The literary antecedents of this film seem hard for the ordinary viewer to pin down. Our local newspaper reviewer compared the first part to George Romero’s cult zombie film Night of the Living Dead, ⁽¹⁾ and then complained about the change in the second part to a Lord of the Flies ending. Other viewers have griped that Richard Matheson (I Am Legend, most commonly known for its film incarnation The Omega Man with Charlton Heston) was not given appropriate credit.

Frankly, if I had to guess who or what inspired this film (directly or indirectly), I would name John Wyndham and his novel Day of the Triffids, or perhaps one of its screen incarnations. This, like Reign of Fire a couple of years ago, is in the direct tradition of “catastrophe destroys civilization in the British Isles but a few people soldier on” stories which may predate Wyndham, though almost all the modern ones can be traced back to his influence.

The real beginning, in fact — I will skip over the introduction, in which a gang of animal activists unknowingly release a fact acting virus that enrages everyone infected — is straight out of Day of the Triffids. A young bike courier, Jim (Cillian Murphy), who has been in a coma since an accident, wakes up alone in his hospital (ladies, turn your heads away — there is a shameless full-frontal here) to find everyone gone and the hospital in a shambles. He puts on a hospital gown and sets out to explore London. Unlike Wyndham’s hero Bill, he does not find a city full of people struck blind but a city totally empty of people — until he enters a church with which he’s familiar, sees stacks and stacks of bodies, and is attacked and chased away by the priest and half a dozen survivors, all of them ready to rip him to pieces with their bare hands and teeth.

The story takes us, one by one, to four sets of survivors, each confronting the situation in a somewhat different manner. First is Jim, who is on his own and doesn’t have any idea what is going on. He is rescued from the pursuers mentioned above by Selena (Naomie Harris) and Mark, who have basically been in hiding and keeping out of everyone’s way, hoping to survive until “the infected” starve to death. The third group is taxi driver Frank (Brendan Gleeson) and his young daughter Hannah (Megan Burns), who are holed up in their upper-story flat but who have set out blinking lights to attract other uninfected survivors. Finally, a radio broadcast takes Jim, Selena, Frank and Hannah to a burning Manchester, outside of which Major Henry West (Christopher Eccleston) and half a dozen or so of his men have taken over an old manor house, with all the comforts of home, and are planning to reestablish civilization based on this as a center. Unfortunately, their understanding of “civilization” seems to be rather simplistic in nature.

Again, if I had to guess at the inspiration for this story, I would definitely name Wyndham. ⁽²⁾ Aside from the opening, the scene in which an infected soldier gets loose in the house also closely mirrors a scene in Triffids.

I will follow the lead of several posters to the internet and advise you: if you think you’re going to see another Night of the Living Dead, perhaps convinced by reviewers or trailers, forget it. This is a film that concentrates on the living and how they cope, not with the “zombies”, who, aside from not being zombies, are just background.

My only complaint might be the ending, which is just a bit too pat. ⁽³⁾ Frankly, I’d like to have seen the civilization that came out of Jim, Selena and Hannah’s struggle to survive in a post-apocalypse world.

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⁽¹⁾ As I move this to a web site in early 2004, I’ve just seen a trailer for Day of the Dead which seems to be very reminiscent of this film. So perhaps influence moves in two directions.

⁽²⁾ John Wyndham’s real name was John Beynon Harris, under which he wrote a number of earlier, largely forgettable science-fiction stories and novels. Today he is most commonly remembered as John Wyndham.

⁽³⁾ The rapidity and totality of the virus’s effects is also unbelievable; its method of dissemination is similar to that of ebola virus, which, however, seems to be easily containable by the simple expedient of keeping out of vomitting distance of the ill. Of course, ebola victims don’t feel a need to attack you and rip you open … I also gather, incidentally, that there’s a second ending to the film that I haven’t yet seen.