*** (out of ****)
and
28 WEEKS LATER
** (out of ****)
Starring Robert Carlyle, Rose Byrne, Imogen Poots, Jeremy Renner, Mackintosh Muggleton, and Harold Perrineau
Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo & written by Rowan Joffe, Jesus Olmo, E.L. Lavigne, and Fresnadillo
2007
95 min R
Starring Cillian Murphy, Naomi Harris, Christopher Eccleston, and Brendan Gleeson
Directed by Danny Boyle & written by Alex Garland
2002
91 min R
And such is the set-up for “28 Days Later…,” Danny Boyle’s gripping (if slightly over-rated) experiment in the zombie genre. The movie is a mixture of high-tech and low-fi. I’m recommending it primarily because of Boyle’s digital imagery; his cityscapes are as smeared as watercolors, while low-frame rate driving sequences are lovingly pixilated. Some of its dread is undercut by being too MTV slick in camera, editing, and shadows.
In the same year as the sequel to “28 Days Later…” (“28 Weeks Later”) is the Robert Rodriguez half of “Grindhouse,” “Planet Terror,” which uses a similar zombie infection set-up, also shot on DV. What struck me is, despite the gore and lesbians, that “Planet Terror” is structurally and visually the same as Rodriguez’s kid-friendly “Spy Kids.” A band of misfits rescue one another, then runs for a chopper amidst an intense, limited color palate.
Similarly, Danny Boyle’s “28 Days Later…” shares the candy colors, fairytale atmosphere, and hopefulness of Boyle’s subsequent kids-and-morality opus “Millions.” On a deeper level, the heroes of both movies are Irish and / or Catholic with abstract ideals of right-and-wrong – slight outsiders living in a UK presented as mechanized and soulless. (Another coincidence: both “28 Weeks Later” and “Planet Terror” feature helicopter blades devouring swarms of zombies.)
It’s that aura of fairytale, however Grimm, that distinguishes Boyle’s films (including “Trainspotting” and “A Life Less Ordinary”) The hero (prettiest-man-alive Cillian Murphy) wakes up and wanders a deserted London. Women survivors wear ball gowns as they dart through the lightning-streaked shadows of a haunted mansion. The colors of the ending may be bright but the tone is muted, sleepy.
Ethereal electronic music plays as the hero dreams of being alone in the country, as sheep flee from something invisible. Zombies run in wild mobs and sleep in animal heaps. Starved zombies lay half-naked on country roads, grunting as a plane flies overhead, then resuming their open-eyed half-sleep. Boyle seems influenced by Edward Yang’s “Yi-yi,” in that he often uses reflections in windows to double visual space.
“28 Days Later…” has often been criticized for going soft near the end. Usually this criticism is directed at the hopeful ending, but it is the rest of the third act that bothers me. Throughout the film, the characters are – however regrettably and tragically – justified in any act of violence, including the bludgeoning of infected friends, family members, children, elderly, etc.
Yet when it is presented that Rage might drive humanity into extinction and that, well, it might be a good idea to get pregnant and repopulate the species, THIS is when “28 Days Later…” goes soft. You can kill all you want for the sake of survival, but the movie doesn’t have the cojones to say that it might be justifiable to engage in mechanical sex – yes, even rape – for the sake of the survival of the species. For a movie that courts so much shock value, imagine how much it missed. “Without women, there is no future” intones the leader of an all-male army squad. “28 Days Later…” stacks the deck, almost unforgivably, by making the soldiers the stupidest band of insane brutes.
Anyway, despite an interesting first section and set-up, “28 Weeks Later” is another band of survivors in London; wandering off when they should stay in the same place; going alone when they should stay together; keeping to themselves information they should share; putting down things they should keep with them; standing and gawking when they should shoot; and eventually running and screaming in the darkness while someone shakes the camera like he wants to wake up the battery. A scene described in the earlier film is re-enacted and there’s more zombies running.
A friend of mine said he forgave “28 Weeks Later” until a character fell down a flight of stairs, then instead of staying put with his friends, apparently ran off for no reason down a tunnel. And, in the end, in true sequel style, nothing is really different than at the end of the first film, except maybe there might be someone with a cure. Is there going to be a “28 Months Later?”
How did the first victim, while still uninfected, get past the quarantine and the guards to enter the lockdown where the virus carrier is tied down? More importantly, after he’s infected and reduced to a mindless zombie, how does he get out? How does a zombie use an eletronic keycard and undo locks? How does he survive armed guards and the firebombing of dozens of city blocks? Of all the directions he could have gone, how does he end up chasing our characters again and again? If our zombies are killed just like human beings, how come severed halves move around after being chopped up by helicopter blades?
Still, I admire the intensity of “28 Weeks Later.” There are some haunting, brutal kills and the production is gruesomely lovely. The set-up, as a husband (Robert Carlyle, as good as he’s ever been) abandons his wife to flee his besieged country house, has tragic possibility. (His guilt would, of course, be eclipsed by the guilt felt by his two dumbfuck brats if they ever realized that they killed everyone by leaving the military base after being told not to.)
Also interesting is the aftermath of the first outbreak, including the clean-up by the U.S. army. And, yes, you have my permission to roll your eyes at whatever ten-cent Iraq connection every hack-crit will make about it.
Finished Sunday, May 13, 2007
Copyright © 2007 Friday & Saturday Night
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