Writer(s): Fresnadillo, Rowan Joffe, E.L. Lavigne, and Jesus Olmo
Starring: Robert Carlyle, Rose Byrne, Imogen Poots, and Mackintosh Muggleton
I love Danny Boyle’s 28
Days Later; it’s easily one of the best movies in the whole “Hollywood
Zombie Craze”, and its success also made it one of the forebearers of that
movement. When I heard they were making
a sequel, I didn’t really have high hopes for it, but I knew that I had to see
it. So I did, with a friend, and soon
after managed to forget every single thing about it. Completely.
It wasn’t even that I hated the movie so badly that I wanted to totally
erase ever seeing it from my mind—it was as if every scene just spilled out of
my brain. (It got to the point that I even questioned the fact that I saw it at
all, but the friend I saw it with confirmed that I did, with 100% certainty).
With this in mind, I was pretty eager to revisit it eight
years after its initial run, if for no other reason than to be able to commit
at least a few scenes from it into the memory bank. I knew it wouldn’t live up to the lofty
standards of the original—I mean, how could it?—but I expected it to at least
be a passable way to waste part of an evening.
For the most part, it definitely is; as with all films, it has its
flaws, a few of them pretty glaring, but it’s directed with such skill that
many of them, though not all, can be forgotten.
One of my favorite traits in a film is unpredictability, and
28 Weeks Later has this in
spades. All too often, it has become
entirely too simple to look at a horror film, and be able to tell, within the
ten minute mark, who’s going to live, and who’s going to die. Hell, these days you don’t even have to watch
the movie—take a look at the poster and the crediting order of the cast, and
that will generally tell you all you need to know. Without revealing specifics (I feel like I’ve
said too much already), I can tell you that 28
Weeks Later does a fantastic job of circumventing these “rules”, and
creating a world where anyone can die at any time.
The film opens to a house in London, sometime during the events of the
initial outbreak documented in 28 Days
Later, where Don, and his wife Alice, are playing host to a few other
survivors. They let in a little boy,
who’s on the run from the infected, and before you know it, the house is
crawling with the undead. Don tries
holding them off, but gets overwhelmed from the sheer number crawling through
the windows, so he heads upstairs to join his wife. Don and Alice are about to escape out a
window, when Alice
sees the little boy hiding in the closet.
She wants to help him, against Don’s wishes, and sure enough, that’s
when the undead break down the door.
Rather than risk his own life, Don escapes, watching Alice get attacked in the window as he runs
away.
Flash forward to 28 weeks later (hence the title!): All traces of the outbreak have been
contained, thanks to the undead starving to death, and reconstruction of the
city has begun. In order to accomplish
this, the city is broken down into districts, with citizens allowed to return
as the sections are properly cleaned, sanitized, and approved for human
life. Around this time, Don’s
children—teenager Tammy, and young Andy—are on their way home from boarding
school, to start their life in District One, in a new house with their father; during this trip, they are given instructions never to leave their district,
because other areas can be unsafe. Considering their
old home is in another district…gee, I wonder what they’re going to do! Anyway, for the time being, they are reunited
with their father, and start to get settled in to their new home.
Unsurprisingly, the two kids can’t resist the urge to do as
their told, and must go to their old house, outside of the safe zone,
just to grab a few things. Also of
course, even though Great Britain is severely militarized, with guards blocking
every major entrance and exit, the kids get out with no problems—granted, they are
spotted leaving by the NATO forces, but somehow, the military lacks the
technology necessary to catch up to, and apprehend, two children before they
arrive at a house several blocks away, and inadvertently threaten national
security.
Putting the story on hold for a second, the biggest
unforgivable gripe I have with 28 Weeks
Later is the same pet peeve that bothers me with a lot of horror
movies: All of the events in this movie
transpire because of the selfish, and completely ignorant, actions of random
people; in this case, it’s two children clearly old enough to know better
(okay, okay, one’s a teenager, but that only furthers my argument). Another pet peeve: Simply because they are younger, human nature
automatically dictates that we are supposed to cheer for them; to ensure that
they defy the odds and make it out alive, even though they are directly
responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of living
people. What sense does that make? Honestly, these little idiots deserve to get
killed more than the people that actually do.
Back to the story: It’s
not the act of leaving itself that’s so dangerous, but what they find: As it turns out, their mother is not
dead. She was attacked after
being abandoned by her husband, but as it turns out, she’s merely a carrier,
immune to the effects of the disease, but still able to pass it on to anyone
her blood or saliva comes into contact with.
I won’t reveal the specifics as to what happens next, but it should be
safe to divulge that it ends up leading to another massive outbreak; otherwise
we wouldn’t have a movie.
When 28 Weeks Later focuses on the raging hordes of the infected,
that’s when it really springs to life.
Like the first film, scenes involving incoming packs of fast-running
zombies are shot in a shaky, handheld style strongly reminiscent of
found-footage films; pair that up with some outstanding sound design, and these
sequences become appropriately menacing.
Also like its predecessor, the makeup and gore effects are grisly, and
are incredibly well done—even a massive CGI killfest near the end of the film,
which is usually a moodkiller for me, is smartly done, using a series of quick
edits so that our brains don’t have time to process the artificiality and
digitization of the individual scenes.
The pacing is also an asset:
28 Weeks Later starts off with
some epic brutality to suck you in, settles down a bit for the story, but then
picks up leaner and meaner than it was before.
It’s not nearly as gripping as the first--not even for a second--but there’s
definitely enough action and bloodshed to keep the viewer awake, and enough
story to at least hold their attention through to the end.
Unfortunately, when it’s not shoving zombies down our
throats, it’s trying to make us sympathize with two characters who don’t
deserve our sympathies. That’s the
biggest change from the first one: In 28 Days, we got to know the main stars
as people, not just genre caricatures, and we quickly learned that, as
terrifying and aggressive as the zombies were, we were still the biggest threat
to mankind. All 28 Weeks shows us is that, no matter how far we advance as a
civilization; no matter how many people band together to restore order after an
unnatural catastrophe, we are no match for two idiot children who can’t obey a
simple order.
RECAP: The action
sequences and sound design are phenomenal, but the writing takes a couple steps
back in this sequel to 28 Days Later,
in which the main stars are two children who, through sheer stupidity,
inadvertently unleash another zombie holocaust.
It does manage to cultivate an atmosphere where anyone--even main
stars--can die at any time, giving it a welcome level of unpredictability, but
it doesn’t even come within a country mile of being as gripping, or as smart,
as the first one.
RATING: 6/10
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