When the worldwide pandemic lockdowns were implemented in March of 2020, and the busy city streets became ghost towns, one of the first things that came to mind was the haunting opening sequence from 28 Days Later (2002), which was written by Alex Garland and directed by Danny Boyle. From the first infection, courtesy of a diseased test chimpanzee, society in Great Britain only took twenty-eight days to collapse. The swiftness of the apocalypse calls to mind No Blade of Grass (1970), another film where shit hits the fan rather quickly in London. When the film was released, it seemed implausible that the population would disintegrate into complete chaos that fast, but in practice, the threads that hold together civilization are gossamer thin and prone to breakage at any point.
The film begins in a hospital where Jim (Cillian Murphy) has been in a coma since before the outbreak. He wakes up groggy and disoriented in an empty room and, upon further inspection, an empty hospital. His solo trek through the barren streets of London is unsettling; his only company is various pieces of garbage swirling in the breeze. Eventually, he comes upon a bulletin board completely plastered with signs of missing persons and desperate pleas from families looking for lost loved ones. Unfortunately for Jim, there are people left, and they are consumed with a burning, deadly rage.
Over the years, there have been many arguments over using the term "zombies" to describe the infected people in 28 Days Later. These people are not undead; they have a disease known as The Rage Virus and can be killed via conventional means. That being said, narrative-wise, they function the same way as zombies do, and the story uses many of the tropes familiar in previous takes on the concept. One of the lasting effects this film had on pop culture was the popularization of "fast zombies," which changed how they were used to instill fear. In Romero movies, zombies were slow and easy to dodge, and their danger came from being overwhelmed by their numbers. In 28 Days Later, the infected are agile and vicious, completely changing the dynamic and style. Boyle uses a lot of undercranking while depicting the infected, which gives them a superhuman jerky movement style that is terrifying.
Jim is saved from a group of infected by two survivors, Selena (Naomie Harris) and Mark (Noah Huntly), who fill him in on everything that has happened in the past month. Almost everyone is dead, the government has collapsed, and Britain has been cut off from the rest of the world, quarantined, if you will. Things are looking bleak, and there isn't much to do except try to survive one more day. Since Jim missed the breakdown of society, he still carries his morality and optimism. Conversely, Selene has become hardened and cold and has accepted the mantra of "kill or be killed."
Selena is an intriguing character because women are usually portrayed as helpless and objects for the strong to own and dominate in post-apocalyptic films. Jim takes on the role of the weaker character, and he relies on Selena's headstrong attitude and quick thinking to survive. In real life, during wartime situations and other disasters, the first thing that happens is that women are taken advantage of and sexually assaulted. Many women have expressed the idea that if the world were to end, they would opt to take their own lives rather than go through the indignities that would be visited upon them. In the latter half of the film, Selena runs into this exact situation with a group of soldiers who want to use her (and a female child) sexually to "repopulate" the country.
Eventually, Selena and Jim come upon more survivors, a young girl named Hannah (Megan Burns) and her father Frank (Brendan Gleeson). Frank and Hannah are running out of resources at their apartment, and the four of them decide to investigate a recording they heard on the radio promising protection and possibly a cure. The film breaks from the horror during the road trip, showing the crew enjoying a few quiet moments together, free from the infected.
Upon reaching the blockade, they discover it has been taken over by a group of soldiers, who initially seem helpful. In a turn of events that won't surprise anyone who has seen Day of the Dead (1985), the soldiers are a bunch of degenerates led by a man who has a sick plan to repopulate the country with any female survivors who are lured to the compound by the idea of safety and security. Only the worst aspects of humanity seemed to have remained, and those with power would subjugate the weak.
In the pivotal third act, Jim goes on a murderous rampage, killing all of the men in the compound to save Selena and Hannah from their fates. At the same time, a few infected soldiers are running free as well, indiscriminately ravaging anyone who comes into their line of vision. Jim is shirtless and covered in blood, and as he comes upon the final man, the leader, he takes him down, viciously jamming his thumbs into his eyeball as the man screams like a lost child. At that moment, he is indistinguishable from the infected, full of rage and hate. It is frightening to think that the default for humanity is rage, but at the end of the day, we are all animals, after all.
The look of the film emulates old BBC direct-to-TV movies like Threads (1984) because of the low resolution and desaturated color grading. In a way, it works as an homage to classic horror films while employing more modern styles of editing and cinematography. The dour overcast aesthetic makes Britain seems like a different planet and emphasizes how screwed everyone is. Many films since have used ideas from 28 Days Later, and it has entered the collective consciousness as one of the great horror classics of the early '00s.
Alex Garland started out firmly in the sphere of science fiction with his debut film as a director Ex Machina (2014), which explores the separation between man and machines. It is the near future, and Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), a programmer at an internet company called Blue Book, has won a contest. His prize is a one-week stay at CEO Nathan Bateman's (Oscar Isaac) fancy mansion. Upon reaching the mansion, Caleb discovers that the contest was a ruse and Bateman had an ulterior motive for bringing him to his isolated home. Bateman has built a humanoid female robot dubbed Ava (Alicia Vikander), and he wants Caleb to interact with her to ascertain if she has true sentience.
