The zombie debate surrounding Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later aren’t zombies at all, but human beings reacting to the effects of the film’s “Rage” virus.
Garland first got his start as the best-selling author of The Beach, a suspense novel about a group of backpackers who find their way to a secret island in Thailand. The book was adapted by screenwriter John Hodge for Boyle and Garland's first collaboration, the 2000 film of the same name, which starred Leonardo DiCaprio and Tilda Swinton. Though many felt that The Beach didn’t do Garland’s book justice, it still found reasonable success and kickstarted a collaborative relationship between Garland and Boyle. Two years after the release of The Beach, Boyle and Garland returned for the low budget 28 Days Later, this time finding far more critical success. Aside from giving audiences a taste of Garland’s talents as a screenwriter and introducing the world to actor Cillian Murphy, 28 Days Later unintentionally kicked off a debate that was to persist for years after its release. Despite its rather untraditional approach to the zombie genre, many fans have long argued that the project is indeed a zombie film.
However, while 28 Days Later's zombie movie status has been a contentious point for many years, Garland has now weighed in on the issue. While chatting with Empire recently, Garland confirmed whether or not his creation can rightly call itself a zombie film. The writer had a definite answer for all nay-sayers:
“I’m aware for years and years there’s been debates about that, over whether or not it’s a zombie movie. It’s a zombie movie. Whatever technical discrepancies may or may not exist, they’re pretty much zombies.”
Oddly enough, Boyle doesn’t the feel the same way. The Trainspotting director has retained a firm belief over the years that 28 Days Later does not fall in to the zombie genre. But considering that Garland wrote the film, it’s hard to argue with the idea that he would be the one who knows the story and its characters best. In the years after 28 Days Later’s release, zombie films with speedy undead became far more common, and it could even be argued that the zombies in the wildly popular The Last of Us gaming franchise were inspired by Garland’s creation. But of course, for some die-hard purists, a zombie isn’t a zombie unless the person in question has risen from the dead.
It would be somewhat naive to think that Garland’s assertion will finally end the debate surrounding the undead in 28 Days Later. The beloved genre wasn’t created by Garland, after all, so any attempt on his part to modify or alter the formula that more or less began with George A. Romero won’t get far with zombie traditionalists. That being said, every genre evolves to a certain degree over time. To insist that only a very strict definition of zombie culture is valid is restrictive, and without Garland’s take on the genre in 28 Days Later, today’s zombies would be quite different from what audiences have come to love.
Source: Empire
