[Review] 28 Weeks Later

28 Weeks Later



I saw 28 Weeks Later the same weekend that I saw Shrek The Third.  This was the worse of the two experiences. 

28 Days Later was a fantastic take on zombie horror.  The tilting, jerking camera and the zombies-on-speed motif was effective at thrilling and creeping out audiences at the same time.  The ending needed some work (none of the endings offered on the DVD were fantastic), but up until that point it was a great ride. 

By contrast, 28 Weeks Later was just an awful movie.  After a very cool flashback opening scene, a disturbingly realistic exposition laying out how Britain's allies planned to repopulate England through a 'green zone',  and yet another unique plot twist on the zombie premise, things were set up nicely. But horrible plot moves completely destroy any hope that this film would live up to its predecessor.  Some examples (and yes, these will ruin the movie):

• -Is there any real need to try to repopulate any part of England so soon?  What's the rush?  Wouldn't they wait a year or more to make sure all the corpses rotted and everyone died? 
  
• -Why on earth would anyone leaving the green zone be allowed to return?  You'd think that, given the lives at stake, that anyone caught taking the bridge to the mainland would be shot on sight.  The army troops just let a couple of kids go, knowing that the blood and saliva of any corpses can pass the Rage virus.  Riiiiight.  
• -How is it that the mother is left completely unguarded after she is brought in from the infected area?  They knew she was infected.  Are we to believe they wouldn't ring the place with heavily-armed guards?  And how the hell did she survive in the first place when every zombie on the island would want to beat her to death?  (Another question is 'why don't the infected beat each other to death', but that's a suspension of disbelief I'd made going in.)
• -Once the dad got in, he just kisses the wife?  He hasn't been told she has the virus?  He doesn't care?  Could he possibly be that stupid?  People in the teater were making gagging noises at this point, and laughing. 
• -That plan they had in place to contain an infected Green Zone was the best they could do?  Really?  Wow - that scares the crap out of me if something similar were to happen here.
  
• -You're telling me that France wouldn't just shoot them out of the sky, or kill them upon landing?  Maybe they got lucky and found an unmonitored spot in French airspace to land upon without being seen. Maybe they flew in below radar.  In either case, the French would have killed them quickly once they saw where they came from. 
  

I guess what I'm saying is this: what made the first movie so enjoyable was that the first installment didn't rely on a series of blindingly stupid decisions by leading characters to drive the plot forward.  It didn't have to, given the situation.  This one resorted to the same old Hollywood horror bag o' tricks that I got sick of years ago, and has been fodder for stand-up comics ever since.   There's just nothing particularly extraordinary about 28 Weeks Later -- and that's precisely the problem.  It gets one reel for the disappointment factor, and because I got almost nothing out of seeing it.

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