Before he flew solo with his own directorial projects, filmmaker Alex Garland (“Ex Machina,” “Annihilation“) was a go-to writer for captivating genre projects. His early screenwriting work included the Danny Boyle-directed horror film “28 Days Later” which focused on a post-apocalyptic London after animal activists unleash the “rage virus” upon the United Kingdom and essentially the world.
Boyle has long insisted the film isn’t part of the zombie genre. This is hard to argue with as the two films allude to the rage virus only working on living humans and doesn’t have the ability to reanimate corpses. However, while speaking with Empire Magazine to promote his stylish new horror-thriller “Men,” Garland says definitively it’s a zombie movie.
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“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,” Garland told Empire. “Whatever technical discrepancies may or may not exist, they’re pretty much zombies.”
The original certainly mirrors elements of George A. Romero‘s “Dawn of The Dead” with rag-tag survivors played by Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Brendan Gleeson, and Megan Burns trying to find sanctuary, and the latter part is in the same vein as “Day of The Dead” with the group of unbalanced soldiers led by Christopher Eccleston‘s Major Henry West. From a narrative and tonal standpoint, “28 Days Later” very much feels like it takes place within the zombie genre even if it doesn’t have traditional zombies in it.
When trying to place his newest A24 film “Men,” about a young woman who goes on a solo vacation to the English countryside following the death of her ex-husband, starring Jessie Buckley and Rory Kinnear, into a subgenre, the filmmaker said it is “folk horror.” “Yeah, it’s not sci-fi,” he clarified. “If we’re gonna get into subgenres, the subgenre here is folk horror.”
Garland expanded upon that concept, explaining “It’s the horror of rural England. It’s certain kinds of churches, certain kinds of forest – the shadows within dark green. That kind of thing.” Kinnear recently revealed he plays every man in the movie to Empire. “I play nine or ten different characters,” he revealed. “Some are actively threatening, some of them seem fairly benign, but all of them personify different aspects of the male tendency to belittle or spite or slight. And each one had to be as fully rounded as the next, even though some of them have a very limited amount of screen-time. The threat they represent, or their lack of self-awareness, had to come from a specific place within them.” Here’s the official synopsis:
In the aftermath of a personal tragedy, Harper retreats alone to the beautiful English countryside, hoping to have found a place to heal. But someone or something from the surrounding woods appears to be stalking her. What begins as simmering dread becomes a fully-formed nightmare, inhabited by her darkest memories and fears in visionary filmmaker Alex Garland’s feverish, shape-shifting new horror film.
“Men” will be released by A24 Films on May 20, 2022. The debate around “28 Days Later” may rage on forever.