28 Years Later

After much 'dithering' due to the mixed reviews from the general audience, I took the plunge and went to see this over the weekend. I'd initially decided to wait for it to hit streaming but curiosity got the better of me. I figured if I went in with low expectations there was a good chance I might end up pleasantly surprised.

I should have waited for streaming!

Alas, my low expectations were fully justified. The high points have been mentioned many times here.. the chase scene near the start, Comer and Fiennes are always solid, Danny Boyles kinetic direction holds your attention.. but these are not nearly enough to save a deeply flawed movie experience. The low points are numerous which have also been mentioned here so I won't repeat them.

The movie did leave me thinking about it afterwards but that was more to do with "WTF did I just watch!?" as opposed to "were there underlying themes going on that I just didn't get?"

Danny Boyle can certainly make an entertaining movie and I've enjoyed a lot of his output.. Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire.. I might even be in the minority in that I loved Yesterday! Thought it was a very sweet movie.

I just don't think Boyle has the gravitas (nor has Garland) to pull off a deeper meaning, social commentary type movie. He's certainly no Kubrick! To be fair to him, I partially blame that brilliant, award winning, fast paced trailer which I feel misled viewers in what to expect. Despite conforming to expectations, it would have made for a more rewarding cinema experience. At least for this movie goer.

But Spike never watched tv, I think it would be a cop out to have them as his pov as we never got that in other scenes. I think they will be shown to be a weird cult based on childhood memories, with an obvious dark side that we saw with the body hanging upsode down.

Part of me thinks it might be a fake out and after this scene of them appearing as incredibly efficient killers they all get killed off in five minutes in the next film.

More likely though is that they set their sights on the doctor/village and Spike has to try and stop them.

Either way, not where I wanted the series to go. After going through a real life pandemic there could have been lots of interesting directions/themes to explore but the ending feels like a meh British parody of Zombieland that you'd see on Youtube 10 years ago.

if bone temple is anything like 28 years, they should wrap it up anyways, wouldn’t have any interest in seeing another 2 hours of absolute scutter

It wasn't the crow that was infected though. The drop of blood came from one of the corpses that it was pecking at. Presumably it isn't a species jumper and the Rage virus contains itself to apes.

'28 Days Later' sets up its rules very clearly which 28 Years abandoned, at least in part. One of the most absurd examples being the zombie baby scene which was a woeful idea in every aspect. The idea that someone who's been living in that world would act as some sort of bizarre midwife to someone with such a dangerously communicable is utterly laughable, given that we know that a single drop of an infected person's bodily fluid is enough to transfer the disease to you and change you in an instant.

I think a better way to handle that baby scene - I'm assuming that that baby has an important role in the next instalment or two. If not what the hell was the point of it? - would have been to have Comer hear a baby crying on the train and discover the infected mother dead with the child newly born a few moments before.

I think the Power ranger is his father'father's toy.

are they supposed to be wigs 'in film'?

Here one of the parkour athletes Ed Scott's BTS of the scene I dont know if its becos they had to swap out the actors for stunt guys makes them look worse.

I don't think I will bother with it in the cinema but from reading this thread could somebody set me straight: does a zombie Jimmy Savile actually turn up and save the day at the end of the movie! WTAF!

[SPOILER]

At the end of the film, our hero Spike meets a group of young men and women who wear long white wigs, headed by a late-thirtysomething (Jack O'Connell) who is called Jimmy, has long white hair and a tracksuit (with the addition of a tiara), who we saw at the start of the film as a boy, watching the Teletubbies, while infected attack him and his family, which we see his father proclaiming in joy to be the rapture.

What I was theorising was I know Alex Garland said he was influenced by the Omega Man, which features a mutant albino cult (replacing the book's vampires) called the Family, headed by an almost-Manson esque Anthony Zerbe, but they all have long white hair and sunglasses, and for years, people over on this side of the Atlantic including myself have made jokes about how they look like Jimmy Savile cosplayers. Now, it's like Garland has said, 'What if they actually WERE Jimmy Savile cosplayers?'

[/SPOILER]

That has all been covered in the thread already. No biggie.

Just watched it tonight in cinema. Enjoyed it in the main but like others found it a little disjointed in places.

One thing that bugged me however, how come when the doctor tranquilises Samson after the train scene he doesn't take the chance to kill him??! Like, why tf would you let a collosal killing machine like that live if you could take it out!!

I sense that Dr. Kelson was probably a bit of an eccentric even before the infected came about.