Another zombie film, I know. Well, there's been a lot of zombie movies running amok in our memory like Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Night of the Living Dead, the very hilarious zombie-spinoff Shaun of the Dead, and dude, what else could be dead? I was just glad that Danny Boyle, director of this film, caught this one and dealt with it seriously - and I mean, seriously. It's not just another zombie film, for me, it's another film about the man's instinct of survival. It just occured to me that the film I watch before this was The Descent, and it, too, was a film about survival.
Jim, portrayed by Cillian Murphy, wakes up in a hospital only to find it deserted after a fateful accident with his bike and a car. He's too shocked to notice that everyone was gone, and the streets of London had been wiped blank. Later he meets Selena, played by Naomie Harris, and then discovered that everybody was infected with a so-called "rage" virus, a kind of pandemonium gene that originated with monkeys and once humans are bitten, they would become the same savage, man-eating zombie-like creatures. Well, at least, at this junction, we are being presented with a reasonable cause why people are turning zombies, unlike other films which show zombies popping out of nowhere without any because...
So they made an escapade of avoiding the "infected" ones and probably killing them on their way, and soon encountered other survivors, one was Frank, played by the fine actor Brendan Gleeson and his daughter Hannah, played by Megan Burns. They were four and they had this sole mission: to get into Manchester, to where the soldier resides, and apparently giving them hope to survive.
The characters were very real, and their personalities had this complex feel unlike most horror one-dimensional characters. Jim reflects every individual, Selena had this tough-minded straightforwardness being honed by the situation and a realist too. She's so tough that you somehow forget she has a heart and compassion, and that she eliminates everyone including a friend if they were bitten by the infected ones. Within 20 seconds, bitten individuals must be eliminated or else they turn into the infected beings.
So we know it's a horror movie, but a good science fiction too. This had stunned me because of some unnerving images including the empty, derelict streets of London, the Westminster Bridge, and haunted look of the Piccadilly Circus. The film was intriguing enough, filled with interesting plot, yet devastated by the film's conclusion. The last scenes were muddled with army shoot-outs and chases that it blurs you out. There's this probing issue also that the army were keeping the two women, Selena and Megan, to help the men with the dying generation of humans. They all looked pathetic yet the main characters struggled in defiance.
But inspite of that, it was a good film. A diabolical study about human nature, and well written, at that.

Rating: B