28 Years Later (Danny Boyle, June 20, 2025) Movie • Page 4

28 weeks later, not great

 

I picked up 28 Days Later on blu ray (which is apparently out of print?) at a yard sale for $2 the other day, excited to revisit it soon.

 

stealing this mf's rig

 

looks very practical

 

also new trailer for this before Mission Impossible was extremely intense

 

Did you hear about that circus fire? It was in tents.

 

Isn't the circus Ronald's territory?

 

ronald has passed away

 

vaxxed?

 

He was in the tent.

 

Likely seeing this Friday or Saturday

 

Got my ticket for Friday night, seat middle of the theater. Let's goooooooo

 

Did a rewatch of the first two, after having not seen them in years - first is good, but the sequel just felt relentlessly bleak.

 

Sequel has some decent moments (obviously the intro but I think the outbreak where they have to napalm the city is cool) but it definitely feels like a different franchise.

 

Disagree. I watched them back to back this past weekend and feel like Weeks is one of the most underrated horror sequels/action-horror movies I can think of. First one is perfect, though

 

Rewatching first one as well, it was intentionally shot on a potato, right?

 

Anthony Dod Mantle, Academy Award winning cinematographer on the HBO series The Undoing, 28 Days Later, Slumdog Millionaire, Rush, Danny Boyle, Lars von Trier and more

1. Digital Video (DV) Camera Use:
   • Boyle and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle shot most of 28 Days Later using Canon XL1 digital video cameras, a consumer-grade DV format.
   • This gave the film its grainy, harsh, and immediate look, especially compared to glossy Hollywood productions.
   • The DV allowed for guerrilla-style shooting, particularly in the empty London sequences, and contributed to the raw, documentary-like feel.
2. Dogme 95 Influence:
   • Dod Mantle was closely associated with the Dogme 95 movement, started by Danish filmmakers like Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg. The movement emphasized:
     • Handheld cameras
     • Natural light
     • On-location sound
     • Minimal post-production
   • While 28 Days Later isn’t a Dogme film per se, its aesthetic owes a lot to that stripped-down, gritty realism.
3. British Realism / Kitchen Sink Echoes:
   • There's a lineage from earlier British realist cinema—like Ken Loach or Mike Leigh—in its unglamorous visual style and real-world settings.
   • Even though it’s a horror film, 28 Days Later inherits a sense of social realism, especially in its early depiction of a deserted London.
4. Lo-fi Post-Apocalypse:
   • The low-budget, lo-fi aesthetic of 28 Days Later also influenced and mirrored other British indie horror and drama films of the time (e.g., The Last Resort, My Summer of Love), which focused more on texture, mood, and atmosphere than polish.

So, does the style have a name?

There isn’t a single formal name, but it’s often described as:

• Dogme-influenced digital realism
• British digital guerilla cinema
• Or just part of the DV indie wave of the early 2000s

It was a deliberate reaction to both slick Hollywood aesthetics and the newfound accessibility of digital filmmaking tools. 28 Days Later was one of the first widely seen major films to lean into that look for creative and practical reasons.

 

Is the Undoing good? I’ve been meaning to watch it

 

That cinematography takes some getting used to, but really matches how jittery and visceral the film is imo. Pretty inspired choice

 

Is there any chance that ATJ and Comer play the kids from Weeks

 

I haven’t paid super close attention

 

I could be misremembering but I swear someone said they’re just ignoring the sequel

 

Well if the virus was still confined to Britain, I think it would be far fetched to see have a pocket of rage zombies still in that little island/wherever 28 years later. Then again, if the virus did make the journey via the kid on the heli over to France, and therefore spread rapidly from there, I would then assume it would end up taking over most of the world. But at the speed it infects people, and then how quickly they starve, after a few weeks, it would be highly unlikely pockets of the virus would exist 28 years later. I'm analyzing this too closely and will shut up now.