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We Need Meaning (and that's the problem).
by Vladimir Verano
Discussed: "That man is the noblest creature may be inferred from the fact that no other creature has contested this fact"-G. C. Lichtenberg In the first ten minutes of the film 28 Days later the scene is set for one of the most visceral sci-fi premises I've ever experienced: Well-intentioned Animal Rights radicals break into a Chimpanzee facility to free experimental subjects. A hand-held, grainy security camera tone channels the action as the three confront a now-familiar scene: Chimps in cages, shrieking, scampering, and two of them contained in an oblong plastic prison, more agitated than the others. There is an escalation as the activists confront a scientist, demanding that the lab free the animals. He begins to run around, attempting to thwart the do-gooders screaming, "They're infected! You can't let them out! It's too dangerous!" When they brutishly ask for clarification, the fearful scientist repeats, " Rage! They've been infected with Rage! You can't touch them! If they get out, we have to kill them!" Queue the Ironic Turn of Events and we have the start of a remarkably intelligent movie. Nowhere in the film is "Rage" defined more than as a highly contagious disease of violence that infects like HIV on steroids. Usually these lapses in SF stories are irksome, but in this case, a detailed analysis would have disrupted the overall feeling of the film. 28 Days Later carefully, intelligently evolves into an allegory for why we-for need of a unifying, all-encompassing phrase-suck. It appears that the virus in 28 Days Later provides us with a complex investigation of the contagious nature of violence in society and, most especially in war. Now, I'm no brilliant intellectual who can draw this deeper meaning from what is essentially an "Art-house Zombie Flick." I had some help.
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