Some filmmakers are under the impression that if a sequence is scary, repetition is even scarier.
Some filmmakers think that shooting pulse-pounding action in tight close-ups makes it more intense. Some filmmakers think that crazy editing and flashing lights are scary.
Not so.
Because a single brilliant sequence is best left alone to make room for more flashes of brilliance.
Because tight close-ups make me want to yell ‘get out of the way so I can see what’s going on!’
Because flashing lights are not scary, they impede visibility and cause tremendous headaches.
What the Spanish director, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo has created is stylish and fancy, but nobody can accuse him of telling the story well. Storytelling is the finest of the cinematic arts, it creates an event we want to experience and caress and remember- it asks for and gets our involvement, whether it’s a horror film or a musical.
But ‘28 Weeks Later’ is little more than a t is a laundry list of bloody jolts with living breathing people, reduced to video game stick figures. I gave up caring about forty minutes in.
‘Night of the Living Dead’ was one of the most horrific films ever. It did not suffer these cinematic abuses even though 28 Weeks borrows heavily from it.
So why did the mighty Robert Carlyle sign on? He raises things when he’s mortal, that expressive and wonderful face combine with compact emotion – by gum, he’s good – and underrated.
These scenes opened the film and gave me hope. Then Carlyle went all zombie and over the top. That initial flash of brilliance was all there was.
‘28 Days Later,’ the original rage virus film that launched Cillian Murphy’s career, was a well-developed and provocative piece that was crazy scary! The characters were well enough defined that we had a reason to care that they were in mortal danger and that we were truly with them.
In ‘28 Weeks Later,’ we just watch, often through stylistic and physical barriers, and feel left out. It’s out there, beyond reach and caring.
Here’s the deal. Zombies are roaming the countryside, some humans are left but they must hide or be eaten, zombies attack, kill wife as cowardly husband runs away. Children return from safe have to begin again in London’s Isle of Dogs.
Will remaining humans going to stay human? Will the US military/cavalry save them?
Fair enough.
But what accounts for this contemporary film emptiness? Is it the artistic limit of people who grew up fixed on video games / rock videos and never got out into the world?
Poor old England. And look out Europe, because no matter what I think,’28 Weeks Later’ will do well and there will be more 28s to come. It aims at a certain audience and it does what it is supposed to do.
If it’s a great zombie film you’re after then check out Andrew Currie’s Fido, starring Billy Connelly.
28 Weeks Later
Opens May 11th. MPAA: Rated R for strong violence and gore, language and some sexuality/nudity
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