28 Weeks Later: Thoughts

America is a nation prone to oversimplification and overreaction, often to the detriment of the international community who have no other choice but to stomp to the beat of the big bad bully as it imposes its will, and who can, when unappreciated, lash out in frustration. I know all of this because I’ve seen 28 Weeks Later, the uneven sequel to 28 Days Later, a film that followed the beautifully long-faced Cillian Murphy as he navigated a Brittan consumed by a “rage virus” (not zombies!). Director Danny Boyle is gone from the sequel (but hanging out as a producer), and his absence is felt halfway through the film, when his strongly established foundation of “survival horror” (on display in the sequel during a harrowing opening sequence in a country house, were a group of survivors huddle around a table for dinner—in the middle of the day…which is all I’ll say about it) takes a melodramatic turn, as Robert Carlyle, infected by the rage virus (in an amazing scene that would spoil it to discuss), decides to reunite with his family who’ve fled the contaminated “Green Zone” (established twenty-eight weeks after the initial outbreak by the American government in an attempt to repopulate England—before the bodies have even been cleared! Talk about efficiency!). The first film worked both in the literal: a version of the zombie (nay, rage! rage!!) outbreak we moviegoers have expected to break out in England since A Clockwork Orange; and the metaphor: a Brittan, so button-down and isolated, that a virus unlocking its primal rage has particularly catastrophic effects. Would anybody have noticed a rage outbreak during rush-hour on the 101? The literal is still there, but the second film seems to be working towards a metaphor of American nation building that sadly falls apart as director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, in an effort to heavy lift the plot from beginning to end, abandons the aesthetic of the original film, which had the ability to change genre in a second and felt like an anthology of horror, rather than a sustained narrative arch (something even the endings—depending on your preference—solidified), which is something Fresnadillo can’t seem to find, and something the most literal studio-style American filmmakers, outside of Tarantino, have struggled to grasp for decades. But Fresnadillo isn’t a hack, and if there is one thing he does well it is filming tight spaces: scenes that take place in cramped hospital examination rooms (shudder), locked “safe rooms”, or on the steps of pitch-black underground escalators, or that house at the beginning, all hum with tension. But it’s when Fresnadillo goes into the open that the film stalls, scenes in which we are supposed to care about the plight of two children who, in all honestly, ARE DESTROYING THE WORLD. These sequences reek of studio plotting and are completely incongruous with the facts as they’ve unfurled on the screen. In the end, Boyle (clearly the more talented filmmaker) created a great horror film, whereas Fresnadillo, in an effort follow-up Boyle’s amazing effort, created a movie more American in its execution than one expected, or wanted.