28 Weeks Later: A review made a week later…

On the verge of Hollywood‘s lack of new ideas, and reverting to old and foreign ideas, including those from other mediums like comics nowadays, British movies are arising fiercely. Although their international screenings are small in numbers, as compared to Hollywood‘s offering, we can see it in their quality, especially in their story writing.

Brit Movies (or would it be Brollywood? As opposed to Mollywood and Bollywood) are not sought after that much, due to language issues, especially, if the film is using Queen’s English, armed with slangs and British-specific references (remember the scene in Austin Powers where he chats with his father? They had to put in subtitles!). Brollywood movies tend to be heavy on the script, and realistic on the actions, thus making the language issue more dire.

28 Weeks Later (28W), tries to address this issue by injecting American faces into it, making it more acceptable to most. But the story, are much better than an most mass virus infection movies.

No, quite contrary to popular belief, there are NO zombies in this movie. There are only human, and a virus that made them extremely aggressive.

I was supposed to write this a week ago, since I’ve watched it a week ago, but I feel the need to watch 28 Days Later (28D), the film of which 28W is the sequel of (I know, bad grammar. My bad).

Set in Britain in 2002, 28 weeks after the first outbreak in 28D, the Infecteds have starved to death. it seems that the virus, which is transfered via bodily fluid, caused the Infected to be so consumed by rage, until they forgot to eat.

I think that is to say zombies are smarter than very angry human. The news confirms this.

London is being opened up, with the help of US troops. the infection have been contained, and safe zones (or Green Zones as mentioned in this movie). The troops are rebuilding the cities, and starting to repopulate London, with the arrival of the first batch of British citizens.

Amongst those in the first batch, are siblings Tammy (Imogen Poots) and Andy (Mackintosh Muggleton), whose father, Don (Robert Carlyle) is one of those survived the outbreak, and now working as a janitor (or as he likes to say it, he runs the place) in the Green Zone.

Trouble starts when they found their mother, who is a carrier of the virus, but is not affected by it, except for a bloodshot eye. It seems, that those who has differing eye colors, are immune to the virus, but are still capable of carrying it.

Somehow Don, with a the key to virtually all doors in the Green Zone, was infected when he kissed her wife. Then all hell broke loose.

Story wise, I have to say that 28D have better ones, although personally I prefer 28W due to it’s better portrayal of the chaos caused by the outbreak. Logic is at times ignored, dropping a single line explaining it, but otherwise, it is a good watch.

In one scene, several badly injured Infecteds are walking, zombie-like, with one of them losing the left torso. I don’t know why they chose to make it like that, since that scene looks like it’s from a Romero film, instead. The Infecteds usually swarm with the efficiency of swarms of football (soccer) fanatics from the opposing teams after losing a game. The kind of swarms you see in the news.

I loved it how they make London so empty, that nobody can be seen for miles. It’s kind of eery, isolated feeling that even the audience can feel. This helps creating the atmosphere needed to show how bad things are over there.

However, I got claustrophobic watching the action scenes, at times even dizzy. Cameras were handheld most of the time, establishing the surrealism, but they had to zoom into the scene, causing a chaotic, claustrophobic feel. I guess that the director wants the audience to feel what the characters are supposed to feel, hence the abundance of such shots. It works on me, to the point that I lost my voice being scared. Seriously. The last time any movie did this to me was the claustrophobic feeling I got when watching The Descend.

I won’t nitpick on the actings, however, since in this genre, anybody who had a hangover could do the zombie walk, footie fanatics could do the swarms, and Tom Cruise can just run and act confused. Case closed.

The songs are chosen carefully, as they did one heck of a good job in establishing the mood. Songs are mostly British, so do expect sounds similar to Coldplay. In fact, If I were told that Coldplay played the theme song (yes, these 2 movies have a theme song, or at least a song was played in the crucial moments for both movies, including the trailers.). I’m still looking for that song, since I don’t know the title. Anybody can help me?

All in all, this is a very realistic movie, so hopes are at times lost to see the protagonists live. The audience are made to feel like so, thanks to the hopelessness of some scenes. Still, I prefer Children Of Men, whose director chose to use insanely long shots to achieve the same effects. But I guess, the stamina to do such scenes would be immense, it would not be possible beyond 2 minutes.

One thing I don’t understand about films in this genre is, that the infected always know who’s infected, and do not attack their own. Gosh, we could learn so much from these zombies.

verdict: 4/5 – Go Watch!