p.s. what does "wearing chains" mean? O_o is there some kidnap-victim chain-bondage april action figure?
watched 28 weeks later. gotta be one of the worst movies i've ever seen. like you never really get a chance to know or like any of the characters, but what frustrated me most is that nothing anyone does through the whole movie makes any kind of sense. i kind of hate that one of my favorite movies ever got this crap as a sequel. but at least it didn't dig up and trash the old characters. and they're so utterly different i'm able to kind of compartmentalize them as totally different movies in my mind. so my fantasies about being a machete-wielding badass in a grimly hopeful post-apocalyptic world with a dreamy cillian murphy with a headwound are preserved.
9 comments:
i liked 28 Weeks Later pretty well, myself, but i don't really like the first one so i think we're coming at it from different places. the first one is definitely a better-made movie while the sequel is clearly a cash-in, but i liked it overall better than the first one. i like 28 Days up until it gets to the military facility, then i completely lose interest, heh.
but 28 Weeks had Robert Carlyle as the smart zombie dad (hehheh) and Imogen Poots.
yeah, the part where they reach the military base kinda slows down things in 28 Days, but i feel like it redeems itself when Cillian Murphy's character is running around crazy and the girls are in impending danger. it does kinda suck that they have to be rescued, but it seems like they're about to figure out a way to help themselves before they get saved.
i dunno. the main thing that bothered me about 28 weeks is that no one's motivations or actions are ever really explained satisfactorily. like how did these kids manage to slip out of a highly-controlled military base with no problems whatsoever? why does the army just decide to start killing everyone, when it's really fucking obvious who's infected and who's not? why are snipers still sniping people when they know their impending napalm doom is coming? and the subplot with the mom and dad was interesting, but is over before it really goes anywhere. i guess that's what mainly bugged me, is everything i found interesting never went anywhere, and i got frustrated with how little everybody's actions made sense. and i kind of hate horror movies that star kids or whole families anyway. so i guess i was just bound to hate it from the get-go, heh.
i only sort of remember, saw it a while ago, but the soldiers inexplicably shooting people i thought was pretty clear, they're just either power-tripping or they don't give a shit because they're in this pseudo-lawless setting and reduced to fear and instinct. "i have a gun! gotta shoot!!!" heh. they didn't have a rational, thinking motivation, they were just shoot first ask questions later 'cause who gives a shit. you know, it's SOCIOPOLITICAL COMMENTARY! ;) i can't remember what happens with the kids escaping, though, so i can't answer that one.
i mostly didn't like the military base in 28 Days because i liked the countryside stuff so much more, you never see that kind of thing in these types of movies, it's always people holed up somewhere. and i get that the army base makes sense thematically, it's like there's man vs. nature, man vs. man, man vs. himself yadda yadda and it's important to Cillian Murphy's arc when he goes crazy, but it still felt like treading water to me. and a lot of the military base stuff was about how the humans there were WORSE than the infected, or just as bad, and you're better off out with the zombies. which is cool, but Romero already did the same thing back in '85 in Day of the Dead, so while 28 Days could have just homaged Day or something, Boyle just hijacked the metaphor and didn't do anything new with it other than Cillian flipping out and there being rape (or impending rape) involved. i don't know, i just liked the first 2/3rds so much better, that's all. i think it would definitely be one of my favorite movies if it weren't for the military base. i even watched the movie again recently, spurred by my friend Kelly who also loves the movie, and i hoped i'd feel differently but the military base stuff still killed the film for me. XD
WOW, THAT WAS LONG. sorry.
it's cool. i understand why someone wouldn't like it. it was just really up my alley for so many reasons. i really enjoyed the soundtrack and the "indie film style," but i'm a sucker for that kinda thing. and like you said i really enjoyed when they leave london and are surviving peacefully in the countryside, so cool and unique. but i also like when they get to the army base, despite it being used as a device for commentary that's been done before as you stated. to me the difference between 28 days and other zombie movies i've seen, including romero's, that makes it stick out to me is this underlying, starry-eyed, romantic hopefulness that pervades through most of the film, particularly the ending. most zombie movies are all doom and gloom, and this is one of the only ones i've seen where it seems to view things as not an end but a new beginning, which kind of fits into my own post-apocalyptic fantasies haha. i guess that's also why i hated 28 weeks, because it just took the typical horror movie nowadays where it's terror, terror, then a semi-happy but open-ended ending, then the world sucks again and everyone dies. i understand the whole theme about how mankind is defenseless against nature, how despite all our attempts to control the world we can't ever really, but that's been done to death far more than the whole humans-are-worse-than-zombies theme to me. just sayin'.
whew, now who's being long??
i liked 28 Days' hopefulness, too, i prefer that to the doom-n-gloom, but don't forget that besides Night and perhaps Dawn, Romero's stuff is also very hopeful. although i do find Dawn pretty hopeful too, in that Peter is all about to shoot himself in the head, but then at the last second he decides not to and chooses life and then beats up a ton of zombies!!! anyway, Day has such a hopeful, upbeat happy ending (including a happy ending for Bub, the lead zombie!) on a tropical island, all the good guys survive and are happy, and then in Land all the heroes live and it's all buddy-buddy and they ride off into the sunset to a new beginning. i think Romero's movies are just less, i don't know.. sentimental, than 28 Days? so maybe they seem more doomy than they really are? i don't mean sentimental as a bad thing, but 28 Days is more emotional than Romero's stuff, it has more ups and downs in terms of the emotion, like 28D had the sweet romance subtext and the ending was all happily skittish or something, i think that kind of thing goes a long way.
me again!! that's a good way to put it, 28 Days Later's ending was very starry-eyed, hehheh, while Romero's happy endings are more low key or something. it definitely would be nice to see more starry-eyed zombie movies, i'm with you on that. XD
hahaha wearing chains. that's nuts. 99.9 lbs. BUT NOT 100. BECAUSE THAT WOULD NOT BE RAVISHING.
ravishing stops at 100 pounds. no fatties can be ravishing!
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