by MATTHEW HAYS

Nothing like buzz about alternate endings to generate additional revenue for films that have attained cult status. Horror films, in particular, seem to be haunted by faux and spiked closures: the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Bad Seed, famously, had uplifting endings foisted upon them by nervous studio suits.

Danny Boyle has now perfected the alt ending stunt with his latest, the very cool and chilling zombie (or is that SARS parable?) flick, 28 Days Later. Aware that audiences now have greater tolerance for the concept of multiple possible endings due to DVD extras, Boyle has tacked on an additional ending to the film.

PLEASE READ NO FURTHER IF YOU HAVEN'T YET SEEN 28 DAYS LATER, AS I'M GOING TO DISCUSS SENSITIVE PLOT POINTS! What's odd to consider is the fact that Boyle placed the new downbeat ending on in response to some of the film's British fans (28 Days Later was released there last year), who felt the initial ending was too uplifting. This says something about the British, who can't seem to have their movies too grim nor their food too bland. But I would argue the initial ending is grimmer than the tack-on one. If you look at the sequence more closely, you'll see that Boyle was clearly trying to create something so Utopian, so happy, that it was meant to undermine itself. Are we really supposed to buy that our three non-infected outcasts actually manage to survive? I doubt it. Boyle builds this doubt in several ways: he ends their flight with a freeze frame, after our male protagonist has actually been shot and is bleeding profusely. (The idea that he would survive this wound is preposterous.) As well, Boyle shoots the sequence (notably, the only shots in which we see actual sunlight) in film, breaking with the rest of 28 Days Later, which was captured on DV.

By undermining his own film's ostensibly happy ending, Boyle joins a long list of directors who've done precisely that. In F.W. Murnau's silent '24 classic The Last Laugh, the studio forced him to add a more uplifting final scene; the director tacked on something so unbelievable, he felt it would indicate to his audience that it wasn't really heartfelt. Melodrama demigod Douglas Sirk specialized in the ironic ending, often closing his films with scenes of reconciliation that had severe emotional undercurrents which suggested desperation and ambiguity. And John Cassavetes ended Gloria, his '80 Oedipal gangster film that won his star (and wife) Gena Rowlands an Oscar nod, with a scene that was obviously intended to suggest fantasy.

That's why the cry for a bleaker ending to 28 Days Later surprised me. Frankly, after seeing the second ending, the first one seems even sadder and more anxiety-inducing to me. Sometimes, it seems, fans' complaints are better left unheeded. For my money, Boyle's original closure was far more subtle and infinitely more intriguing than the new one that's now screening in cinemas.

28 Days Later is now playing

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