28 Days Later

United Kingdom of Zombies
New Brit Horror Flick 28 Days Later Provides Adult Chills

Zombie movies are typically more about brains being eaten than being used. The new British horror thriller 28 Days Later is a brainy exercise in frights, laughs and fast-paced action.

The movie opens with animal rights activists breaking into a laboratory to free some chimpanzees. A lab technician catches them in the act and warns them that the chimps are infected with a virus called rage that is highly contagious to humans. The activists unleash the chimps anyway and are immediately attacked by the animals. The result is that the virus spreads through England with frightening speed and disastrous consequences.

“It’s a primate-based virus,” said director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Shallow Grave). “It’s hideously virulent and is spread by contact with the blood. It leads to an appalling state of aggression, where even the simple sound of a human voice makes you want to kill that person. It has a built-in obsolescence though because they can’t feed themselves, they don’t understand any process about living, other than killing.”

England panics and nearly everyone who is unable to leave the island is infected or killed. One of the survivors is a cycle courier named Jim (Cillian Murphy) who wakes up after a coma in the deserted intensive care of a London hospital. In disbelief he wanders through the empty streets of London looking for help. While being pursued by mindless infected people, he is saved by two fellow survivors, Selena (Naomi Harris) and Mark (Noah Huntley). After meeting a father and daughter who have holed up in their apartment building, the group of survivors sets out to find out if the whole world is infected or if England is being “quarantined” by the rest of the planet.

“I see it as sort of oblique war film, relayed via 70s zombie movies and British science fiction literature, particularly J.G. Ballard and John Wyndham,” said screenwriter Alex Garland (The Beach).

The idea of a virus producing zombies has a contemporary feel to it and the infected minions are truly terrifying. Instead of the slowly plodding zombies that horror fans have become used to, these infected persons seem to have actually stepped up their foot-speed a notch or two, making for some harrowingly fast-past attack scenes. At a time when Hollywood seems to be obsessed with filming action scenes in super slow motion, the “real-time” effects of 28 Days Later are a special treat.

Director Doyle tempers the terror with some good dollops of humor and breathtakingly beautiful scenes of the British countryside. The music and scenery of the film actually lull the viewer into relaxing right before the action kicks in again. As an adult who finds most horror films cheesy at best and laughable at worst, it was refreshing to know that some filmmakers from England could still make me jump.

28 Days Later is rated R for violence, language and brief nudity. It is currently showing at Carmike 12 Cinemas in Hickory.

Hickory’s Carmike 12

Look, they’re raising a new building in the Boone area! That can only mean one of two things: A new bank or a new hotel. The true question is when will someone build a new movie theatre in Boone? The Appalachian Theatre in downtown Boone specializes in second-run, cheap-ticket movies, Chalet Triple is terribly outdated, and Regal consistently devotes more than one screen to the latest blockbuster. Ashe County has the Parkway Theatre in West Jefferson and—apart from Lees-McRae College—there are no cinemas in Avery County.

That means that new releases such as A Mighty Wind and 28 Days Later don’t have much luck finding a home on one of the High Country silver screens.

Traveling to one of the bigger cities off the mountain is one solution. To see 28 Days Later, I went to the Carmike 12 Cinema in Hickory. Having never been there before, I was very impressed with the state-of-the-art sound, subtle wrap-around shape of the screens and, best of all, the steep stadium seating.

The theatre complex is definitely a meeting place for teenagers, with video game rooms and other attractions. The presence of a few Hickory police officers (as opposed to security guards) kept the Friday night action peaceful and sober. The lobby, theatre, bathrooms and outside areas were all clean and attractive and the parking lot was big enough to handle the Friday night crowd.

Carmike 12 is located on Hwy 70 in Hickory, just past the Target/Best Buy/Old Navy Shopping Center, behind the Valley Hills Mall.