Could have been great

Rating: 6/10 (11 May 2007)

OK, I just watched this. This is not a review, just one guys opinion.
Its a decent popcorn movie, but it fails to rise to the level of the original. Its a fun night at the movies, but once you watched it once there is really no reason to watch it again. It fails where the original succeeded for three reasons.
Actors - the original had some of the best acting ever seen in a horror movie. There was great chemistry between Celina (sp?) and Jim and between the cab driver and his daughter. This movie has four generic bland actors in lead roles as the kids, pilot, and the medical officer. None of them are really developed beyond what I just wrote. We don't care if they die. The parents (cant spell actor names) are actually played by good actors and have chemistry between them, but are killed off early and needlessly. The guy who played the sniper is the only one who shows some character, but he cant carry the film by himself. All the deaths are pointless, seeing one good character die creates a bigger emotional impact than seeing a thousand extras mowed down by snipers/machine guns, helicopter blades, and fire bombings. This movie is like Aliens without Ripley or Newt.
Director - More is really less. Hence books are always better than the movies based on them (unless the book was awful to begin with). The first movie left a lot to the imagination, we didn't see how the infection spread through London but everywhere we saw the aftermath. This movie shows everything, leaves nothing to the imagination, and the result is underwhelming despite a lot of creativity on the part of the filmmakers. Same with the shots of empty London. In 28DL we got small glimpses of deserted London that haunted us, here we see a travelogue of every single landmark in the city shot from a helicopter, it stops being cool really quickly and gets annoying.
Cinematography - is also out of place, the movie apes its predecessor without understanding the purpose behind the technique, as a result action sequences are hard to discern, and you are always aware that you watching a movie cause every second the camera does some art school shot. The technique was effective in a small horror movie, it is not effective in a big budget action movie which is what this is.
Its last sin is actually a result of the other three, its not scary. Between the generic actors, expensive but soulless crowd scenes, and drunken monkey camera work, we stop being concerned for the characters and are taken out of the movie, as a result we are just not scared.
There are five good minutes in the movie, and its the intro. The movie would do better just to follow Don.