"28 Days Later"--TWO THUMBS DOWN

[skypilot]

There's probably already been a thread about this movie but I've missed it. Was anyone else disappointed by this movie. A film critic here in Philly described it as a horror movie "with all the boring parts cut out". He couldn't have seen the same movie I saw.

I'm just going to cut and paste my "user comment" from IMDb. Some of you will agree with me and some of you probably won't:

: Stop it with the "thinking man's horror movie" nonsense.
***POSSIBLE SPOILERS*** Some of us plebes munching on popcorn were able to determine that this movie didn't make a lick of sense and that it was not the "horror movie" that the reviews and commercials had promised us. "Scary as hell"??? Huh? "Thinking man's horror movie"??? Puh-leez. First of all, STOP calling it a "zombie movie". There isn't a single zombie in the entire flick. A zombie is a reanimated corpse. The infected victims in this movie don't die and then come back to life; they are simply consumed by an uncontrollable rage. Other "thinking" critics describe the infected as being "zombie cannibals" or "flesh-eating zombies" when it is never established that the infected actually ate human flesh--or ate anything for that matter. They may very well BITE in the same way that a raging dog will but do they even think to eat? Or are they so utterly consumed with rage that they don't notice or recognize hunger? An early scene in which two of the infected are set afire while chasing the protaganist and yet don't waver in their pursuit pretty much establishes that their instinct for self-preservation is gone.

And why don't they attack each other? They seemed to "hunt" in packs which is something that a social animal would do and yet these monsters are infected with a very antisocial rage; a rage so intense that swarms of rats flee the infecteds' approach. Yet the infected operate almost like a gang. People who need people...

As for the film's "man's inhumanity to man" subtext or its exploration of our darker nature and instincts,blah,blah,blah...so what? Haven't you people ever seen a war movie--particularly a War War 2 or Vietnam war movie. These are not new themes and they are not handled with any real panache or originality in this movie. And why do the people in this movie assume that the virus has gone global and that there is "no future". It would be next to impossible for a virus that manifests itself quite vividly within seconds to jump from an island nation like Great Britain to "Paris and New York". Only one character in the entire movie questions the possibility of this and he is a minor character who is chained to a radiator, ignored, and eventually killed. The predicament of the two female characters, who are surrounded by men, hinges on this perception of "no future". It is a perception that the movie failed to acutely convey, in my opinion and I couldn't understand why the characters seemed to have a last-people-on-earth mentality. It seemed inevitable that some "uninfected" country would eventually come to the rescue--as they in fact do. In the meantime, the "infected" become almost peripheral to the numbing story that is being told and I can't figure out for the life of me what people found so scary about this movie. Spare us the sequel

[bicentennial_baby]

1. I disagree

I thought it was a beautifully shot, subtle horror film. Suspension of disbelief, though, is essential to the enjoyment of all horror films, imho.

[skypilot]

4. suspension of disbelief

That I had to suspend so much disbelief is one of the things I had a problem with. "Suspend disbelief" is another way of saying "Don't think too much" and yet this movie is being hyped as some sort of intellectual piece that the popcorn-munching-conditioned-by-Hollywood crowd just doesn't "get".

[EOTE]

17. Here here!

I really enjoyed it as well. I agree it wasn't a very scary movie, but as you note, I was able to suspend my disbelief and in a zombie flick, that's quite an achievement. I thought the film did a really good job of portraying how people would behave in such a situation. IMHO, it's the best creepy flick since Frailty.

[terryg11]

2. really?

it sounded good by the previews I read although you do raise some interesting weak points. I'll have to judge for myself. thanks

[jayfish]

3. Sounds A Lot Like "Night Of The Comet" To Me.

Anyone remember that one?

Jay

[PROGRESSIVE1]

5. Disagree...

The jist of this movie was to show us what can happen when all control is lost.

I though it had an excelent storyline.

[skypilot]

8. Loss of control

If all control were lost things would probably been far WORSE than they were in this film. I appreciate the films themes (even though I don't think they are particularly original) but my main problem was that the film just isn't SCARY. The same critic that I quoted in my original post described the movie as a "mean, cutthroat little son of a bitch" that "scared the living shit out of me". Can you understand my disappointment after reading a review like that.

[EarlG]

6. I just saw it last night (spoilers)

And I've gotta say, I liked it. First of all, you're right in saying that it's not a zombie movie, but I wasn't particularly disappointed by that. I thought the idea of a virus which infects via blood and takes effect within 20 seconds was actually pretty cool :)

Halfway through the movie my girlfriend said that she thought the infecteds weren't very scary - but by the end I thought that that might have been kinda the point. I mean, zombie movies have been done many, many times, and you can only watch so many actors with bloody makeup stumbling around moaning before you think, "this is a bit silly." But what got me was that it was the uninfecteds - the soldiers - who were the real scary characters in the movie. When the good guys reach Manchester you know something isn't right, and when the soldiers all seem so happy, I found it very unsettling. And by the end, you discover that the soldiers are pretty much as inhuman as the infecteds - one could argue more so, since they actually enjoyed killing, whereas the infecteds had no choice.

I actually liked the red herring about the virus spreading to New York and Paris, because it was so obvious that it couldn't, I completely overlooked it. I mean, when you watch an apocalyptic movie about a deadly virus, you automatically think - well, it's the end of the world, right? Pretty clever I thought, especially when you've got the mad soldiers trying to repopulate the planet - for no reason whatsoever.

