Vote No on 28...

Rating: 6/10 (12 May 2007)

A few weeks ago, I took a few members of my family out to see "28 Weeks Later". My mother had never seen the first film (and in fact cannot stand grotesque horror), so I'm not sure exactly how I got her to be there (she walked out after about a half hour anyway). As for my brother and I, we were watching this movie almost directly after viewing the first one for the first time, so we were feeling fresh and ready for the next chapter.
The next chapter... One of the best things I can say about this movie is that it actually does feel as though it could be the next chapter. Unlike some other summer sequels (to name a few - Spiderman 3 and X-Men 3), it does feel as though this is the same universe that Cillian Murphy adventured in twenty-four weeks prior.
That's about the best thing I can give it, though. "28 Weeks Later" is, simply put, a gigantic fall down the stairs.
The first scene in the movie is the best, which features a very frightened Don (Robert Carlyle) leaving his wife to die while he runs from zombies that are many enough to populate a small town. It's sad what he does, it's weak, it's cowardly, but it's powerful. What he was doing really got to me, and that's what had me ready for another great zombie film.
Cut to 28 weeks later, and characterization has died out along with the infection. I'm not saying that characters don't exist, but I am saying that they're dull. We've got the annoying 'older sister, younger brother' archetypes, whose character development goes as far as 'they have parents, they care for their parents, if someone mentions their missing or dead parent they go fanatical and someone has to rescue them from zombies.' There's a rebellious US soldier who goes against orders (how cool) and decides not to kill innocents. There's a beautiful lady whose character seems to be, 'get these children to safety and safe the world'. She's the beautiful bombshell who's all business. Hearing these people talk was horrible. If there had been one more scene of heavy dialogue, I would not be able to handle this film.
Even when the dialogue stops it's impossible to handle. The action can hardly be tolerated, either. Danny Boyle was walking on a tightrope when he filmed "28 Days Later" in shaky-cam, which in my opinion is a terribly overused technique in modern cinema. Juan Carlos Fresnadillo tries to emulate the style but goes overboard. It is impossible to see what's happening. At one point, while we're all getting sick from trying to make sense of blur-in-motion, the entire screen goes red. Red? As if it weren't difficult enough to watch already! I couldn't wait for fight scenes to end.
Thankfully, the film's only about an hour and a half long. In light of all the things it comes short of, that's a good thing. Nonetheless, it still feels as though it's ended before anything really happened (as much as you may be suffering in your seat, this is the real frustration). Sure, the infection spread out once more and Britain is in another state of emergency, but what happens with the characters? Why should I care about the Iraq allegory when that's all there really is to this film? Anybody can construct a simple metaphor that conveys the public consensus. I don't mind that this movie did. But a deep film, which is what it seemed like they were going for, has to be more than that.