The greatest horror movies don’t merely scare us; they help to illuminate what scares us about modern life. In the case of Danny Boyle’s genre-redefining zombie movie, the threat of contagion from an unfamiliar disease — the “rage virus,” anticipating COVID-19 by almost two decades — takes ruthlessly fast form. Gone are the listless “walking dead” of George Romero movies, moaning for brains, or the trope where everyone patiently waits for a compromised member of their party to slowly transform into a flesh-eater himself. Everything is super-accelerated here, which Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland make clear from the moment Naomie Harris is forced to machete-chop a friend, a split-second after realizing he’s infected — which comes as a shock to Cillian Murphy’s wide-eyed coma survivor. Shot on tiny, versatile Mini DV cameras, the film puts audiences on the front lines of a postapocalyptic London, eerily anticipating the 2020 lockdown.
