Could have been a contender

Rating: 6/10 (24 November 2007)

I watched the two "28s", original and sequel, back to back in one go. I enjoyed them both, but I realized something I hadn't quite figured out when I first watched this movie in cinema theaters: this second one doesn't scare me half as much as the original. There was something unique in the first movie that made it so incredibly compelling even when nothing was happening and zombies were at rest. Here, except for the incredibly well shot beginning sequence, there's an overload of violence that is predominantly graphic but not quite able to hit you viscerally as the first one did. Even Robert Carlyle, usually an excellent actor, is unconvincing where Cillian Murphy was so effective in his portrait of the survivor. Too many special effects, too many unresolved characters on the side we are never quite sure whether we should get attached to or not, like the soldier. In the original, even characters who got terminated halfway like Brendan Gleeson's Frank became full functional to the story and its emotional angles. Overall, it would have been more interesting to follow up on Jim's predicament in the first one than tell the tale of a rather unbelievable repopulating program at such short distance from the outbreak. could have been a contender...