28 days later...disappointed

[Dr. Gore]

Hey there,

I was invited to join this discussion. Below is my comment. It pretty much says it all. "28 Days Later.." was overhyped. Reinvent horror? No way. If you are going to have the nerve to say that, the movie had better deliver. This did not.

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Hello? HELLOOOOOOOO?!!!! Where's the horror? HELLOOOOOOOO?!!


I was excited going into this movie. Zombies. British. British zombies. End of the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is a classic example of over hyped mania. This movie does not reinvent horror. Nor is it terrifying. Nor does it fit into any other adjective spit out by some overpaid blurb writer. This is what it is: Post apocalyptic survivors going from one desolate English town to another while they try to connect with each other. Scares are scarce.

"HELLOOOOOOOO?!" Remember that word. It's the theme of this movie. It's about connecting, dang it! How would you handle the world flipping upside down? What choices would you make to survive? Would you be able to make hard decisions at a moments notice? Like bashing the head in of some drooling, raging maniac? Not a hard choice at all for me. Of course I would. Gladly.

This is not a horror movie. It's a sci-fi thriller that's low on thrills. There are no zombies either. Like Umberto Lenzi's "Nightmare City", they are infected with some sort of virus, (The Rage Virus), and go about randomly attacking people. Unlike "Nightmare City", this movie is not fun at all. All the attacks are shot "Saving Pvt. Ryan" style. Very fast speed. Also, most of the attacks are in the dark so you'll have double trouble actually telling what in the heck is going on. But the big problem is that the "zombies" are not attacking nearly enough. That might be because the "zombies" are not what this movie is about. It's about connecting, rebuilding, desolation, empty streets, nothingness, no future, dreary English musings on life, etc. When you have a horror movie that is not about the horror, that's the first sign that something is stinky.

When the survivors run into the soldiers near the end, the movie picks up a bit. There is some infected action and suspense. But by the end I had had it with this world and was ready for them all to be infected. It would have made the movie livelier. The hype surrounding this movie definitely plays a part in my disliking this film. I don't know what difference it would have made if I had went in cold. My dad saw it with me and gave it a B. He knew nothing about the flick before sitting down to watch it. If you walk into the movie theater healthy and hype free, you may think "28 Days Later" is fair. If you've read this comment to this point, you're infected.

[carrigon]

I was invited over here, too. There was so much wrong with this film, much too much wrong, and very little right. The opening sequence was right when we see the activists get infected. But then the movie just starts to fall apart from there. And so much of it was bad rips off good films. After the activists, we get treated to a nude shot of the main character, which appears to be a rip of Resident Evil. And Milla did it better :-p

The empty hospital, totally wrong. There should have been dead bodies, blood on the walls, zombies. The whole England was evacuated didn't sit well with me. It was visually well done in terms of making England look deserted, but it did not work well in the film, particularly a film touting itself as a zombie/horror film.

I had huge, major problems with the lack of guns for the characters, but I'll get to that a bit later.

Good church scene, obviously ripped off The Stand. And probably could have used more shots of the zombies.

The zombies, themselves, were perfect. The makeup job was wonderful, and I loved the idea of fast moving rabid zombies. But we got to see so little of them in the film that it really ruined the film.

And here we get to my gun complaint again. The survivors had no guns and didn't seem interested in finding any. This drove me nuts throughout the film. At least make the effort to try and find a better weapon. Even if you are unsuccessful, at least make the effort. The baseball bats and large knives just didn't do it for me. Yeah, let's all get up close and personal with those rabid zombies who can infect us just by spitting blood in our faces.

Next scene, in the main character's house. I had a big problem with let's all sleep downstairs in this kewl unsecured location and not even attempt to board up the doors and windows cause no zombie could possibly want to attack us. Character stupidity, seemed to be a main theme in this movie. I did wish that survivor guy, Mark, hadn't gotten killed so easily.

The stairway scene, excellent. But again, too little too late.

So they meet up with more survivors, and hey.....let's all go sleep outside in the open and take drugs to make us sleep cause no zombie could possibly want to attack us out here with us all vulnerable and no real weapons. I really wanted to kick the director here. Same goes for the diner scene. Yeah, I want to go all alone into that diner for absolutely no other reason than to get attacked by a zombie. :-p

The scene of the father getting infected, very good. But I hated the obvious plot here. Must get father out of the way so his daughter can get sexually attacked by the soldiers. So sexist.

