28 Weeks Later may be hokey, but it's a fresh take on
fresh-blood connoisseurs
28 Weeks Later Rating ***
Starring: Robert Carlyle, Catherine McCormack, Jeremy Renner,
Imogen Poots and Mackintosh Muggleton.
Directed by: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo.
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The zombie genre lost its lifeblood years ago after George A.
Romero slaughtered his very own monster with a slew of Night of the
Living Dead sequels, but we all know you can't really kill a
zombie, you can only lock it in the basement for a while before it
busts loose and starts to feed again.
Alex Garland and Danny Boyle's first zombie movie, 28 Days Later,
felt like a pound of fresh flesh when it was released in 2002. Not
only did the British film look significantly different from its
predecessors -- thanks to a shooting style that preferred natural
half-light to high-key studio artifice -- it behaved differently as
well.
The zombies in 28 Days Later didn't walk about like lost tourists
in a Tube station. They were lightning- fast predators who
transformed from human beings into flesh-eating monsters within
minutes of infection.
It all amounted to a good creepshow, and in 28 Weeks Later Boyle
and Garland hand the reins over to director Juan Carlos
Fresnadillo, who yields similarly unsettling results in the
sequel.
Taking his cues from the first movie, Fresnadillo brings back the
same basic building blocks of horror. The scene is London, 28 weeks
after the "rage virus" first hit the Isles and turned just about
everyone into red-eyed, blood-spewing, teeth-gnashing
people-eaters. A few surviving non-infected are left, while the
rest of the zombie population have starved to death -- at least,
that's what the interim emergency government run by the American
Armed Forces is hoping.
Believing the city to be virus-free, the Americans have reopened a
sector of London that they now call "Sector One." The area is fresh
and clean, and populated by soldiers carrying automatic weapons --
and what better image for the new Eden, where humans are supposed
to hook up, start families and begin the chore of repopulation,
than a place swarming with American G.I.s?
This is just one of the many subversive little jokes Fresnadillo
and his writing partner Rowan Joffe insert into the larger
narrative that centres on Don (Robert Carlyle), his wife Alice
(Catherine McCormack) and their two children, Andy (Mackintosh
Muggleton) and Tammy (Imogen Poots).
When the movie opens, we're stuck in a farmhouse with Don, Alice
and a group of straggling survivors trying to wait out the zombie
storm. We learn Don and Alice's two children are on a school trip,
which offers them some comfort as they fend off the flesh-eaters,
but when the zombies break into the house seeking fresh blood, Don
and Alice are separated.
Don flees the house in a blind panic, but the minute he turns back,
he sees Alice banging on the window asking for help. He leaves her
behind, and from that point on, Don's no longer the same man.
We catch up with Don 28 weeks later, in Sector One. As one of the
last citizens, Don's been given the keys to the city -- an
all-access pass to Sector One and its many secret areas.
Yet, when Alice is found alive -- and apparently well -- Don uses
his keys to get some face time with his wife. The reunion does not
go as planned. Sector One soon becomes a flesh-eater's
paradise.
What makes all this hokey zombie stuff work is the look of the
picture, which has a realistic, greyish hue, and the production
design, which is never so sci-fi we no longer recognize the city.
The whole ugly premise feels creepily believable, and so does the
inevitable denouement -- which shows society spiralling toward
anarchy.
The makeup and gory special effects also pass the credibility test,
thanks to deep red blood, plenty of red vomit and a creative effect
showing the iris turning crimson.
Small details like these really make a horror movie, and 28 Weeks
Later offers some of the best prosthetics the genre has ever
seen.
The rest of the story, which focuses on Andy and his sister's bid
to survive the virus and the American troop surge, feels a little
tired and predictable -- but the visuals keep things fresh, and
eerie.
Abandoned city streets littered with rubbish and dead bodies is all
too familiar in these days of war, and Fresnadillo uses each
picture like a drill bit to the cranium -- fastening it to the
larger narrative engine, and pushing it deep into our brains.
To his credit, it never feels like a lecture on current events or a
piece of propaganda: 28 Weeks Later feels like any other decent
horror movie as it gnaws away at a sense of personal security, as
well as body parts.