Directed by
Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
Cast
Catherine McCormack ………. Alice Harris
Robert Carlyle ………. Donald Harris
Amanda Walker ………. Sally
Shahid Ahmed ………. Jacob
Garfield Morgan ………. Geoff
Emily Beecham ………. Karen
Beans El-Balawi ………. Boy in Cottage
Jeremy Renner ………. Sgt. Doyle
Harold Perrineau ………. Flynn
Rose Byrne ………. Maj. Scarlet
Imogen Poots ………. Tammy Harris
Mackintosh Muggleton ………. Andy Harris
Meghan Popiel ………. DLR Soldier
Idris Elba ………. Gen. Stone
Stewart Alexander ………. Military Officer
Run Time: 100 minutes
Rated R
DVD Release date: October 9, 2007
Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later. . ., probably the single most over-appreciated horror film of this young century, was lauded by critics for reinventing the zombie genre and for its social commentary. The problem with these accolades however, is that
A. the film borrowed heavily from other sources, reinventing virtually nothing,
and
B. the film’s social commentary was clumsy and obvious when compared to any given movie by Romero, Cronenberg, Wes Craven, or any other horror director worth his salt.
For a quick recap, let’s catch you up on what happened in 28 Days Later . . .:
An Outbreak monkey caused an epidemic of “rage” throughout England. Those infected with rage become (don’t call them) zombies, i.e., they move fast, and seem more interested in causing further infection than eating brains. The result is basically a cheaper version of the monsters from Demons.
About four weeks after (dot dot dot) the initial outbreak, Cillian Murphy wakes up in an ominously deserted land (ala the four times filmed “I Am Legend”). He meets up with some other survivors, and the ragtag group must try to work together to stay alive (ala every zombie movie ever made). Eventually, we all learn that people do bad things too; in other words, “They’re us. We’re them and they’re us.”
Huge re-invention.
This brings us to the movie at hand, 28 Weeks Later. We start off with the Donald (Robert Carlyle) ditching his wife Alice – the dead wife in Braveheart – in order to flee the zombies infected. Then we jump to about half a year removed from the events of the first film. Britain looks ready for repopulation. The zombies infected have long since died of starvation, and the disease has yet to “cross species”.
Well, not counting the initial monkeys which caused the problem to begin with.
At any rate, people are being shipped back to the nation, and NATO forces (i.e. the U.S. Military) are in charge of picking up the zombie infected corpses, and keeping the new citizens in the green zone. Donald’s kids come back from their monster-extended holiday, and they have a happy, yet motherless, family reunion.
As it turns out the U.S. military is no match for Donald’s pair of kids, who manage to skirt the border patrol and saunter right into the heart of zombie town.
The terrorists have already won.
Anyways, these kids have to sneak into their old house because they wanted to snag a couple of pairs of their shoes, steal a picture of their mom so they don’t forget what she looks like, use their old trampoline, and marvel at the monsters’ surprisingly adequate lawn maintenance abilities.
Those non-zombies certainly keep a short lawn.
Naturally, there exist complicating factors. Namely, Alice is hiding out in the house, somehow immune to the symptoms of infection by having two different colored eyes. The military interrupts this mother and child reunion, only a moment away, and quarantines the lot of them.
Once again displaying the utter incompetence of our armed forces, Donald somehow has the security clearance to enter his semi-zombified wife’s room. Donald decides that the best course of action would be to engage in a makeout session with Typhoid Alice. Naturally, he gets infected and the outbreak begins anew.
So basically, the opening of the movie is a suspense piece about survivors of zombie apocalypse hiding out in a dark cottage. The second part of the film is about national reconstruction following a disaster, as seen through the eyes of the military and an average family. Both of those could be very intriguing films. Unfortunately, the third part of the movie is spent as an uninspired action flick starring children. Children are fairly useless as action heroes. The movie cannot even exploit the vulnerability of children for the purposes of terror as it pretty much tells us that these children are genetically immune to infection and those already infected.
Storyline wise, nothing is really given a chance to develop. The characters are all pretty flat and unmemorable. Thematically, there are a lot of “bad dad” issues going on in the background, but nothing particularly striking or disturbing. In terms of craft, there are terribly annoying scenes in which the camera appears to be among “the infected”, that is to say, somebody with a handheld camera is running around like a crazy person.
But I don’t want to criticize the movie too harshly. It isn’t terrible, and it ends before it wears out its welcome, speeding through 100 minutes. The film is just bland and forgettable. The most interesting things about the film are:
A. Michael from “Lost” is in it
and
B. the kids are played by actors with silly names (Imogen Poots and Mackintosh Muggleton).
The DVD
Audio and Visual
The movie looks and sounds as intended.
The Extras
The 28 Weeks Later disc offers a number of special features which are of very little interest to me.
There is an Audio Commentary by director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo and producer Enrique Lopez Lavigne. I wasn’t particularly intrigued by the prospect of virtually unknown filmmakers, for whom English is a second language, effusing praise upon a film of mediocre quality. But upon actually listening to the commentary track, I really began to (what’s the word? ah, yes) hate Fresnadillo and Lavigne.
Also with optional commentary are, count ’em, two unremarkable deleted scenes.
We get three making of featurettes, one focusing on pre-production, another on the zombies, and the third giving the hard sell to the picture.
Finally we get two semi-animated featurettes, in which the DVD reads two 28 days Later comics. I’m not really sure why that is.
