28 Weeks Later...And I Finally Update The Blog.

I still haven't seen Skyfall so i'm reviewing this five year old sequel instead.
28 Days Later is praised as having resurrected horror and zombie movies with its groundbreaking blend of a decent story and re-imagining of monsters. Without getting into that whole debate but summing it up with the phrase "running zombies omgwtflolsrsly?", Danny Boyle's independent little gem was doomed to receive a big-budget sequel.

If i need to explain when this film is set, please call your nurse and tell them to better restrict lobotomy patients from internet access. We now follow the tale of Don (Robert Carlyle) who abandons his wife and acquaintances in a cottage full of insane rage-infected zombies, in what is undoubtedly the strongest part of the film and one of the best openings to a horror film i've seen. Unfortunately it's all downhill from there. Having established an interesting and morally questionable protagonist, the film then proceeds to kill him off as quickly as possible, or rather "infect" him which is a whole other issue whining further down the page. Now I'm far from against killing off characters, especially in a horror film where it's pretty much compulsory, even a protagonist is fine, i certainly didn't expect Don to kick the bucket as early as he did. The problem with this twist is that there are no other interesting characters in this film...at all. What's worse is that the writer and director seem to notice this mid-production and never fully settle on a new protagonist.

At first it seems that Scarlet the female military doctor will take precedence with an interesting plot point involving "carriers" of the virus, in other words, people infected with Rage and contagious but not a slavering, mindless, cannibal themselves. Then we get a brief glimpse at some bored snipers and soldiers, the most important of which being Doyle (Jeremy Renner) who will presumably serve some purpose when the inevitable outbreak occurs in the peaceful quarantined section of England where Don and his refugee children are reunited. His son is next in the spotlight and arguably remains fairly central from then on, but apart from a fleeting tender moment with his sister, about missing his mother, he has less character development than the bloody zombies.

They also make a big deal of his heterochromia, probably as it's his only memorable characteristic.

So Don, Tammy (the sister) and Andy (our hero!) are reunited and after explaining that their mother was killed whilst sidestepping details of his own escape and abandoning her, Don takes a backseat to the irritating moronic children, who decide the best thing to do in this situation is ignore the extensive rules about the quarantine and go visit their old house. A brief spark of intrigue rekindles the film as the dopey son discovers his batshit crazy mother hiding in the attic. She introduces the "carrier" subplot as Scarlet examines her and a stereotypical military prick decides the best course of action is killing their only chance of a cure, despite the threat being strapped onto a desk in a locked room inside a military compound.

Meanwhile after Don's children expose his dickish ways to him, he strolls into the facility and makes out with his unhealthy looking wife. Now since the virus can be spread by blood or saliva Don becomes infected and has a brilliantly disturbing fit as he mutates from loving father and remorseful husband to blood belching psycho zombie and if memory serves that's the last high point of the film.

ZombieDon then kills his wife with eye-gouging in a pointless callback to 28 Days and rushes out of the complex, somehow overpowering and infecting multiple armed soldiers along the way. The eye-gouging thing really pissed me off actually, because in the original 28 Days Later it meant something. It was a horribly brutal way to kill someone and it almost convinces a main character witnessing it that the protagonist inflicting it is infected. This brings up some interesting moral questions, heightens the film's tension in its final act and gives the audience some satisfaction in seeing a rapist get his eyes squashed. In 28 Weeks, it's completely meaningless since it actually is a zombie doing it and they've been proven to be quite violent in the past, hence the whole fucking premise of both films. 

28 seconds later and everything's gone tits up, the zombies are running loose, Tammy, Andy and Scarlet are trying to escape "District 1" and the military is ordered to "shoot everything" on the ground because they can't tell who's a zombie and who isn't. The film seems to be trying to recreate the rational but morally questionable military officers of the first film but it doesn't really work since this is a large network of soldiers who should be prepared for such an event whereas the group in 28 Days were few, isolated and starting to lose their minds. And the filmmakers really want you to feel these guys are organised, there is endless military jargon being thrown around as these efficient American peacekeepers stand in formation and march down corridors and loads of other pointless shit that means my 28 seconds joke doesn't actually make sense since it takes a beard-formingly long time for anything to actually happen in this film.

They're called "establishing shots" not "burn into the recesses of your subconscious shots"

 Anyhow, all the military propaganda in the world can't disguise the fact that the "civilian containment area" was placed right next to where the outbreak happened, and the geniuses still utilised it to bursting point until  inevitably the place is overrun with infected. Skip forward and Doyle, Scarlet, the kids and some expendable survivors are attempting to get rescued from Flynn; Doyle's helicopter pilot friend, who is possibly the most unlikeable and badly written character in this entire thing. For some reason he refuses to rescue any of the civilians despite an impending zombie horde and even replies "fuck you pussy" to an uninfected man falling to his death after trying to escape the zombies on the bars below the helicopter.

So Flynn leaves them to die and the group eventually escape the zombies by hiding in a car whilst a random gas cloud floats past. The car doesn't start moving however until Doyle gets out and pushes it, whereupon he's incinerated by a blind military clean up crew. This untimely outbreak of the stupids spreads to the nearby helicopter pilots who despite having absolutely no evidence that zombies can drive cars start shooting at the group of clearly uninfected people driving away from the deadly gas. This is followed by some downright infuriating Blair Witch style footage as Scarlet uses the night vision on a gun to see the two kids scream repeatedly before falling down an escalator. Fucking Chilling.

Oh and even though there's American military everywhere, the audience doesn't need to be reminded every five seconds that the characters are in England. There are frequent, patronising shots of London landmarks and of course the protagonist (whoever the fuck that is) takes the scenic route from Regent's Park to Wembley Stadium then past the good ol' White Cliffs Of Dover and every by jove English thing in between.

It's also worth mentioning that throughout the film, Don keeps reappearing in some apparent hunt for his children, adding a new element of higher intelligence to the zombies, not previously seen. Of course this is never explained nor reaches any meaningful level so we just have Don as a zombie who can hunt specific targets and bludgeon people with the butt of guns for no reason.

I'd talk about the climax of this film but there frankly isn't one. Andy gets bitten but is fine because he's a carrier like his mum, Scarlet gets got by Don and Don gets shot by Tammy. Tammy and Andy meet dickhead Flynn and get carried to supposed safety before we're threatened with the risk of a third film when zombies somehow reach Paris. I think a major factor in this film's quality was both Danny Boyle being replaced by some unknown new director and the writer Alex Garland having a bunch of unnecessary colleagues to help fuck things up. There is so much unnecessary crap in this film and yet the few good ideas it has are completely overlooked and forgotten in favour of gimmicks, empty dialogue and RUNNING ZOMBIES! OMGWTFLMAOASLFFSGTFO...