The Blog of Lone

WARNING: SPOILERS 

I’ve got to say that 28 Days Later, the original title in the sequence is one of my favourite films.  So it was with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation that I went to see 28 Weeks Later, hoping that it was capable of living up to the original, worried that it couldn’t.  I was right to be worried.

In the original film the Rage virus took over the UK spreading until there was only a few struggling survivors holding out against the zombie-like infected.  The film opens in what is undoubtedly it’s best scene with Don, his wife, and a few other survivors sitting down to a meal in a barricaded farm house.  When a small child comes a knocking, you know it’s not long before the Infected are close behind, hungry for their meal too.  When they break in Don and his wife are trapped in a room, he has to choose between trying to save his wife and certainly dying, or leaving her and running for his life.  He runs.  And this is what the film is really all about.  It’s not the zombies, the gore, the special effects, that are the star of the film here; it’s the human story of hard decisions.  It’s a film about telling your kids that you couldn’t save their mother, and then having to confront the truth when she is found alive.  It’s a film about human morality under pressure, of whether you’d shoot a child who may or may not be infected because you’re ordered too, of whether you’d risk your life to save others.  The Infected zombies create the stage and the situation upon which the film is set, but it is the human dilemma upon which it turns.  This film almost punishes you for having ever thought that there are simple heroic characters in cinema, instead of complex individuals like in real life.

Robert Carlyle is perfectly cast as the family man Don, forced to make some horrible survival decisions, and it was to my surprise that he spent half the film as a zombie.  Carlyle’s acting skill allows him to show all the facial emotion you would expect from someone in his situation, and the scene where he becomes infected should get him an Oscar in my opinion; it’s brilliantly acted, and utterly, utterly, horrifying.   The rest of the cast isn’t bad, especially Imogen Poots and Mackintosh Muggleton (what a name!) as Don’s children, Tammy and Andy.  It’s unfortunate that Rose Byrne provides a lack lustre Mjr. Scarlett Ross, and that the American troops are protrayed as nothing more than gungho stereotyes; but with strong acting from the rest this can be overlooked.

Which brings me to the director, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo.  In films like this the director is almost another character, so strongly can you feel their presence on the screen.  It was Danny Boyle’s strong vision of a ruined London that entranced in the original film, and JCF had a lot to live up to in this one.  There are certain scenes that are truly excellent; such as the opening scene where Don is sprinting to the river, and infected are pouring off the hills around him, and there are scenes that are less so.  Part of JCF’s approach is to very much put the zombies into the background; apart from Carlyle’s zombie self, we see all the other’s in flashes, or at a distance; which is quite a feat in a film featuring several hundred zombies.  When they are up close, such as in the crowded basement scene where the zombies break into a locked room full of people and mayhem ensues, (which really had the potential to frighten: crowded small space, no lights, stampeding people who can’t escape), all the audience really sees are dizzying flashes that get the impression across but don’t truly frighten; unless you’re frightened of having an epileptic fit.  The zombies are always a menace just over the horizon, never in your face.  Also 28 Weeks Later may be one of the few films to actually suffer from a bigger budget.  It certainly lacks the indie feel of the first film, and there is one notable bit where a helicopter is used to decapitate a bunch of hungry Infected that is straight from Hollywood.  You can almost feel JCF thinking, ‘well I’ve got all this budget left over, how can I get rid of it?’

Overall the film is pretty good if you’re interested in seeing a slightly unusual zombie flick, and extremely good if you’re willing to look past the fact that there are zombie’s on the screen and to try and see the deeper human side of the film.  I’d recommend watching it just for Robert Carlyle’s performance alone.

7/10 Licks.