If you’re still hell-bent on seeing 28 Weeks Later, you’re in for exactly fifteen minutes of good cinema, and another eighty-five minutes of generic zombie movie. The introduction, done by the original director of 28 Days Later, Danny Boyle, stands in stark contrast to the rest of the movie, done by guest director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo.
Fresnadillo seems to have confused 28 Days Later with Resident Evil – walked into the wrong screening, perhaps? The train-ride that brings the protagonists into the safe zone, located on the Aisle of Dogs in London, eerily resembles the tram-ride into Resident Evil’s underground research lab (of death). Some other similarities are the canned techno music, canned script, and canned scares.
There’s also the canned marine chow. Soldiers figure big in this movie, and dictate the events from start to finish. If you enjoyed the feeling of free-roaming, freakish adventure from the first movie, you will be profoundly disappointed by what this one has to offer. Civilian characters like the ones you related to in the original are here, but very much in the back seat.
Easy now, it’s just a zombie-flick, right? We know what to expect from these, and why ask for more? If you’ve seen 28 Days Later, or even Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead, you know the answer. Skip the next two paragraphs.
28 Days Later was about a virus called “rage,” which produced in the infected an uncontrollable desire to kill. The premise was standard zombie-flick stuff, but Boyle brought it something that zombie films rarely see: realism and class. It provided an experience that was gritty, engaging, and haunting. The characters were good enough that you actually wanted them to be ok – not just dismembered in the most interesting way possible.
Boyle also seized on an opportunity to expound on the human condition, examining natural human brutishness and group mentality. 28 Weeks Later broke some heavy ground in the horror genre, showing audiences how much scarier these films can be when served up with a modicum of intelligence. Boyle demonstrated that it’s not about the blood and guts, it’s about the heart – so to speak.
To be fair, Fresnadillo was charged with a rough task: making somebody else’s sequel. Rather than ask why he didn’t make it right, we might ask why Boyle didn’t just make it himself. The opening sequence is so different the rest of the film, that you’ll even hear strangers to the original saying: “The beginning was so good, what happened to the rest of it?”
It’s worth noting that most of the introduction was released as promotional material, which suggests a deliberate effort to deceive. By sucking in the cult audience of 28 Days Later, and gearing itself toward a broader audience of flesh-ripping-gore lovers, this movie is bound to do fairly well in the box office.
But even if you have ten bucks and two hours to throw away, it’s a movie you’re better off not seeing. The worst thing about a bad horror movie is that it will stick with you, whether it’s good or not. The greasy buffet of gratuitous violence this movie serves up will probably leave you depressed and nauseated.
