28 Days Later more than anything else functioned as the mainstream launching pad for one Cillian Murphy, whose crossover appeal landed him a co-starring role alongside Rachel McAdams in Wes Craven’s equally visceral horror lark Red Eye. Unfortunately, there’s no discernable lead actor for 28 Weeks Later, owing to a peculiar director shake-up as Danny Boyle (Trainspotting) surrenders the helm to semi-newcomer Juan Carlos Fresnadillo.
The blood-spurting appeal of the 28 franchise lies not in its trite approach to zombie horror. In fact, most zombie plots these days follow thusly: a containment zone is erected (e.g. George Romero’s walled city Fiddler’s Green in 2005’s Land of the Dead), a restoration process begins and the economy rebounds, only to be devastated once again after their fortress of solitude is breached by yet another hoard of zombies.
No, 28 Weeks Later glimmers rather for its unnerving detachment from lead characters, from visceral camera movements and the knowledge that Fresnadillo can expertly dish out two kinds of repulsion: the unbridled madness of “infected” zombies chasing terror-stricken civilians, and the oftentimes barbaric choices humans make when suddenly thrust into dire circumstances.
The plot picks up roughly six months after the “rage virus” is contained and almost everyone infected is murdered, but this story revels in the aftermath- the bleakness and despair after the outbreak. London’s sprawling metropolis, purged of all its inhabitants, is left to forever bake in the midday sun. The scraps of humanity are one by one corralled into a single group, told that London is undergoing a reconstruction, that only 15,000 Britons survived and it’s safe to return to “The Green Zone”-a patch of city guarded by American military that’s cordoned off from all the blood-soaked streets, corpses and wrecked automobiles located across the Thames River.
They’re also told one pub (!) is in operation-a travesty in and of itself especially to Londoners-but that’s beside the point.
The allusions to America’s current Iraq occupation are crystal clear, especially during the sequences when military personnel attempt to curtail the infection by spraying bullets at everyone suspected of harnessing the virus, amounting to an atrocity far worse than the death dealt by the mucous-spewing zombies.
Such sequences are jarring to watch, as stacks of random death splatter the screen and main characters like Don (veteran Scot actor Robert Carlyle) buy the farm early.
Amid the merry-go-round of shaky cameras, frenetic jump cuts and intentionally choppy editing, there is a tiny subplot that tries to breathe life into its characters, but 28 Weeks Later is a film desperately deserving of a running time longer than 98 minutes.
By the time Fresnadillo races to string together plot points and mold dynamic characters from mush, everyone’s favorite cadre of running zombies penetrates London’s barricade, the hunter and prey scurry about like cockroaches…and nobody cares. The effect of faceless civilians ripped limb from limb is grueling, but only because the mayhem is meaningless.
What Fresnadillo should have done is lasso the 15,000 Britons together and film them managing with only a single pub at their disposal.
Now that would’ve been a real massacre.
28 Weeks Later Trailer