I had huge problems with the soldiers only wanting sex. What, there are no women in the military? And just what century is this? I didn't like the plot device.

I did love the scene of the main character setting the chained zombie free. Some of the house scenes were excellent. But not enough zombies. I did hear it's on the DVD, some cut out scenes of zombies in the house. But the version I saw was missing a boatload of them.

The ending was LAME. Lame, lame, lame. I hated the ending. All the zombies starved to death and look, we're saved! Oh, that ending sucked.

For me, this movie lacked guns and zombies. It dragged in too many places and it had too much character stupidity going on. As a horror film, it's a bomb. And it's not really a great psychological thriller. It just falls somewhere in the category of wannabe. I wouldn't give it a one on a scale from one to ten, but I certainly wouldn't give it a nine or a ten. It just seems to fall around a three.

Carrigon

[Skypilot]

I was really excited about seeing this movie when I heard what it was about. The idea of a "rage virus" made me think of the movie "Jacob's Ladder" where there was a sublplot involving a drug that had the same effect as the virus in 28 Days Later. The first thing that put me off about this movie was the fact that the irises of the infected person's eyes would turn red. That reminded me too much of a zombie or of someone inhabited by a supernatural entity when in fact these people were infected by a man-made virus. It would have been better if the whites of their eyes turned red; imagine the rage being so intense, with blood just pounding in your head and pressure building up to a point where the blood vessels in your eyes start to rupture. People who've had eye injuries that leave the whites of their eyes red like that can be very disconcerting. And then there was the fact that the infected never attacked each other. This completley diluted the premise that these people were infected with such an intense, and, I would imagine, indiscriminate rage. But the thing that was just too much of a stretch for me and that undermined everything the movie tried to do was the fact that everyone seemed to accept without question that the virus had made its way around the globe in just 28 days and decimated the world's population. I just could not get my mind around the idea of this virus going global so quickly when infection by it is so quickly and easily detected. People over at IMBd who are fans of this movie are theorizing that the virus could have been spread by birds as well as humans. This is thoroughly silly and pointless because the movie does eventually established (at least to my satisfaction) that the worlds population had not been decimated and that the "news" of the virus spreading to Paris and New York was spread in order to enforce a mass quarantine of England. I just could not buy the idea that no one would question this assertion of how far the virus had spread and how many people it had infected or killed. I mean for God's sake the soldiers that Jim, Selena, and Hannah meet up with have a radio and the only thing they use it for is to lure women there under false pretenses. One of the soldiers even doubts the official story of how bad things are and screams out his doubts and suspicions and yet no one pays him any mind. Do these guys like living on an abandoned estate with only two women to go around and a dwindling food supply? And they're military!!! You'd think they'd consider every option and oppurtunity for survival. Alas, the best they can come up with is to plan on gang raping a woman and a young girl (who has just lost her father)in hopes of repopulating a planet that they haven't even ascertained needs repopulating. This part of the story just felt like a phony "crisis" to me. I wasn't convinced by Col. West's transformation into a "bad guy" after his impassioned monologue about man's capacity for violence before the rage virus came along. It's as though all the soldiers had to conveniently turn into a**holes just so the movie could make Col. West's point.
Also, over at IMBd the standard reply to the people who were disappointed with this movie is that we didn't like it because it's not standard American, Hollywood dreck. It might not have started out that way but by the end 28 Days Later was doing its best to imitate the worst and most trite that Hollywood has to offer: a wet shirtless male protaganist almost singlehandedly taking out a group of bad guys and then winning the girl. Hollywood can do it just as well--or just as bad.

[BritishSteel]

What is it you guys want? Constant thrashing and bleeding and writhing corpses, screaming and growling for two hours?

If 28 Days later was going to be more violent then you would need to start with a bigger cast or just end the movie real short, otherwise it's just a movie of people running around in packs with red eyes and not a lot else.

Maybe I'm missing my beloved London, but I loved the movie. I thought it was edgy without being pretentious, it was thrilling without being plain visceral and somehow it managed to cram in humourous (see, even spelled it British) and clever into a plot which was hard to get those elements into.

I wouldnt call the film a masterpiece, but on the other hand what is a great horror movie of the last three years?

Can't think of one meself.

Thanks,

Charles.

