I haven't watched 28 Days Later since it came out. This movie was kind of a turning point in a lot of ways. Its use of digital photography was an experiment in style at the time. The digital cameras were just barely capable of producing images that could compete with film, and Danny Boyle, always the innovator, took a chance to experiment with this low budget zombie movie. What he produced was as close to this generation's Night of the Living Dead as you could imagine. Watching it now, it doesn't look all that different from the dozens of worthless low budget zombie movies that are produced every year now. But it WAS different in that it was the first. It also has a big amount of charm, skill and care put into it that it's frequent imitators fail to capture, new technology or not. Boyle also managed to (digitally) present a deserted London cityscape. No small feat.
The other big advance of this flick is that it isn't really a zombie movie at all. The antagonistic cannibals are not undead. They did not rise from the grave. They are not really looking to feed on the living. They just want to kill everything.They are actually living people suffering from a horrible disease. That aside, this is the first noticeable 'fast moving zombie' movie. This one element was enough to secure 28 its spot in horror movie history and bring back the zombie genre for a new millennium.
Other than that, it's just a zombie movie. It's got all the elements that make a rad zombie flick. Likable characters, social commentary and dirty zombies rippin' people apart and puking blood. That's all ya need!
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After that, Witter and I watched one of our favorites, Pet Semetery. This movie is amazing, but only under the right circumstances. You have to watch it with a like minded bud and just sit back and marvel at all the individual moments that this movie throws at you in order to creep you out. Some of them (the moments) are, indeed, scary. Some wildly miss the mark. Some are downright hilarious while others are kind of brilliant. This flick is so uneven that when it hits one of its genius moments, I am always more impressed than I should be. There are sequences, hell, whole performances in this flick that are just terrible. Then you get to that scene with the dying sister or ol' Gage calling his dad on the phone and you can't help but be amazed.
Plus, Fred Gwynne! Right!? Am I right?! Master of what I have officially dubbed 'The Stephen King Accent'.
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