Director: Danny Boyle
Cast: Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Christopher Eccleston, Brendan Gleeson
Have I Seen it Before: Oddly enough, no.
Did I Like It: One has to wonder precisely why I have missed the film over twenty years later. The likeliest suspect on spec is my general aversion to the zombie genre. I’m fine with misery porn when its based on reality—presumably we’ve surpassed or are trying to surpass the ills that introduced said misery—but when its all hypothetical, my threshold is pretty low.
My antipathy isn’t helped much by my skepticism that Boyle* has spent years insisting that the film isn’t really about zombies. How many directors of zombie films—from Romero to Edgar Wright—have insisted that their opus isn’t really about zombies? More importantly: How many of them are right or even remotely believable in that assertion?
So, I’m happy to report that Boyle was right on the money** and joins the elite minority of those who actually know what their film is about. The film is incidentally about zombies and more about how the institutions we’re supposed to rely on are bureaucratically and temperamentally unable to meet the needs of the future. Jim (Murphy) awakens in a hospital, but there is no care there. He immediately heads for a church, but there is nothing but frightening realization there. He eventually bands together with some fellow survivors and try to find a base of military officers who offer protection, and possibly, answers.
Answers are scarce, and whatever protection they have in mind is a parody of the concept they would want us to believe in.
If you can get over the pronounced British video quality of the cinematography—it is often distracting, and puts one in mind to watch some BBC sitcom of the era—then the film offers plenty to chew on, and even a little bit of hope by the time the credits roll. The Walking Dead couldn’t even manage that much and they’re still trying to bring that thing to a conclusion fifteen years later.
*Not that one. Har har har.
**Har har har.