Throughout watching this film I was on edge. I have permanent gouge mark in the shirt I wore. And yeah, I know, "Rage" is an excessively ambiguous and corny handle for a communicable disease (artificially engineered?) but since this movie was shoot in the pre-SARS era - creepy! In the tradition of zombie movies, which technically this isn't, since the ghouls are infected and not un-dead, it does straddle two genres. Like I mentioned, the Zombie flick but also it works more as a gritty realistic sci-fi/"what if?" scenario. For instance: the "Andromeda Strain" or to a lesser extent "Outbreak"; what a shit film.
The paranoia of mankind's most pervasive enemies is a captivating theme, always has been and always will be. For this reason, I think, this is why this film is so effective. It's not "Freddy vs. Jason". It's a meditation into the deepest human fear. The holistic elimination of the species. A prospect we are teetering closer and closer to accomplishing.
Also, the ambiguities of the film also lend beautiful exposition for the audience to chew on. Is it only the Britain that has been quarantined? Or is the rest of the world infected too? Who knows but it adds another element of tension that works in favor of the film.
All I can say is go see the film.
Paul Burke
Montreal, Canada
