalypsis, literally, "uncovering" or "revelation." (A synonym for "apocalypse" is "disclosure.") Perhaps we are fascinated by these films because we see truths in them, about ourselves, and the nature of our existence.
Or do we just bloody like being scared out of our wits?
Maybe it's a combination of all of these reasons, and quite possibly, even more, unknown to anyone except God and our private, most secret selves.

Parting shot: Due to the graphic nature of these films, those easily repulsed, or with weak stomachs and hearts, should probably not even consider watching them. You have been warned.

(Cabin Fever, 28 Days Later, and Dawn of the Dead OS’s courtesy of impawards.com.)

(The above is a slightly altered version of an article previously published in 2004.)

28 WEEKS LATER

(Review)

We open with Alice (Catherine McCormack) and Don (Danny Boyle crony Robert Carlyle), cooking dinner. Then of course, we notice the lights are out and they’re running low on canned goods. And there’s a photo of another family in the kitchen.
London is in the bloodied teeth of the Rage virus, and husband and wife are in a cottage with a bunch of other survivors, all shellshocked and coping as best they can with this unimaginable catastrophe.
We all know this is an idyll, of course, a false one, as fragile as a soap bubble. And yet, when the bubble does burst and the chaos explodes on the screen, it still gets you, by golly.
And thus does Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s 28 Weeks Later grab you by the balls, and never really quite lets go.


Roughly half a year after the events depicted in Danny Boyle’s welcome shot in the arm of zombie cinema, 28 Days Later, England is slowly being repopulated. Civilians are being brought into places like District One, a cordoned-off urban area with electricity and running water (and a pub!), guarded by NATO and the U.S. Army.
Don is reunited with his children, Tammy (Imogen Poots, seen for a bit in V For Vendetta) and Andy (newcomer Mackintosh Muggleton), who were away on a school trip when Rage first spread into the British populace.
Their arrival meanwhile, has alerted District One’s Chief Medical Officer, Scarlet (Rose Byrne, seen recently in Boyle’s Sunshine; review in Archive: April 2007), who is concerned about the lack of protocol regarding such young repatriates, a concern poo-pooed by the higher-ups.
And, as kids will be kids, Tammy and Andy sneak off into the quarantine zone to return to their home for one final time.
And Tammy and Andy, apparently never having seen a horror movie before in their lives, are in blissful ignorance of the fact that this is the catalyst for All Hell Breaking Loose.


In a world where zombie films are currently very much one of the horror sub-genres du jour, and where even the undisputed master’s fourth go-around lacked significant bite, 28 Weeks Later detonates at ground zero and quite decisively raises the stakes for the rest of the zombie lot to follow, among them, Romero’s fifth Dead film, Diary of the Dead, as well as a remake of Romero’s Day of the Dead, by Halloween: H20 and Friday the 13th Part 2 and Part III helmer Steve Miner.
(And yes, technically speaking, the 28 films feature the “infected,” but let’s call a spade a spade, gentlemen. And besides, they also play by the same rules and display the same conventions as zombie cinema. And if any of you still have trouble with that, shall we all agree to “apocalypse cinema,” then?)


And, as with Days, which featured excellent performances from its ensemble, Weeks has a good cast across the board.
Byrne, as she did in Sunshine, brings much-needed humanity to the proceedings (and in apocalypse cinema, that’s indispensable), and you can’t go wrong with Carlyle (one of the very few bright spots, along with Tilda Swinton, in Boyle’s disastrous adaptation of The Beach). If there are some of you out there who only know Carlyle through The Full Monty, well, here’s your antidote.
The curiously named kids are great too, as is Jeremy Renner (terrific in Michael Cuesta’s Twelve and Holding, and soon to be seen in the Brad Pitt-starrer, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford). As Doyle, an Army sniper, Renner is the ostensible physical male lead; the sensible man of action in these sorts of movies.
Heaven help me, even Harold Perrineau is credible here as chopper pilot Flynn. I may not have liked his turns in The Matrix sequels and thought he was the weak link in the Lost ensemble (not to mention what he did to Ana-Lucia and Libby), but what Perrineau does here with his helicopter is unprecedented in the annals of horror movies. Utter bloody mayhem!