[Skypilot]

We wanted it to be scary and I've noticed that people who are not from America seem to have certain assumptions about what is scary to Americans. No, we didn't necessarily want "constantly thrashing and bleeding and writhing corpses" . I for one just wanted the movie to be better than it was and that doesn't necessarily mean that I wanted buckets of blood being hurled around the place. I'll tell you a horror movie that I loved that non-Americans would assume I'd hate. It's called Session 9 and it is probably an even slower moving flick than 28 Days Later. It really got under my skin and I ended up watching it three times. I have to ask: What is it that you people want. By "you people" I don't mean Europeans, I mean you people who can't just accept the fact that some people don't like this movie. I don't think there's been a movie in the entire history of movies that has been liked by everyone that has seen it. Some of you thought this was scary and some of us didn't. You say potato I say potahto.

[BritishSteel]

Dude,

You made it sound like I was making a generalisation about Americans and their feelings about the movie. I don't believe your views represent a uniquely American perspective, I'm sure there were Brits who felt similarly and people of every other nation who saw the movie who probably felt similarly too.

I know for a fact that many Americans loved the movie... my wife included.

I'm sorry if it came off as if I was being patronising or offensive to Americans, that's not what I meant and I don't think that's what I said.
I was simply asking the people that posted in this thread saying they that 28 days later was boring or lacking in thrills or whatever.

I also wanted to know that if 28 days later was not a good thriller/chiller/horror then give me the name of a recent movie in that genre that was better?

Perhaps you could tell me more about "Session 9"?, i've never heard of it.

My sig is just jokey stuff, I don't mean anything about the quote about Americans... I'm married to a beautiful smart 27 year old petite 36D-24-35 blue eyed blonde Minnesotan, she's the love of my life - Something I could'nt find in Britain

Peace,

Charles.

[Skypilot]

Session 9 is set in an abandoned mental institution in New England. It is an actual mental institution and not a movie set. A bunch of guys go in to do asbestos removal and strange things start to happen. There is an open question as to whether there is a malevolent force at work in the building or if the men are starting to crack under the pressure of the work and problems in their personal lives. The boss has committed the men to getting the job done in about a week and the building is huge. Session 9 has been compared to The Shining . The thing is that I hated The Shining but loved Session 9 .Go figure.

[BritishSteel]

We've rented "session 9" and we're going to watch it tommorow night.

Ever since I heard the album "Master of Puppets" and more specifically the song "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)" I've had an unhealthy fascination with hospitals for the criminally insane.

My wife has been devloping a fascination for thrillers and chillers with some good storylines, so it would be good to find some movies of the genre which fit the description and are a good
watch watch.

I'd love to read some wel-reasonad arguments as to which of to rest to some reasoned.

[tabuno]

The first critique of this movie is understanding as I had the same problems with this movie, but the fundamental direction and cinematrography, acting were so good that I overcame the movie's short-comings. This movie is one of the best horror movies I've seen, yes even lacking the constant (and for me) obnoxious blood and gore. This movie made up for its weaknesses with a brilliant, underlying constant dreaded fear that horror movies must contain. This cerebral movie was more true to life (yes, excepting for clean grocery stores and our anti-gun group of survivors, and super cars bouncing over tunnel wrecks).

The feel of isolation, the feel of the collapse of organized government and civilization, the feel of powerlessness, and being alone were all well-captured on screen. Man and sex is a primitive emotion, the need to re-populate. Of course I wouldn't personally unleash a trapped zombie-like person without protecting my woman or women - but well one takes one's chances in the big mansion.

"Psycho" didn't seem to require all that much blood and gore to be effective and that fear didn't have to jump out at every corner. "28 Days Later" is a classic return to something much more difficult to achieve, poor horror of silence and the mundane. The empty streets and cooridors (cleansed of the evil and rage by the monsters that take their dead apparently away from the pure light of day) provoke a much more primal fear than anything I can imagine - a Twilight Zone of emptiness.

[Prince Lazy I]

I'm with Tabuno all the way. And if you don't believe me, then see what John Shirley has to say!

http://www.locusmag.com/2003/Reviews/Shirley07_28Days.html

Steve

[tabuno]

Thank you for providing some moral support. As an American, I hope that some cultural, European depth has survived intact in the new world here.

[Prince Lazy I]

Well, I figured we Brits needed to apologise for sending you all that godawful Swinging London romcom cack like NOTTING HILL, together with any comedy film starring Julie Walters and/or Rhys Ifans... and let's not even start to talk about the original Posh Knobhead his self, Lord Guy of Ritchie...