Viewed on 14 Jul 03   If you see 28 DAYS LATER and you think it has the "look and feel" of Trainspotting, you will be on the right track.    If you see 28 DAYS LATER and you slowly become convinced that Director Danny Boyle was actually on all the drugs they were taking in Trainspotting, you win the jackpot - he and Producer Andrew Macdonald are to be held totally culpable for both films.    The gravest of tactical errors, we now know if we hadn't already guessed, is to try to make an artsy-phartsy horror film - its as incongruous as a circus hippopotamus dressed in a tutu.   In this case, failure is its own reward.
        The underlying theme in 28 DAYS LATER is survival; how to survive in a world where virtually everyone else is infected with a hideous virus that has turned them into shrieking, blood-vomiting banshees.  So why were these few uninfected survivors doing more and stupider things faster and faster by the minute to insure they would not survive?   As we watched, we at first became annoyed, then as we had our intelligence insulted for the 20th time, we became disgusted and disappointed, actually hoping the worst would befall the entire pack of morons.
        There were so many logic breaks in the story-line that all we could do when we walked out was to ask each other questions; why this? -why that?   An example: Why does the virus turn humans into raving zombies 30 seconds after infection, whereupon they -"the infected"- start vomiting blood regularly, but don't die for weeks, even though they have no food?    The film lasted 112 minutes - it would take longer than that to enumerate all the illogical points in the film.
        But the buck stops at 20th Century Fox - they allowed this film to be made.    The digitized 16mm film fails as a medium altogether - photo quality of America's Funniest Home Videos far outshines this drudge-dreary, out of focus hocus-pocus.   This film will either herald Fox's collapse, or they will decide to pull up their socks and get back into the entertainment business.
  LEAST Enduring Line/Phrase "...kill off humanity - the world WILL return to normality."


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