The canny move Fresnadillo and co-writer Rowan Joffe make here is to present us with a situation where not only do the survivors have to worry about getting infected, they need to worry about the military too. (It’s to the credit of Weeks that one of the film’s most intense and harrowing sequences is precipitated not by blood-vomiting madmen, but by the threat of bullets raining from the sky.)
The last time war seemed this insane on the cinema screen was Sam Mendes’ Jarhead.* And this is war, with an infected populace as the enemy. (And where the uninfected are simply potential enemies, like sleeper agents waiting to be triggered not by code words, but by a drop of blood, or saliva.)
Even District One is nothing so much as an occupied zone, with the military presence undeniable and unmissable.
Ultimately, Fresnadillo and company present us with a grim situation where you can’t even trust the military to be on your side when the chips are down.


As an entry in apocalypse cinema, you can’t go wrong with 28 Weeks Later. Some of the imagery in here is powerful and indelible, from piles of multi-coloured plastic garbage bags, to the black, oily smoke from bonfires burning the dead. And when the fit hits the shan, the frenetic hand-held shots and staccato editing from Days are here as well, put to good use, placing us in the middle of all the mad, gory action.
The tension is unbelievable in some spots here, and in a lot of ways, 28 Weeks Later plays like the nastier cousin to Days, uninterested in taking any prisoners at all.
Schizophrenically enough, it also plays like the nicer cousin in some bits.
The emotion is more overtly presented in Weeks than in Days, and the central dilemma which faces Don and his family is played out over the length of the film to interesting effect, thus providing an additional layer below the tale of survival which is the visible aspect of the narrative.


All in all, this one’s a keeper.
Boyle and Alex Garland (executive producers this time around) have proven that the 28 films, like Romero’s Dead movies, have the potential to interest us not with recurring characters (as is the usual rule with a franchise), but with a situation rich with narrative potential.
(I’m still of the mind that the Alien franchise should have taken a page from that book after Ripley’s death in Alien3, instead of forcing the issue with Sigourney Weaver in Alien: Resurrection. But that’s a whole different story.)
So if they can stay on their game, and come up with another story that isn’t “just another zombie movie,” then I’m all for 28 Months Later.
Years, too.
But maybe not Centuries… That could be pushing it…

* Sorry, not much of a war movie guy. I think Jarhead was the last “war movie” I saw, and it isn’t really even that. (Not in the way, say, Eastwood’s double whammy of Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima are “war movies,” at least.)

(28 Weeks Later OS and images courtesy of aintitcool.com.)

SUNSHINE
(Review)

Before I wrote this review, Danny Boyle had only ever really disappointed me one time, with his disastrous adaptation of Alex Garland’s The Beach. He bounced back though, with a bloody-minded vengeance, with 28 Days Later (from a script by Garland), and followed that up with the charming curve ball, Millions.
Boyle then re-teamed with Garland for Sunshine.

Now, Boyle’s disappointed me one and a half times.

The Icarus II is on a mission.
Our sun is dying, and so is our planet. Following the failure of a previous mission (thus, the Roman numeral), Captain Kaneda (Hiroyuki Sanada, recognizable from the Ringu films) and his crew are presently in transit, with the payload that will signal a literal dawning of a new age on Earth, should they succeed.
The mission: to detonate a stellar bomb the size of Manhattan Island, in the sun, and thus, re-ignite it, giving humanity a second chance.

We’ve all seen this one before: the very survival of the human race in the hands of a crew on board a spaceship. (Sadly, we all still remember Armageddon and Deep Impact, don’t we?)
Now, not only is Sunshine a film from the Save the Planet from Destruction school, it’s also that particular sort of sci-fi film that seems to be an exercise in giving the Ten Little Indians a remedial course in Murphy’s Law.

We all know that in the course of completing their mission, the crew will make a singular, catastrophic decision that will then become the crux for the entire film’s narrative.
This will occur because, A) the decision was inherently the wrong one to make in the first place (see Alien), or B) human error will bollocks the whole thing up.
In Sunshine’s case, it’s B.
Fit will then continue to hit the shan as the story unfolds, repeatedly proving Murphy’s Law to the audience’s satisfaction, as the Indians drop like flies.
All the while, completion of the mission parameters will look increasingly bleak, till the last minute, when the day will be saved by the remaining crew members. (Survival of said crew members by end credits roll, uncertain.)

