Are you hopping mad? Could be a pesky virus it might be a virus

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Are you hopping mad? Could be a pesky virus it might be a virus

Rage can be infectious.
Many recent movies have used The Great Virus as their theme, instilling varying degrees of horror into audiences. This time around, the screenwriter of “The Beach” (2000), Alex Garland, has brought us the “rage” virus, a germ that unleashes extreme homicidal behavior across movie screens.
The disease starts with animal activists, of course. They break into a primate research laboratory and find chimpanzees transfixed in front of TV screens, repeatedly watching violent scenes, such as riots, wars and demonstrations.? They free the chimpanzees, neglecting a researcher’s desperate warning that the animals are no longer harmless objects of investigation. One activist is attacked by the monkeys. Thus, begins the long plague.
Twenty-eight days later, Jim (Cillian Murphy) wakes up from a coma. He walks out into the hospital’s corridor, but finds himself alone. He walks around an eerily silent London, hearing only the flapping of “looking for” messages posted on telephone poles.?
When he enters a church, he sees a stack of the dead and is relieved to find another living human, a priest. But the holy man has already been infected. And he has friends just like him. The red-eyed, bloodthirsty mob chases Jim out of the church and into the street, where he encounters two fellow survivors, Selena (Naomie Harris) and Mark (Noah Huntley).? From them, Jim learns of the rage virus, which is transmitted via blood and overwhelms its victim within seconds.?
After losing Mark to the monsters, Selena and Jim find Frank (Brendan Gleeson) and Hannah (Megan Burns), a father and daughter still left uninfected. The four hear a radio broadcast that an army of survivors has set out to defeat the monsters. They decide to leave their relative safety for the possible salvation ― not realizing that a monster attack is the least of their worries.
Likely less of a brilliant ploy than a budget concern, casting no-name actors in the main roles allows the audience to identify with them. After all, it could happen to anyone, right?
Another effective casting choice was to have athletes play the unnamed monsters, and then make them move fast. Really fast.
The director Danny Boyle spreads fear like an accelerating plague, playing with the audience superbly through music and uneasy visuals. There is no relaxing during this film. The director confirms what anyone who reads the news knows: Man is his own most dangerous enemy.
The song “Ave Maria,” heard throughout the film, is used to draw contrast between the dead and the living, and make the audience feel thankful they are alive. But look around the darkened theater for anything glowing red.


by Park Sung-ha
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