netflixed "28 days later" and by the title alone, i thought it was a sequel--afterall, a movie from a few years prior named "28 days" is available but that's a sandra bullock vehicle that i had completely forgotten about temporarily, my bad. this film is in essence a zombie flick. you have the majority of humans turn into deranged human eaters while the minority of human survivors tries to somehow continue their existence and fight the deranged human eaters. only instead of zombies, these transformed humans are said to have the "rage" disease. yeah, whatever. it's still a blood-born disease common with many of this genre but unlike traditional zombie horror films, those that are victims do not become like their victimizers. so instead of turning into a zombie, the victim merely dies. so what you have in this film is really a lot of bodies, death, decay, gore effects, while clinging to thoughts of survival and somehow making it in the face of adversity.

the timeline of the story can be broken into essentially 2 sections of 28 days later: we follow the characters around 4 weeks since the rage outbreak began and this lasts for perhaps a few days, then it cuts to 28 days later. but when it cuts to 28 days later, it's more about hope and using your imagination as to what happens to the characters and ultimately human kind. during the time that we follow the story of the main characters, it is while they travel in search of a better life, or rather in search of saviors/guardians/others rather than being stuck in their current and dangerous mode of survival or holed up in an isolated, yet protected shelter. isolated in the sense of there are no other regular humans left that they interact with.

addressing the questions of how zombies first came into being and subsequent issues of survival for the unchanged humans are interesting if done well but quickly lose their momentum as this is tackled by virtually every zombie film out there. instead of reading deeper into the film to reveal the inner layers that comment on modern society, this film was much more enjoyable on the topical surface of gross shock value and comedy, much like the other work the director is known for, "trainspotting". the only question left for me now is, does the soundtrack kick enough ass to add it to my collection?