28 Months Later

A sequel we really didn't need. Supposedly the director of the first flick will be back for the 3rd, trying to cash in on the John McTeirnan model.

OK, 28 Days later was just "Day of the Triffids" with zombies instead of alien mobile plants, and really bad camera work.

28 Weeks later was... so flipping boring I turned it off.

Now that I'm done whining like a child, supporters of the franchise my berate my critique and voice their support.

 

Couldn't care less about sequels but 28 Days Later was a brilliant twist on the zombie motif, by a director I have come to admire. Not sure what was so terrible about the camera work. I loved it, beginning, middle, end. Its rare I find a movie I love that much. Hell even the soundtrack is fantastic.

 

Danny Boyle won't be back after Slumdog. Horror is beneath Oscar winners

 

[image=http://thecia.com.au/reviews/e/images/exorcist-poster-0.jpg]

 

I loved the first one and I don't like zombie movies at all but I really dug it. The second one I watched but didn't really get into except for the helicoter chopping scene. That rocked all kinds of ass.

 

Ahh but that is the exception rather than the rule. Name one other horror film nominated for Best Picture or any non-technical category

 

Silence of the Lambs.

Zing!

 

The first film had people placed in extraordinary circumstances behaving like
buffoons. Ever watch one of these zombie films or 'escape the monster' pictures
where the characters do everything they can to put themselves in harm's way while
you sit there cringing and saying to yourself, "Oh come on, stupid, stop making noise
before the zombies hear you," or ,"Why don't you turn the lights on so you can see?"
Nothing but shoddy plot elements to 'build suspense', but in actuality, fostering disbelief
and contempt for the film. 28 DAYS etc., were all that - silly films made nominally
watchable by some ultra-gore, with characters running around making themselves targets.

Another film in the franchise? Talk about beating a zombie, I mean dead, horse.

 

Ah yes but that is considered a 'thriller' by Academy standards

 

Take the structure of 28 Days Later. Read "Day of the Triffids". (Yes, I'm asking you to read the book, since finding the british miniseries can be tricky.) Event by event, they are identical, right down to the evil red-headed soldier. But 28Days has the annoying spead-up monsters that a lot of modern horror movies seem to like, but which I find immensely irritating.

 

The DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS analogy is absolutely spot on, and the ludicrous 'accelerated venomous
humans' imbecility is nothing more than a shoddy effects slapstick designed to distract the audience from
the obvious lack of originality in the picture. No scary, nightmare creatures come to mind...? Let's just
strobe-out and quicktime people with freshman-year makeup and colored contacts!

I sincerely hope the third film does better. It wouldn't take much effort.

 

I'm not sure you watched the same film I did honestly. First I can't recall a single instance of ultra-gore anywhere in 28 Days Later, with only a few instances of blood, used sparingly and only as transference medium of the virus. Thus I don't think its entirely inappropriate.

Second, I think you have missed, in this and other zombie films, some continuing themes of social commentary (Consumerism, voyeurism, bigotry, religious fanaticism) particularly relating to just how unprepared for disaster most of society would be. Most people are far too complacent in their daily routine, that if things were to fall apart around them they simply wouldn't be able to cope let alone survive a zombie apocalypse, and things would quite quickly go to hell. The best zombie films explore humanity at their worst and how even when things are falling apart, we will still find reasons to hate, distrust and even kill each other.

 

Days did too much commentary. At least that's how I now interpret my initial reaction to it, which was "bored to death". That wasn't a zombie movie at all. Surely someone must have noticed that before they marketed it as the "scariest thing ever".

Of course, I haven't seen it since and wasn't quite as smart back then as I am now. Still won't subject myself to it again, though

 

Saw a cute book at Barnes&Noble "Zombie Survival Guide".

Nothing to do with the movie, except society does have the resources and information now that people could look up how to survive a zombie apocolypse.

 

NPR recently had an hour-long segment on zombie survival, complete with interviews with zombie survival experts, questions from callers, survival book reviews, and so on. It was like any other segment on surviving a bioterror attack or earthquake or such.

Zombies have been so exposed into mainstream society and culture (try going a day without seeing a serious or half-serious reference to zombies on television or in print, see how easy it is) that if you were to drop someone from a couple decades ago into the world today, they'd probably think that zombies are real and that the world is facing an imminent zombie apocalypse.

