Collective Works Cited

28 Days Later. Dir. Danny Boyle. 20th Century Fox, 2003. DVD.

"28 Weeks Later (2007) - Trivia." The Internet Movie Database (IMDb). Web. 18 Apr. 2010. .

"Danny Boyle - Awards." The Internet Movie Database (IMDb). Web. 18 Apr. 2010. .

"Danny Boyle - Biography." The Internet Movie Database (IMDb). Web. 18 Apr. 2010. .

"Danny Boyle - Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia." Main Page - Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 18 Apr. 2010. .

"Shallow Grave (1994) - Trivia." The Internet Movie Database (IMDb). Web. 18 Apr. 2010. .

Shallow Grave. Dir. Danny Boyle. Perf. John Hodge, Kerry Fox, Christopher Eccleston, and Ewan McGregor. PolyGram Video, 1994. DVD.

Slumdog Millionaire. Dir. Danny Boyle. By Simon Beaufoy. Perf. Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Madhur Mittal, Anil Kapoor, and Irrfan Khan. Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2008. Film.

Sunshine. Dir. Danny Boyle. Prod. Andrew Macdonald. By Alex Garland. Perf. Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Rose Byrne, and Michelle Yeoh. Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2007. Film.

Trainspotting. Dir. Danny Boyle. Miramax, 1996. DVD

Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later

28 Days Later is the film that made me realize Danny Boyle is a filmmaker to watch. It’s a masterpiece, and one of the cornerstones of the zombie genre. The film opens with Jim (Cillian Murphy) awakening in a hospital, having been in a coma for several weeks while the citizens of London fell victim to a ‘rage’ virus and became zombies. Jim meets up with Selena (Naomie Harris) and the two navigate London together, eventually hooking up with Frank (Brendan Gleason) and his daughter Hannah (Megan Burns).

The four journey across London together, encountering zombies and trying to survive. Frank is tragically infected and killed during the group’s attempt to find a military base. The three survivors seek shelter in the base, only to discover that the soldiers plan to rape Selena and Hannah. Jim embraces his rage and kills the soldiers, saving Selena and Hannah. The three escape, and are eventually rescued.

28 Days Later is a deeply ironic film, subverting audience and character expectations at every turn, even down to its basic premise. The ‘zombies’ that give the film its distinctive horror elements aren’t zombies in the traditional sense, seeing as they didn’t die and come back to life, but instead were infected with a virus. Jim begins the film as a milquetoast, scared man, and Serena has already evolved into a badass and saves Jim, a fresh twist on the standard damsel-in-distress story. Later in the film, when Jim and Serena first meet Frank, he’s clad in riot gear and beating zombies mercilessly. This is ironic because, after the introduction establishing him as a force to be reckoned with, Frank ends up being a gentle giant, not a brutal killing machine. The film’s strongest irony comes in its climax, first with the revelation that the soldiers protecting the group plan to rape the women, showing that even the survivors of the zombie outbreak have lost their humanity. The film then embraces this concept as it shows Jim snapping and going on a wild killing rampage, becoming overcome with his rage so effectively that Serena initially believes he’s infected.

28 Days Later is one of the most effective horror films I’ve ever seen, Danny Boyle’s first truly great film, and about as good an introduction to his work as I could have asked for.

Danny Boyle's Major Works

Shallow Grave (1994) – Boyle’s first film tells the story of greed and bloodshed between three roommates who discover a large amount of money. It marks Boyle’s first collaboration with Ewan McGregor and was the highest-grossing film of 1995 in Britain.

Trainspotting (1996) – Boyle directed this energetic descent into the underworld of drug abuse based on the novel by Irvine Welsh. Trainspotting was Boyle’s first international success, his second collaboration with Ewan McGregor, and contains several of Boyle’s most famous scenes, including a horrifying sequence where the drug addicts that serve as our main characters discover they’ve killed their child.

28 Days Later (2002) – Boyle singlehandedly re-energized the zombie movie genre with this visceral and gory masterpiece. It was his first collaboration with Cillian Murphy and his first movie to find success in America, going on to gross $45 million in the States. It was followed by 28 Weeks Later in 2007, and Boyle did some second-unit directing on a few action scenes.

Sunshine (2007) – Boyle’s best film is a deeply intelligent sci-fi piece about a group of astronauts travelling to the sun in order to jumpstart its core and save humanity. Boyle regular Cillian Murphy returns, as does musical composer John Murphy (who also worked on 28 Days Later).

What Makes Danny Boyle Danny Boyle

Danny Boyle’s works, as a whole, sort of buck the tradition of embracing one common theme. Boyle loves to explore the human condition and different sides of human morality. His films can range from showcasing the absolute worst actions humans are capable (28 Days Later, Trainspotting) to showing the audience that, above all, hope prevails, or some other cloyingly sweet message (Slumdog Millionaire, Millions). His films have very little in common with each other, as he leaps from zombie film (28 Days Later) to children’s fantasy (Millions) to intelligent science-fiction (Sunshine) to adults’ fantasy (Slumdog Millionaire), all in the space of six years. His style varies from film to film, with 28 Days Later adopting a gritty, realistic style, Millions looking like a straightforward children’s film except for the few moments where it slips into fantasy, Sunshine aping classic science fiction films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alien in its set design and visual style before it descends into an overly artistic horror film in its final act, and Slumdog Millionaire doing interesting things with story structure and injecting insane amounts of energy into several sequences to cover up the fact that the film’s story is overwhelmingly shallow. (207)