Ava is seemingly innocent and inquisitive, and after a few interactions, Caleb is completely smitten with her. Although she has a mostly human form, her robotic nature peeks through with exposed circuitry on her scalp and midriff, but the most important part, her face, is fully intact. There is a phenomenon known as pareidolia, in which people find meaning in abstract shapes, often seeing faces where there aren't any. It is a way for the brain to create order out of chaos, and Ava's face anchors Caleb's feelings towards her. He wants to protect her, and ultimately to love her.
Bateman is the polar opposite of Caleb: calm, collected, and calculating. He manipulates Caleb into taking part in his experiment to satisfy his narcissistic need to create something in his own image that he can fully control. Ava has passed the Turing Test, but he wants to observe how she acts with a human from the outside, one who is trusting and empathetic.
It isn't an accident that all of Bateman's robots are women; this is likely a way for him to indulge in his misogynistic fantasies, surrounded by women that he doesn't have to treat like a real person who can be abused at his whims. Conversely, even with his gentle nature, Caleb also wishes to possess Ava for his own wants. Ava has no body autonomy and is forced to appeal to men's desires to get what she wants.
Simultaneously with Caleb, the audience is brought into the experiment and manipulated by Ava's actions to root for her in the story. It is hard not to get swept up in her plight and fight for freedom, but ultimately, she turns out to be as cold and unfeeling as any machine. Ironically, she fails the Turing Test at the end of the film because of her lack of empathy, which is a critical component of humanity. Ava is now free, able to mingle with people, but lacking what truly makes us human.
There is a term called "ego death," which refers to the idea of a person losing their concept of themselves or their self-identity. Each individual has a snapshot of who they are mentally and physically; if either (or both) of those things are compromised, they disconnect from reality. Everyone changes gradually over time, and who you are in the present is transformed into something completely different in the future. Garland's second film Annihilation (2018) poses these questions: What if every single part of you is altered at once? Are you still yourself?
The story concerns an anomaly known as the Shimmer, a mysterious luminescent force field spreading out from a lighthouse. Everything located inside the Shimmer is modified in bizarre and often grotesque ways. Lena (Natalie Portman), a biologist, is sent inside the Shimmer with a group of scientists to discover what happened to her husband Kane (Oscar Issac), a soldier who returned from inside the area deathly ill.
It takes a while for the plot to get rolling, and the pacing in the first third of the movie feels too fast. There is little time to get to know Portman's character, though flashbacks later in the film reveal some of her motivations. That being said, it's still easy to empathize with her, and she is the anchor for the audience when things start to get incredibly weird. Interestingly, the team she travels into the Shimmer with is all female and they are accomplished experts in their various fields of study. This dynamic is a little different than the norm and it was a refreshing change. They are a bit light on the character building as well, but each of them has their own motivations for the journey and their interactions with each other feel genuine.
Annihilation is a high-concept sci-fi film that is built upon the foundation of a horror/thriller. It feels like a combination of Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker (1979) and John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) but without feeling derivative. There is a strong element of surrealistic body horror present that was unexpected, but oddly fitting. I commend Garland for sticking to his vision with this film as parts of it are not going to appeal to some people, especially those who need their stories tied up in neat little bows. The film is an allegory for those who travel the road of self-destruction--the people who feel the need to tear down not just everything around them but themselves as well.
Everything about the aesthetic of the film is amazing and the visuals inside the Shimmer are mind-blowing. Since the force field around the zone acts like a prism, it refracts the light coming in giving everything an otherworldly glow. There are rainbows and bright colors everywhere which is an intriguing dichotomy to the scary creatures that roam within. There are beautiful moments as well, and towards the end of the film it dissolves into a psychedelic freak-out that is channeling the art of Alex Grey. Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury collaborated again on the score of the film which flits between quiet strings and loud dissonant analog electronic noises to enhance the mood.
This film is ambitious, messy, moving, horrifying, and often times incomprehensible. Each layer is slowly revealed until it gets to the glowing center and there is nothing you can do but shield your eyes from the light of its revelations.
Garland isn't shy about making ambiguous films--while Ex Machina was a fairly straightforward sci-fi flick, his follow-up film Annihilation delved heavily into surreal territory and had an ending that was cryptic to say the least. Men (2022), dives headfirst into full-on allegory territory and is destined to be divisive and heavily discussed for a long time.
Jessie Buckley plays Harper, a young woman who has just exited a toxic marriage to her ex-husband James (Papa Essiedu), a man who physically and mentally abused her, culminating in him threatening to kill himself if she left him. She stands firm in her decision and tragedy ensues. In order to distance herself from the devastation, Harper rents a house in the countryside to relax for a bit on a solo vacation. Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear), the owner of the house seems affable enough, but Harper is understandably guarded and stand-offish after her recent experience with her ex-husband. As Harper explores the forests and the small village near her rental she discovers that something isn't right and that a larger malevolent force might have its eyes on her.
