Dead to Rights

The cheap camera also does for Boyle what it did for Joel Schumacher in Tigerland -- both men had become bogged down in silly visual excess in their previous films (The Beach and A Life Less Ordinary for Boyle; that one with the capes and rubber nipples for Schumacher), and had to get back to the basics of story and character. For Boyle, this means a movie more like Shallow Grave than any he's done since, and not just because Christopher Eccleston returns to play the most morally ambiguous character. That dark wit is back: Gleeson gets to be positively Homer Simpson-esque in a supermarket scene wherein he discovers the sole batch of apples that has not yet spoiled, and goes "Mmmm ... irradiated!" And the instinctive use of music, so well placed in both Shallow Grave and Trainspotting, is back as well: Choral selections and contemporary pop blend seamlessly to emphasize the bleak new world.

One can nitpick about certain details. How, for instance, does a package delivery man suddenly become a deadly assassin capable of taking on trained soldiers? Why, when you know zombies favor darkness, would you opt to go down an unlit tunnel rather than take the long way around? And why, once you've done that, would you stop to change a flat tire in the dark tunnel, rather than maybe driving on the rim for a little while longer? On the latter two questions, Jim does offer a rebuttal of sorts -- "This is a shit idea. You know why? Because it's really obviously a shit idea!" -- but on the first point, it seems to be that Boyle's making some sort of point about human rage, since the virus is also called "Rage." They are us, and we are them, you know. Whatever. The deep thematic concerns are never fully developed, but the characters are, and the story compels.

Also, the movie's pretty scary. That's what counts.