It figures that director Danny Boyle and author Alex Garland would come up with this deft sci-fi hammer: “Train Spotting” meets “The Beach” (with Terry Gilliam as the X-factor). Monkeys bred “rage” are inadvertently freed by British activists. Suddenly, rage is the rage and the world goes mad. A month after the devastating outbreak, four London survivors stake their ground in the wasteland.
At first, Boyle’s movie looks and feels like a staple — disease kills humans; humans hang on; zombies lurk. There are even light moments. But then it mutates. The “rage” gear kicks in and steals the film. Safety loses meaning; no center holds. Garland and Boyle toy ambitiously with the nature of hatred (man-made), the meaning of normalcy, and the rule of law. Definitely not an actor’s movie (though Cillian Murphy and Naomie Harris do well), this grim allegory appears to resolve itself in a shootout, unless you stick around a minute or two longer…
