DV with High RPM or Eat Them Words, Boy, Eat em!
A Review/Ponderance of 28 Days Later by Mike Meyer

I just happened to look back at the gigantic Word document that houses all of my reviews and I read through the very first one I did for Filmbrats…a very scathing review of Full Frontal and DV cinematography in general. As you’ve seen, I’m very fickle and just as I buried the hatchet with Soderbergh on Solaris, I see a future tainted with more word eating regarding DV with the advent of 28 Days Later, the first film shot on DV that I loved through and through.

To preface, however, I love zombie movies. From the socially poignant Dead trilogy, to Fulci’s gruesome Zombi, to the even ridiculous and spiteful Return of the Living Dead series, I love them all. I think they trump most other horror subgenres for one simple reason….the story is never about the zombies. Every vampire movie is centered around the vampires themselves. Werewolves, sea monsters, Frankenstein, demons, and various others are hard to pinpoint because they are so scattered in terms of theme and how the creatures are represented so it’s difficult to make a concise comparison. But zombie movies are very concise and never about the braindead walking dead themselves. For the most part, they’re “end of the world” movies. Bleak wasteland which once was America movies. Because really, the only way for these slow, lurking, ultimately harmless creatures to be any threat, is to have them en mass against you and you must have no armed resources. So ultimately, the best zombie movies are hard looks at society at large and what could capably paralyze it, thus making zombies a threat. And 28 Days Later is no different. Though it doesn’t make any great political stance, it creates a physicality to the notion that if you immerse yourself in violence and the awfulness of the world, you’ll become a slave to that awfulness. Any more detail will lead to spoilers and I don’t want to be an Ebert here (By the way, thanks for giving away key details in your review, Bob. Didn’t want to figure that out for myself.)

So let me glow over the aesthetics of this movie. It was classic and astoundingly original at the same time. Danny Boyle has such a great eye for making the drab of London incredibly electric. And nothing helped capture the electricity of this film like his choice of DV. He seemed to use all the setbacks of shooting with DV to his advantage.

1) DV loses 60% of color upon transfer to film at the very least. He used this to give his movie the gray look of London that was so signature to Trainspotting, which is further enhanced by the fact that….
2) DV is very muddy when blown up and transferred to film. This gave the film a more impressionist quality that while it made the picture a little less clear, it neutralized any chance of it having the glitz of a Hollywood film. Even gritty 35mm movies have a clarity and beauty about them that would have destroyed the ambience. And finally…
3) The frame rate of DV and that of film are slightly different so when DV is transferred to film, the picture appears more choppy or is given to “ghosting”. This was the best effect of the film. It gave the impression that the whole thing was shot with a sliver small shutter, giving it a very stark, strobing quality, enhancing the action a million fold.

And all this on top of the fact that DV costs virtually nothing to shoot, so you can have your astronomical shooting ratios at bargain basement prices. This is what makes me so elated about this film. It’s a DV film that’s truly a DV film. It doesn’t try to be film by any special process. Sure, you can say that Harminy Korrine and Steven Soderbergh did the same thing, but they lack one essential element…zombies. There I said it. It’s the spoonful of sugar to the proverbial DV medicine for me. I didn’t have to be forced to appreciate the film because of the use of DV and how it’s awkwardly becoming a viable option for shooting a film. I thoroughly enjoyed the film, dug the zombies, and was intrigued at how well the DV complimented the story. And while I’m talking about using things I once thought silly to compliment a story (as a complete nonsequitor), I love how Danny explored the “running zombie” from the Return of the Living Dead series. The idea of a zombie that can run really fast scares me more than any other hypothetical thing, beating out H Bombs that unleash a wake of knives and government mandated sex with relatives.

There are a few outstanding complaints about this film from a variety of sources. That the story derails in the 2nd act. That the characters are poorly developed. That the one big story payoff (which I won’t tell you because I’m not Bobby “Ruin it” Ebert) is a bit flaccid. I can see where they are all valid in many respects, except where the characters are poorly developed as I thought they developed beautifully given their unnaturally horrid circumstances. But I feel this is a “forest from the trees” situation. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned from viewing this film and Blue Car, it’s that some filmmaking and storytelling virtues only have 100% virtue to the people who make films or tell stories. Character development is secondary if it gets in the way of telling a rousing story, it’s not at the very center. Some people do value people battling zombies over the people doing battle. The only way the people stories win out is if they’re able to tell the story of the people without interfering with the action. No one loved Blue Velvet for character development or a really tight story. They loved it because it was a dark absurdist work of art. It’s only one example among thousands and I know it’s good to have a set regiment of standards to grade films by, but every now and then it’s just great to be entertained. And that was me, brother, during 28 Days Later. If for no other reason, imagining how much I wanted to be in England under the deluge of rain machines with a DV camera and gallons of fake dark red blood vomit, making strides to further film expression via hordes of running zombies. YAY MOVIES!!!

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