While the choice sacrificed video quality, it allowed for easy access to shooting around London in places that were only accessible for minutes at a time in order to accommodate heavy vehicle and foot traffic in the areas. Much of the film’s atmosphere can be attributed to Danny Boyle and his team’s use of digital video cameras. It’s as if in response to the horror of the apocalypse, reality has buckled in on itself, allowing dream logic to dictate this new existence. Alice in Wonderland and her red dress dissolve down a dark hall. Horses run untamed through the countryside. Flower fields dissolve into watercolor smudges. But what keeps 28 Days Later above ground as more than just a footnote in the revitalization of the genre are its dreamlike aesthetics, nightmare or benign. It’s a discussion that will shamble on till the heat death of our star. Upon its release and in the two decades since, you can’t approach an online mention of the film without encountering some argument over technicalities of what constitutes a “zombie” movie. It’s nightmarish stuff, especially for the young and unexpecting. Throughout the journey across a desolate England, arms are severed and blood is vomited by the gallon as the infected howl in agony and fury. My first time watching Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later on VHS late at night while home alone felt like a kick in the teeth. However, it’s the 2002 outbreak that has stayed chasing after me all these years. This just so happened to also be the era of the zombie resurgence, with the slacker nerds of Shaun of the Dead and the mean punk spirit of the Dawn of the Dead remake, both movies I love for different reasons. Starting in middle school, I took greater and greater risks to smuggle new experiences home from the library in the form of Stephen King as well as more varied horror movies. As I grew older I also grew more unsatisfied with this arrangement. Movies were only allowed if it was clearly a man in a monster suit. No fiction books and certainly no video games. Growing up, horror was a carefully curated genre in my house.
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