The reason Sunshine doesn’t do it for me is precisely because Boyle and Garland never seem to successfully transcend the confines of this type of sci-fi film. The structure of the film’s narrative is pretty much as outlined above, so the proceedings get pretty by-the-numbers in very short fashion.
Additionally, in a set-up like this, the characters aren’t usually very deep. The performances can elevate the material though, and supply us with subtext, with the impression that these people have lives beyond this ship, and have real relationships between each other. (Again, see Alien.)
Now, there aren’t necessarily any outright terrible performances in Sunshine. Most though, are serviceable, and not much else. Perhaps the only actors who manage to deliver something noteworthy are Cillian Murphy (as Capa; Murphy’s worked with Boyle and Garland before, on 28 Days Later), and Rose Byrne (as Cassie; Byrne was in Sofia Coppola’s brilliant Marie Antoinette, and incidentally enough, in the upcoming sequel, 28 Weeks Later).
Murphy is the only one whose character we really see in some significant personal private moments (sending off a message to his parents Earthside, for one), while Byrne’s Cassie brings a much-needed level of humanity to the crew (she’s the only one who seems to really give a damn about her other crew members, as opposed to blindly chanting the “complete the mission” mantra).

Beyond the fact that Sunshine isn’t as horrible as The Beach (and it’s certainly better than either of the asteroid movies), there isn’t much else I can say in its favor.
It’s serviceable sci-fi, but certainly not great. It does benefit, however, from Boyle’s sharp visual stylings, which go a long way to making the film an agreeable viewing experience.
Admittedly, Sunshine does have its moments.

Thus, it’s only a half-disappointment for me.
I mean, this is the writer-director team that gave the zombie film a welcome do-over with 28 Days Later, so when I first heard they were tackling science fiction, I got excited. So that’s months and months of anticipation, and now that I’ve seen it, well, Sunshine just doesn’t cut it.
Which is sad. I wanted to love this movie. I wanted to sit there as the end credits rolled and have that same rush I had after I’d seen 28 Days Later, that rush of having just experienced excellent cinema.
All I thought after Sunshine ended was, “Well, at least it wasn’t as bad as The Beach.”

(Sunshine OS courtesy of worstpreviews.com.)

BOY EATS GIRL (Review)

The misguided love of a mother (Deirdre O’Kane) for her son Nathan (David Leon) causes a zombie outbreak in the suburbs of Dublin, even as Nathan is doing his best to profess his love for his long-time friend Jessica (Samantha Mumba, who was in the horrid remake of The Time Machine).
Yes, in the tradition of Shaun of the Dead, Boy Eats Girl is another zom-rom-com, though sadly, it doesn’t quite have the bite of its much funnier predecessor.

The I Was A Teen-Age Zombie gambit isn’t firing on all cylinders here, as the hilarious bits aren’t all that hilarious, and the grue doesn’t really start flying till the all-out gorefest towards film’s end.
So it isn’t a laughing-in-stitches comedy and it isn’t a gorehound’s wet dream either. Nor is the romance part of the equation sparkling with originality.
Even as a teen film Boy Eats Girl doesn’t really achieve anything distinctive. The usual teen archetypes are represented, as are the well-meaning though reviled teacher types, but these aren’t really characters so much as they are stereotypes: the Slut, the Bully, the Sleazebag. There’s the Best Friend Who Wants to Be Something More, the Best Female Friend Who Is Actually The Object of Desire, and the Sidekicks.
There seems to be no effort whatsoever on the part of the script to actually mold these types into characters. They may as well be zombies for all the individuality they show.

All in all, this is a lukewarm entry in the burgeoning genre of zombie cinema, which is a shame. Just as George Romero takes aim at culture and society in his Dead films, Boy Eats Girl director Stephen Bradley and scriptwriter Derek Landy could have taken the opportunity to take some digs at the educational system and the insular, stratified society that is high school, but instead go for the bland, low road, in a particularly ho-hum fashion. Horror is always so much better when it’s about something more than just the monster and the screaming victim; comedy, when it’s making you think, as well as laugh.

If Boy Eats Girl had at least been as funny as Shaun of the Dead, then it may have been worth watching, with or without any satirical content. But it isn’t.
And no amount of post-28 Days Later no-longer-lethargic zombies can change that.

(Boy Eats Girl DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.com.)