crackerwax

I loved 28 Days Later, it was gruesome but clever. The start of the film probably sold it to everyone, Cillian Murphy ambling through the streets of a deserted London shouting hellloooo at the top of his voice. Superb!

Why is 28 Weeks Later such a pile of wank then?

The movie opens around the time of 28 Days Later with Don (the mumbling Robert Carlyle, forever Begbie) and his wife holed up in a quiet little cottage in the middle of nowhere. Luckily their kids were on a school trip to Spain when all this zombie business kicked off, so it’s just them and a small group of other survivors.

Shortly after we meet the group, a child, orphaned by the infected and also seemingly incapable of using cutlery, starts banging on the door to be let in. Soft bastards that they are, they do. This is a plot point, so pay attention, it’s a kid right? They’ve not seen their kids for a while. Hmmm.

After dinner is out of the way a group of the infected, who were no doubt led there by said orphan, break in. Don pegs it, leaving his wife who, stupidly, tries to protect Oliver. Clearly Don is married to a stupid cow who deserves to die at the hands of the infected.

Anyway, Don survives and gets to go back to London, well part of it. London is under quarantine only the isle of dogs (or district one) is habitable. The rest of London is out of bounds.

Cue his kids arriving back from Spain. Don explains about mummy’s brave struggle, it’s tears all round and time for bed. The kids have a late night chat about mummy and decide to go back to their old house to get some mementos. Fucking idiots.

It probably wise that at this point if I explained just how irritating these kids are, I’d willingly push them under a bus. I would. The boys an over enunciating floppy haired little shit and the girl is just dumb, dumb with permanent un-smudgable eye liner. They’re the most horrific thing in the movie.

So off they creep, find a moped, get to their old house and lo and behold who do they find? Mummy! Except mummy’s infected, but wait, she’s ok! How could this be? Do you care? I didn’t.

Cut a long story short, the army arrives, air lifts them all back to district one and in to quarantine. Kids get pissed off with daddy (because they think he said he saw mummy die, which he didn’t), daddy goes to see mummy (still infected remember folks), snogs mummy (tongues!), becomes infected, kills mummy, starts on a murderous rampage, I fall asleep.

That’s the story. If it wasn’t for the fact that mummy was stupid and had passed the stupid gene onto her kids, everything would have been just dandy.

As it stands the film is just pointless. Carlyle seems to be the most able zombie ever, seemingly teleporting from one part of London to the next just to pop up in front of his kids to go aaaargh! At one point he even survives a poison gas attack, what the fuck?

There is no one in this film I wanted to survive, with the exception of one soldier and even that was borderline.

On a more positive note the effects are good, a little bit obvious that there was some day for night shots but aside from that an empty London always looks good. The infected were suitably ragey and Carlyle’s turn as one of them was nice and over the top even if it was a little bit predictable.

The fact of the matter is the ending is just a setup, a pointless setup, it’s probably best you don’t go and see it.