Melancholy, loneliness, and despair. 28 Days Later conveys these emotions effectively.
(Warning: Mild Spoilers)
This movie can be summed up with very few words. One that comes to mind is mood. Yes, this film has captured very specific moods all complied into one overarching theme. Terror, loneliness, melancholy, and lethargy. Not to mention the score is quite fitting.
28 Days Later was released in 2002 and starts with an outbreak of a rage virus that is comparable to a zombie plague. It is fast spreading through open sores and orifices such as the eyes or mouth. The main character, Jim, awakes from a coma in an abandoned hospital. As he ventures out, he is greeted by the site of a post apocalyptic London.
This is where the movie does an excellent job of setting the mood. The scenery and overall loneliness of these scenes really stand out. Especially the scenes where Jim is wandering around and yelling occasionally to see if anyone will respond. He eventually stumbles into a church and has his first encounter with the infected. Unfortunately for Jim, these infected are not slow moving like various other adaptations of zombie films. These infected are very fast and sprint at full speed.
Luckily Jim is saved by two people who give him a crash course on survival. Perhaps out of pity for Jim, these to forgo their safety protocols and agree to accompany him on his trip to visit his family home. This would prove to be fatal for one of them.
After a few more events, Jim forms somewhat of a makeshift family and the audience is treated with some blissful scenes such as shopping in a store with no one else around, not to mention no one has to pay. Though one of the crew members decides to leave his card at the register when leaving, as if to show some sort of dignity in this wasteland. However, these scenes represent the only break from the chaos that is the world they now live in. From there on out, their hellish experience becomes worse than they could have ever imagined.
Overall, this movie executes mood setting very effectively and is a gem within the zombie genre, even if the infected are technically not considered zombies. The scores and settings still hold up to today’s standards. The writing is not too cliché and could even be argued as great. That being said, 28 Days Later is a great film and should be highly recommended.
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