I loved it.
SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT! PLEASE LEAVE THE PREMISES AND/OR GO SEE THE MOVIE!
As someone who really liked Intacto, I’m going to put director Fresnadillo on the list of Spanish-speaking directors who manage to breathe new life into genre films: Cuaron’s dystopian sci-fi in Children of Men, del Toro’s fantasy in Pan’s Labyrinth, and now Fresnadillo’s horror in 28 Weeks Later.
This is not a movie with children in it because children in peril make for a more exciting Jurassic Park style ride. Instead, it’s a movie with children in it because the central metaphor here is that your parents will betray you. They will split up. They will lie to you about the break up. They will let you down. They will not be there even if they promise to be there.
All good horror movies have some sort of central metaphor you can relate to. They’re about primal fears, mainly involving darkness and death. Although it’s subtle, there’s something almost mythic about what 28 Weeks Later is getting at. It opens with a cross-generational family scene that’s as idyllic as can be under the circumstances. Dinner, wine, chocolate, a little dysfunctional bickering. And then the scene is brutally dismantled upon the arrival of a boy fleeing his parents…who are trying to kill him. Remember this, because it’s setting the stage.
I agree there are holes in the plot if you watch 28 Weeks Later literally. I can cut it some slack for a Volvo that protects you from sarin gas and then evades a rampaging AH-64 Apache. But I was mostly uncomfortable with the idea of Dad as a superzombie. However, I’m pretty sure Fresnadillo included it as an expression of the children’s fear.
In fact, does anyone other than the children ever see Robert Carlyle after he infects the contained civilians in the basement? Or are the shots of him escaping the firebombing, tracking them through London, and eventually murdering the medical officer in the dark expressions of Andy’s deepest dread, passed on to his sister? The way Carlyle slips away after Andy distracts the sniper certainly suggests he’s in Andy’s head. Because otherwise, Fresnadillo is breaking some firmly established rules from the first movie (which he kind of does anyway in the darkened subway, but let’s not get into that…). I hope I’m not wrong about this, because the movie was awfully smart to slip in such a silly and convenient contrivance.
But even if you’re not into the central metaphor, it’s just a damn good zombie movie with some really stylish direction. Fresnadillo gets what made the first one good: an appealing cast, the overcranked camerawork, the overbearing sound and the quiet, the blood and the confusion, the swelling Godspeed You Black Emperor soundtrack, the way we (well, our militaries at any rate) are our own worst enemy, and most importantly the brutality. This was a brutal movie (my stomach was in knots by the time it was over). He even did a great job with the title card gimmicks!
And unlike Danny Boyle, Fresnadillo gives this movie the ending the genre expects. I remember arguing with DrCrypt about whether the first movie’s ending was ambiguous – my argument that it was a “happy ending” is pretty much vindicated in 28 Weeks Later! – and I’m glad to see that’s not an issue here. I just love the irony that France is destroyed by a kiss, that the silly cliche of the boy who’s blood will save the world (hey, wasn’t that in Ultraviolet?) instead dooms it, and that the helicopter at the end of of every zombie movie isn’t a rescue vehicle but a carrier.
-Tom
P.S. What Dead Rising fan could resist giggling like a schoolgirl at Harold Perrineau’s chopper maneuver in Regent’s Park? Holy cow, that was awesome!