28 Months Later

I think the opening sequence would have worked better if they had used the alternate ending (which I could debate the pros and cons of). The alternate ending had the trio hiding in the hospital that these experiments were taking place in soon after the Brendan Gleeson character got infected. Now whether or not the alternate ending would have been better is debatable. Less cliche' than the whole "Humans are the real monsters" idea, but wasn't really anything special either. And I really enjoy the climax of the film as is.

 

So far, all the comments about the wonderful plot, structure, opening, etc, once again, all come from "Day of the Triffids."
Read the book, or watch the miniseries (not the movie), and you'll see exactly what I mean.
All he did was change the type of monster.

I enjoyed all 3 versions of Day of the Triffids I've seen. They were not boring. 28 Days was boring. 28 weeks was boring beyond all belief--at least, what I saw of it before I turned it off was.

 

Congrats, I'm happy you enjoyed Day of the Triffids. Danny Boyle's come out and said the opening sequence of Day of the Triffids inspired the opening film sequence, and inspired the rest of the film as well. Walking Dead, one of the finest comic books being written also had a similar beginning. Whether or not it is ripped off doesn't matter. What work today isn't derivative? Besides, I'm not scared of plant monsters, but I am scared of ravenous, cannibalistic, super rabies infected people. I could just as well argue that Triffids is rubbish because it so obviously rips off War Of The Worlds. If you walked up to me and told me that "28 Days Later" is a mix of Day Of The Triffids and "Night of the Living Dead", I would say that sounds like damn fine movie. It is a damn fine movie, and I believe it's better than Day Of The Triffids myself (Only have read the book). But hey, you said it best yourself:

"28 Days Later" > Day Of The Triffids

 

The plants in DotT had appeared from nowhere, been domesticated, and turned into a natural resource to be exploited. (Middle East Oil metaphore? Nuclear power?)
Suddently, something that had nothing to do with the plants caused everyone who looked at the pretty lights in the sky to go blind. 99% of the population became blind, society collapsed, the Triffids were unattended, and started causing havok & killing people. (another metaphore for depending on an unreliable resourse that will bite you in the posterior?) People were fumbling around blindly into the reach of poisonous plants that were not only mobile, but displaying signs of basic sentience and group communication.
The scary and interesting part of the book isn't the monster plants, its the collapse of society for depending on an unreliable potentially dangerious resource, and the potential return to a feudal, barbaric society under the control of a dictatorship. And that sacrificing the blind on a 'survival of the fittest' notion.

These are concepts not even touched in 28 Days Later. It is possible they were scratched upon in 28 Weeks Later, but I didn't get that far in before shutting it off.

 

I'd argue that I Am Legend was the first recognizable zombie story in the modern sense. While it called them vampires, the average undead in the story was effectively a zombie.

 

And that is why Triffids is good. You also just explained the major differences between "28 Days Later" and Triffids. They're two different works. Perhaps I've been reading this wrong, but I've read many of your posts as "You can't like '28 Days Later', because it uses ideas from Day of the Triffids. So instead you must like Day of the Triffids, because it is better."

Thank goodness they're two different works, and "28 Days Later" doesn't have to scratch these concepts because "28 Days Later" is NOT Day of the Triffids...

 

I would still argue they were far more vampiric than zombie. However its a good observation since it was a major inspiration for Night of the Living Dead.

 

Perhaps I have explained badly. I have this problem: if something gets praised out of proportion to it's merrits, I get annoyed. 28 Days Later was praised as being "An Intellectual Horror Movie" by many, as well as being inventive and original, when it was just a ripoff of DotT. What's worse, it was a very boring ripoff. And I found the camera work when the zombies were onscreen to be annoying and irritating rather than exciting or suspenceful.

This is true. All the good aspects are just lifted from the original material, and the "original" material put in is dross.

 

First, I'm not going to get into a debate about Triffids, the TV series and novels were both good, but not great. However, I would take 28 Days over any version of the Triffids, it's just better in every way, that's all there is to it.

As for 28 Months later, I loved 28 Days, liked 28 Weeks, and would be all for a third film.

Romero's films were all about human commentary, thus there wasn't a need to know where the zombies came from or why they were now rampant. 28 Days was about government/institutional commentary, thus showing where the ragers came from was needed to start the theme of institutions playing with things that could end life as we know it and not really caring.

I've never been a fan of that alternate ending, in my eyes it goes against the theme of the movie. The ending is bleak enough, but crushing all that the trio worked for, mainly getting beyond their own hang-ups to realize how they needed each other to survive, wouldn't have worked with what the rest of the movie was trying to say about the three of them.

 

28 Days Later was a very good film. I think at times it did lag but technically the begining and how Boyle frames it was sensational for recent horror films