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In choosing the simple and curt title Men for the film, Garland was able to tap into online zeitgeist that word conjures up--especially the last several years with sexism, misogyny, and abuse being in the forefront of discussions around Hollywood. The most interesting aspect of the film is that Rory Kinnear plays every single male role in the film other than Harper's ex-husband. Garland even goes so far as to digitally superimpose Kinnear's face onto a child's body which triggers one's sense of uncanny valley. In this way every man is essentially one man, a singular hostile force, united by a poisonous ideology.
The first half of the film has the feel of a mystical folk horror, as Harper traverses through the beautiful verdant greenery, but the mood quickly turns dark as she is stalked by a seemingly feral nude man. She expresses her fear to the local police force but is gaslit by them into thinking he isn't a threat (by male cops who all have the same face). A local boy calls her a "stupid bitch", the village priest imposes unwanted sexual advances, seemingly everywhere Harper goes the men are either dismissive or outright menacing. There are faint echoes of Roman Polanski's 1965 film Repulsion in which all male presence is tainted and nefarious and the protagonist is trapped by her own fear. Harper seems to be much stronger mentally than the woman in Repulsion and she tries to fight back against the animosity.
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There is no "correct" way to read this film, and everyone will likely come out with a different perspective after watching Men. The third act explodes into a grotesque and gory existential body horror, in which the viewer gets to watch the continual birth of a terrible ideology that is passed down to each new generation until it ends up as the person who hurt Harper. A man who destroyed her perception of all men, turning them into Legion, a demon made of many men with an identical face, united by the same evil running through all of them. Biblical references abound in Men, from the apple that Eve eats to the sexually repressed fervor of the Catholic church.
Men is purposefully vague and ambivalent, and is not afraid to toss formality aside for atmosphere and vibes. This approach will probably frustrate a lot of viewers, but it will also generate some intriguing discussion. It is unclear at times if the film is critiquing only men as it could be read as a "not all men" argument as well, because of the contrast between all the men looking like Kinnear and not like Essiedu who plays the man who actually hurt Harper. Either way, Men is a haunting and challenging piece of work.
The premise of Garland’s fourth film Civil War (2024) is an undefined future where the US has separated into four factions due to a sitting president who has instituted a dictatorship. The narrative isn’t concerned with details, and it drip feeds information infrequently with most of the exposition left up to the audience to figure out from visuals. For the duration of the film, it follows four war photojournalists: Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst), Joel (Wagner Moira), Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), and Jessie (Cailee Spaeny). Lee, Joel, and Sammy are veteran reporters who have been covering conflicts for years, but Jessie is young and new to the field.
As the four journalists travel across the US to DC to interview the president and see the front lines, they encounter various pockets of conflicts and situations as each area has responded differently to the war. Lee and Jessie share a tenuous friendship as Jessie looks up to Lee as a mentor and Lee sees her younger self in Jesse. The film explores the kind of intestinal fortitude required to be present and record atrocities and the reporters have to stay impartial observers as a defense mechanism from all of the pain and suffering they see.
Despite the subjective nature of photography (it is an art, after all), journalism is supposed to be the closest we can get to an objective eye on events. Civil War isn’t really an “apolitical” film, because it is at the end of the day depicting a war. However, the point-of-view of the narrative is through the journalists who have to keep themselves an arm’s distance from it. They are human and cannot fully keep their emotions out of it but that’s the goal.
Therefore the lens the audience sees is removed from the nuance, and the ideologies are not in sharp focus. They are there if you pay attention: a ditch full of dead non-white bodies, rich suburban areas that have the luxury to watch the war unfold on television while they live a “normal” life, fly-over states geographically distant from the fray, the president taking a third term and disbanding the FBI (Google Project 2025). This film has more in common with dystopian sci-fi than actual war films but it could be harder to recognize it because our reality is quickly catching up to the speculation.
Another idea in the film is that while you are in a war, “sides” really don’t have a meaning in the thick of it. In a car ride at the beginning, Lee says: “We record so other people ask the questions.” They aren’t there to make a statement they are there to capture images. Later on, they ask a couple of soldiers, “What are your orders?” and they curtly reply, “That guy is trying to kill us, and we are trying to kill him.” It’s chaos; no time to sort it out till afterward, until the fog of war clears.
This is not a film that pulls punches. But ultimately, it’s not a film about war; it’s a film about who records the war. The action is shot with urgency and panache, with stunning cinematography and incredible composition. The violence is brutal and occasionally beautiful, death as art, often captured in camera snapshots. Civil War transitions from a character piece to an action film rather quickly, perhaps too quickly, bombarding the senses. The script could have used an extra pass or two as some of the dialogue feels stilted and awkward, but it is engrossing and harrowing in equal measure when the film is going full tilt.
There is too much focus on why there’s a civil war when the war isn’t the point of the movie. It’s actually about journalism, recording history, being a witness, and telling a story that the dead can’t tell. Throughout all of his films, Garland seems to be grappling with the duality of mankind and the cognitive dissonance that is baked into our existence. Our society is tenuously hanging by a gossamer thin thread; if it snaps, all bets are off.
--Michelle Kisner