The zombie movie Pedro Pascal calls “a masterpiece”
Actor Pedro Pascal appears to be Hollywood’s favourite actor at the moment, and he has solidified that position after starring in the excellent HBO video game-to-TV adaptation of The Last of Us, easily one of the greatest “zombie horror” works ever made.
Offering his view on the industry and genre during an interview with Variety, Pascal discussed the oversaturation of zombie films in the modern age and drew attention to the film that he believes started the “reinvigoration” of the genre. The interviewer guessed that perhaps the film Pascal had in mind was Zack Synder’s Dawn of the Dead remake.
However, he was wrong. The film is actually 28 Days Later. “Even though it’s a rage virus, still, it was sort of like the conversation about zombies, and I don’t know how much of a hit that movie was,” Pascal said. “But I saw it, and it’s a masterpiece”.
28 Days Later was released in 2002, written by Alex Garland and directed by Danny Boyle. Cillian Murphy plays a young bicycle courier who rises from a coma in a hospital to find that society is on the brink of collapse after an aggro-induced virus has swept Great Britain.
“I saw it in the movie theatre, and I had like, you know, that kind of experience as a grown adult where something gets kind of into the fabric of your skin,” Pascal said of his first time watching the film. “I had nightmares, but they were kind of adventure nightmares.”
Continuing to express his love for the film that, in his eyes, respawned the zombie horror genre, he added, “I remember that thrill-seeking experience like being on a ride, but it also being pretty sophisticated material.”
Pascal then joked, “I’m gonna turn this entire podcast into talking about 28 Days Later.”
However, the key thing for Pascal and the film was seeing how it influenced the projects that came after its release. “I’ve loved keeping track of everything that happened after 28 Days Later because then I was really surprised by Dawn of the Dead,” he said. “I thought it was really good and had one of the best openings of a horror movie I’d seen in a really long time.”
“It anticipated very much the start of The Walking Dead,” he also noted. “I guess I really liked the genre and also felt the oversaturation, so much so that I almost started forgetting about the genre a little bit, and then The Last of Us came along.”