 

Well, Zombies!!! the game has been around for quite a few years, and has 3 or 4 expansions that I know of, not to mention the bag of "100 glow-in-the-dark zombies".
And there are the viral "zombie events" where people get together at locations&times distributed through the internet dressed&made-up like zombies and shuffle along to disrupt onlookers & generally have a good time.

What do Vegetarian Zombies eat?

".....GRaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiinnnnnnssssszzzzz........."

 

We had one here in good old little Düsseldorf last weekend - unfortunately, I didn't know about it until afterwards, though I only would have looked, not zombified myself.

 

The use of highlighted colour in certain scenes was amazing IMHO.

 

Personally, if this is true I am extremely excited. I think I disagree with almost every person that's posted in here. I think bother films are great. The best comparison I can think of is Alien and Aliens.

28 Days Later is this slow build up to an extremely satisfying conclusion. It's a close personal and emotional story. The fear doesn't come from the monsters themselves, but rather looking at the end of the world. Yes, the whole idea of "Humanity is the true monster" is cliche, but it's one of the best showings of it in recent times. So much so in fact, I rated it the best horror film of the last decade. Not that that's saying a whole lot, but 28 Days Later is already considered to be a classic by genre fans.

28 Weeks Later is, as I said, the Aliens, to "Days" Alien. More action, more monsters, but still substantial. Much more enjoyable on a visceral level, and most likely what people were looking for when they call "Days" boring.

Of course... this means that 28 Months Later would be Alien 3...

Maybe we don't need a threequel.

PS: I am a zombie fanboy... though these aren't really zombies.

 

They're zombies. Of a different breed, to be sure. But "zombie" covers as much ground as "vampire" in terms of description. Stephanie Meyer's Sparklepires and Jim Butcher's Wampires, Rampires and Blampires are all still vampires of various flavors. You may or may not be a fan of double chocolate fudge sprinkle zombies, preferring old fashioned vanilla zombies, but despite the different flavoring they're still zombies.


Since the Zombie Survival Guide was mentioned, I feel the need to throw out a recommendation: if you haven't read World War Z (by Max Brooks, the author of the zombie survival guide and also the son of Mel Brooks), READ IT. It's not comedy. It's the best darn zombie story ever told. Ever. Bar none. PERIOD.

 

The only reason I made the not zombie comment was because of Mr. Boyle's need to remind us that 28 Days was "not" a zombie movie and "not" a horror film, because the genre is "beneath him". And then he goes and makes Sunshine which goes from a GREAT Sci-fi film and falls into a BAD slasher film... Sorry off topic. So yeah, I was mostly being sarcastic, though you could argue that they don't have to die to become infected, and if an infected starts eating someone they won't reanimate. If we're defining zombies as living dead, then these are not zombies at all, but more so people with "super rabies"

Yup, totally agree. Also, if you can get your hands on the audio book version, it has a pretty awesome cast, including Mark Hamill.

 

I can third that. One of my favourite books in general.

 

It's the only book I own as a hardcover, a paperback, and as an audio book.

 

Not too keen on another sequel. I thought "Days" was one of the five best horror films of the decade, but "Weeks" was devoid of humanity--much, much too nihilistic for my taste.

 

IIRC he later recanted that statement citing to early Romero zombie films as partial inspiration.

Zombies are a diverse term, and used to have nothing to do with the living dead at all. In fact at one point the concept of a zombie was simply someone who wandered mindlessly. It was the Romero that suggested the modern interpretation of Zombie where they are the reanimated bodies of the recently dead, set to consume you. While I am no fan of running zombies, Boyle's take is very much akin to zombies, though their creation is of a very different nature.

That said I have always felt that the opening scene was a mistake to include. Part of the fun of Romero Zombies was that you were never quite sure where they came from, the best you had were mixed reports and speculation. This lack of information tends to put the audience on par with the characters, not being privy to outside information. It helps create a sympathy and relationship to the characters. I honestly would have preferred if Boyle's Zombies weren't given an origin, we are just told about it afterwards via reflective dialogue, and have the movie start with Jim waking up (again forcing the audience to have the same level of understanding as Jim).