Sure, there were inconsistencies, and the ending was a bit goofy, and it wasn't "traditionally scary" - but what I like about Danny Boyle's movies is that they do manage to make you feel strangely nervous. It's not that you feel particularly scared while watching his movies, you just suddenly realize that you feel all tense inside. Well, I do anyway :)

He manages the same thing to great effect in "Shallow Grave" and to a slightly lesser extent in "Trainspotting."

(Disclaimer: I also thought "A Life Less Ordinary" was complete crap, and I haven't seen "The Beach")

[bicentennial_baby]

7. Dead on

"what I like about Danny Boyle's movies is that they do manage to make you feel strangely nervous. It's not that you feel particularly scared while watching his movies, you just suddenly realize that you feel all tense inside. Well, I do anyway :)"

I agree with you on this completely. Shallow Grave did this very well; it's a very underrated film.

[skypilot]

9. Zombies

I wasn't disappointed that the movie wasn't about actual zombies. In fact, I found the idea of of people reduced to pure rage by a virus more unsettling; reminded me of the drug in "Jacob's Ladder" that did the same thing.

I got the point that the film was making about the uninfected being as bad if not worse than the infected, it's just that the reviews I read set me up for something completely different and I wasn't really impressed with the "They are us. We are them" theme.

[EarlG]

13. I guess I was lucky

I didn't read any of the reviews before I watched it, so I didn't have many preconceptions.

I usually go out of my way to avoid reading reviews of movies I want to see, actually. Even if it's a good review, the reviewer inevitably points out something that spoils the movie for me.

I do like to read reviews after I've seen a movie though.

[skypilot]

15. avoiding reviews

"I usually go out of my way to avoid reading reviews of movies I want to see, actually. Even if it's a good review, the reviewer inevitably points out something that spoils the movie for me."


I'm going to have to start doing that. It's just that I'm usually jonesing for a good horror movie so that if I read one good review I can't stop myself. I read them until I get myself all pumped up to see the movie on the big screen. Otherwise I end up just waiting for things to come out on video. Alas, I see the damned thing at the theater and wish I had waited for the video. The only exception so far (and people will disagree with me here) is "Wrong Turn" I completely ignored the reviews and the preview on TV and would have missed the movie altogeter if it hadn't been getting such good word of mouth here. THAT movie scared the shit out of me even though there wasn't a single original thing about it--just lean, mean, and straightforward scary.

[frylock]

10. all i know is 5 years later, and i can't get the vision of that dead baby

from Trainspotting crawling on the ceiling out of my head. I can only hope that 28 provides a few disturbing images like that to freak me out as well. Going tomorrow!

[skypilot]

11. Disturbing

For me the most disturbing part of 28 Days came early in the film when the female lead had to make a quick decision regarding her possibly infected partner. Nothing else in the rest of the movie was as viscerally disturbing as that.

[skypilot]

12. I hope I don't sound pretensious...

...but I get that "strangely nervous" feeling whenever I read Kafka. Even if I don't fully understand everything that I'm reading something just seeps off the page and under my skin.

[EOTE]

20. The Beach....

Only marginally better than A Life Less Ordinary. That is to say, it's utter crap.

[LynneSin]

14. It was a great movie, but promoted incorrectly

It was NOT a horror movie and those going into the movie expecting to be scared were very disappointed.

But it was a great movie and I felt the biggest horror wasn't the zombies but the relationships between the people and dealing with the fact that they were the last folks left.

[skypilot]

18. That was a problem for me...

...right from the start. I didn't believe of get a real sense that they were the last people left. The virus supposedly making it to Paris and New York stood out in my mind as a giant plot hole from the moment the claim was made.

[Kazak]

16. Frankly...

I thought it sucked...

[RememberJohn]

19. Another movie you're SUPPOSED to like... Like "Blair Witch"

Famous words of Chris Rock: "What the hell was that?"

[skypilot]

21. Another thing

Was there some sort of running joke with the word "Hello"??? Whenever Jim walked into a dark room and uttered that word there was trouble and the last (I think) shot in the movie is of the word "HELLO" spelled out with sheets in the field.

[On the Road]

22. I Loved It (Contains Spoiler)

and I didn't read any reviews beforehand.

Very, very disturbing. I thought it was a good characterization of how normal people would react when thrown into a bizarre situation. The storyline is also unique, which means a lot to me. I really did not know where the plot was going or whether it would even end happily.

On the "end of the world" stuff: My understanding is that once the main character lies down, looks up and sees a jetliner, he realizes that the other prisoner's theory is correct. Britain IS the only country on earth infected, and the rest of the world decided to impose a quarantine. That's reinforced by the rescue plane at the end.

As far as suspending disbelief, I had no problems. The virus acted too quickly to be believable, but hey, it's a movie. I hadn't thought about the infecteds working as a team, so to speak, so that didn't bother me.

I give it an enthusiastic thumbs up.

[skypilot]

25. End of the world

"On the "end of the world" stuff: My understanding is that once the main character lies down, looks up and sees a jetliner, he realizes that the other prisoner's theory is correct. Britain IS the only country on earth infected, and the rest of the world decided to impose a quarantine. That's reinforced by the rescue plane at the end."

My problem with this is that no other character in the movie besides that one soldier seemed to realized this possibility. It occured to me from the moment that Selena said she'd heard on the radio that the virus had reached Paris and New York. It just seems that it would have occured to more than one person.

[classics]

23. Thumbs down or not...

this movie is still better than 95% of what Hollywood will turn out this year.

Knitpick all you like, it doesnt suck.

[skypilot]

24. Hollywood

I would toss this in with the 95% of the crap that Hollywood puts out even though it is not a Hollywood movie. I can't help but think that if we replaced Danny Boyle's name with some American director's name and casted American actors the reaction to this movie would be alot different.