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Some film writers have already suggested that director Danny Boyle's (Transpotting, The Beach) latest movie, the low-budget 28 Days Later, could become the same sort of sleeper hit at the U.S. box office that it became last November when it was released in the U.K. Indeed, Megan Lehmann in the New York Post describes the sci-fi apocalyptic flick as "the perfect antidote to the summer's procession of brainless big-budget blockbusters." Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal, although calling it "heedlessly derivative," nevertheless goes on to remark, "Rarely has so scary a thriller been so well made." A.O. Scott, in his review of the movie, says of Boyle: "It's as if, in contemplating the annihilation of the human race, he has discovered his inner humanist." Chris Kaltenback in the Baltimore Sun writes that Boyle "knows what scares us, and he puts it all up on the screen: paranoia, isolation, uncertainty, abandonment, ruthlessness, fear of the known as well as the unknown, helplessness, megalomania. Not to mention creatures that want to eat you. This one will stick in your head for a while, possibly longer than it's welcome." Some critics remark about how suited the use of digital video is to making such a film. Steven Rea in the Philadelphia Inquirer says that the video "gives this close-to-brilliant fright flick a this-is-really-happening, documentary quality." Scott in the New York Times comments that the grainy video "sometimes has an ethereal, almost painterly beauty." But the film also has attracted a fair share of detractors. Writes Ann Hornaday in the Washington Post: "If it's regrettable that Boyle would turn his prodigious talents to making such a disposable movie, it's incomprehensible that he would choose to make it on digital video, resulting in images that are bereft of tonal range, detail or beauty." |
