Well...

Rating: 5/10 (23 June 2008)

Whenever someone complains about the original film, they complain about either the time spent on character development or the ending. The character development seems to have been taken care of by... Well, removing character development completely. Aside from the opening scene, one of the most masterful opening scenes in any zombie movie I have ever seen, let alone in any horror movie I have ever seen, there is almost no character development. Children are thrown to you and you are expected to care about them. Personally, I could not have cared any less about them. I can empathize, but I cannot sympathize. Why? Because they are only given screen time to show what they are doing, not what emotions motivate them. When Tammy sees a dead body (presumably for the first time, as she and Andy were not in England during the time of attack) she recoils in disgust, not horror. Yes, the body is gross, but in the moments of silence she has on screen, she does not appear to be truly affected, other than the potential reflex to gag. She acts differently than Jim after he kills an infected child by... Well, hardly acting at all. Granted, the act was different, but I would have liked to see more than what was offered. Another complaint I would like to throw out there is that their father, while infected, seems to show up a hell of a lot more than is necessary. He seems smart enough to avoid being shot by the soldiers he kills (who, mysteriously, after being bitten, do not become infected - their bodies lay in wait to be discovered, so that the general can decide to order code red), he is smart enough to avoid being killed in the chaos that ensues when several others are infected, he avoids the firebombing (by cleverly hiding behind a wall, while his poor wife's body, with all of that steel and concrete between it and the explosion, is burned), and he manages to avoid the gas and surviving soldiers. He's pretty smart for one of the infected. The film leaves too much up to mere coincidence. Of course, there is always my complaint of how the supporting cast of characters is predictably killed off, until all who remain are the truly important ones. The movie earns points in its action scenes, which are surprisingly intense. I liked what I believed to be were Hot Fuzz references (a boy from Sanford and a swan, just to name a few). The helicopter scene is a stretch, but an enjoyable stretch. Sadly, what there is does not match up to what there should have been. Still, if nothing else, there is one improvement: a better ending.