28 Weeks Later (2007)
Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
Twenty-eight weeks after the spread of a deadly rage virus, the inhabitants of the British Isles have lost their battle against the onslaught, as the virus has killed everyone there. Six months later, a group of Americans dare to set foot on the Isles, convinced the danger has passed. But it soon becomes all too clear that the scourge continues to live, waiting to pounce on its next victims.
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Fresnadillo acknowledges those sentiments and has created a picture here that is not unlike James Cameron’s “Aliens” in the way that it expands on a universe without detracting from the past; the movie is bleak to the core, cold and merciless in the way it delivers the material, and completely unafraid to challenge the concept to even further possibilities than before.
For a while, "28 Weeks" is on track to be the "Aliens" of this franchise, pitting a small group of survivors (led by Jeremy Renner's morally-minded soldier, Doyle) in an enclosed space against seemingly unstoppable multitudes.
As to the cast, youngsters Muggleton and Poots come off best, especially the former, whose tight-jawed imperturbability is sometimes reminiscent of Michael Baldwin in the original “Phantasm.”
As Army medic (Rose Byrne), and soldier (Jeremy Renner) join ranks to protect the children — who could’ve inherited their mother’s immunity — and get them out of the country, 28 Weeks Later begins thematically recall last year’s Children of Men in which Clive Owen’s beleagured Everyman tried to shunt a mother-child pair out of a similarly hostile, apolcalyptic environment.
Not surprisingly, it works best when it is most reminiscent of that movie and of “Children of Men” and “V for Vendetta,” two other films that suggest that if you want to avoid the coming apocalypse, your best bet is to stay the heck out of London.
There's a Children of Men vibe running through 28 Weeks Later that has something to do with the boy possibly carrying a genetic resistance (and, therefore, antidote) to the rage virus, but from the moment dodgy dad Don meets up with the wife he left to certain death in the film's first reel, you just know that a crimson tide lurks around the bend.
, reminiscent of Children of Men , is quite impressive for its surrealistic presentation in several brilliant sequences.
Compare last year’s extremely good science fiction opus “Children of Men.” Deliberate and raw, “Men” entertained us while provoking deep discussion amongst viewers even to this day.
Thanks to last year’s stunning Children of Men, the notion of a devastated UK as a symbol for social decline and war torn terrorism has already been purchased and spent.
From the social breakdown of George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) to the undead blowback of Joe Dante's Homecoming (2005), the standard zombie diet has consisted of two delicacies: human flesh?preferably brains and viscera?and subtext, traditionally seasoned with sociopolitical flavor.
To set up the sequel, Fresnadillo and company back the story up to the waning days of the original disaster, introducing us to a small band of uninfected survivors holed up in a farmhouse (something like a more civilized version of the folks in George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968)).
Opening with a farmhouse siege that boils George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead into about five ferocious minutes, 28 Weeks Later depicts how Robert Carlyle's husband and father leaves his wife to die when the farmhouse they're hiding out in is overtaken by hordes of flesh-shredding infectees.
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And this whole franchise remains a scrawny reiteration of George Romero's The Crazies and David Cronenberg's Rabid � I hope Romero, in particular, is getting a few bucks from Danny Boyle and Alex Garland (who directed and wrote the previous film, respectively, and executive-produced this one).
Therefore, unlike the Romero films (notably “Dawn of the Dead” and “Day of the Dead”) there are whole countries where zombies don’t rule.
You can tell a man has been infected partly by the dramatic discoloration of his eyes (also, of course, by the way he chews on your arm); one character, in apparent homage to a very similarly staged scene in Blade Runner , gouges out the eyes of another whose imploring gaze haunts him still; rooftop-stationed soldiers use their infrared rifle scopes to scan the windows of green-zone apartments in search of comedy and/or nookie.
Fresnadillo and his co-writers took a cue from Hitchcock's "Psycho" in killing off people you don't expect to go so soon.
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As an exercise in pop politics, Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead remake cut deeper by replacing the crypto-socialist survival impulse of Romero's original with a total capitulation to cynical, self-serving individualism.
Cowriter (with Rowan Joffe and Jesús Olmo)/director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo ("Intacto") ably takes over the reins from Danny Boyle ("28 Days Later") and slams us into the sequel with an opening sequence as powerful as Zack Snyder's "Dawn of the Dead" remake.
Therefore, unlike the Romero films (notably “Dawn of the Dead” and “Day of the Dead”) there are whole countries where zombies don’t rule.
All the way through till the end of its first act, 28 Weeks Later is an intense and highly personal take on the zombie genre, one that seems prepared to take its rank among the likes of its predecessor and Romero's Dawn of the Dead.
But the big difference between this sequence and the kind of explosive, in-your-face horror in which films like Resident Evil traffic, is that director and co-writer Juan Carlos Fresnadillo is using the action not just to grab the audience in the opening reel, but to establish character and set the story in motion.
It might as well be the latest Resident Evil sequel.