Begbie Running from ZOMBIES: 28 Weeks Later, featuring Robert Carlyle, in theaters NOW!

The opening ten minutes or so were terrific, the whole first hour was pretty good, but all the running around at the end felt a little perfunctuary, and the crazy grasp of London geography didn't help.

1. They had just escaped from the Isle of Dogs, and the chopper pilot says to meet him in Regents Park - THAT IS ROUGHLY A FOUR HOUR WALK AWAY. Greenwich Park is right next door.
2. Regents park was not Regents Park, it was Hampstead Heath.
3. Then: 'meet me at Wembley Stadium'. Another four hour walk away.
4. Only someone with absolutely no knowledge of the city would go from RP to Wembley via Westminster. It is in the opposite direction.

2. Regents park was not Regents Park, it was Hampstead Heath.

I can forgive 'em that, they needed somewhere overgrown looking. Zombies not too handy with a lawnmower.

5. this was a film about a virus that turns people into eye-gouging quasi-zombies

6. That doesn't stop the innacuracies from irritating/amusing me.

ya the car scene was the one that really stretched my suspension of disbelief.

-- s1ocki, Sunday, 13 May 2007 22:27 (6 days ago) Link

wait what? how about giving begbie an all access card that literally gives him all access, even to sensitive military biomedical facilities? dude is just a guy that keeps the buildings running.

they've only just set up there and security is focused on zombies rather than break-ins. i didn't find that too implausible, and they foreshadow it by showing him lock the turnstyles. i know "that's different" but all the same, they tried.

"combination of gas not getting in and zombies not breaking glass."

OTM. Reminded me of that one Saturday afternoon movie the Simpsons watch where the spacemen can't breathe until they put on the goggles.

This was ok. My wife liked it. I don't like 'music video' cuts. Can't they hang on one shot for more than a second? Everything is so disjointed that it becomes impossible to discern what exactly is occurring, just that it's 'scary.' Maybe I sat too close?

Did this trend of quick cuts start with A-Ha or with Blair Witch? I dunno but I can only feel frightened by shaky cameras and strobe light shots of bloody teeth for so long.

Do I have to see the first one before I watch the sequel? Or are they about completely different situations?

They're about entirely different characters, you'll be fine. The first one is better, though.

so bad. so, so bad. no ideas whatsoever, zombie stuff got really fucking boring, shots of empty london - only redeeming feature.

i don't think i want ideas from a zombie film.

I do!

i only just realized the thread title doesn't say "Begbie Running ZOMBIES." sooo disappointed.

i think people need "ideas" like "lol iraq amirite" and "all families are psychotic", but really what else?

Per bitching on another thread, I need to register here that this was the absolute stupidest movie I've ever seen in a theater.

I take it you didn't see 28 Days Later in a cinema then?

I liked 28 Weeks more than 28 Days, only cos I think 28 Days Later is one of the worst things ever to be aloud on celluloid.
28 Days Later : Worst Film Evah!

I did in fact see the first one on DVD. I enjoyed it, up until the uncomfortably stupid manor ending.

The second one, though! I think I have more philosophical objections than film-related ones: the moral of this story is that blind obedience and punctilious order-following are all that stand between humanity and zombie apocalypse. I think it's the most creepily conservative film I've ever seen -- the bleeding-heart save-everyone liberals destroy Europe.

I didn't see that as the moral at all. If anything, I think it's challenging the idea of how audiences conflate moral action to positive outcomes, and making a larger statement about the futility of exerting control on apocolyptic situations. The last part is the message of pretty much every well-done zombie movie ever, though, so it isn't really groundbreaking.

I think that's certainly what it's going for, J, but the thing that keeps getting me: if everyone involved had suspended all moral thinking and blindly followed orders, there wouldn't have been any problems in the first place.

I mean, I know it's not trying to be creepily conservative, and it probably doesn't even end up there -- but still, the horrible end result is basically the cause of soldiers not following orders (traitors!) and people thinking they know better than the government command. It kinda begs to be dissected in a Colbert style, you know?

The dimension that bugged me, though, was mostly just spending 2 hours watching people on screen do horrible stupid idiotic things that were very obviously just bringing doom upon the earth. Normally this constitutes a "tragedy," only tragedy is instructive -- the instructive components here seemed iffy, unless (as you kinda suggest) the instruction is "don't try to do anything good, you don't know enough, you'll probably just wind up killing western Europe."

The more Nabisco posts, the more I like this movie in retrospect!

(Haha yeah I am actually half-convincing myself that this was some brilliant subversive nihilist story.)

(But wait NO I sat there the whole time, I was THERE, it was AWFUL, I walked out and practically barfed.)

I quite liked the subtext that its all the mutant kids fault!

The moment they let kids back into the country, we were fucked. Stupid people be doing stupid things. AGANE! As for the French air defence, shame on you! Shoot down the chopper.

I think this actually underplayed the character development in order to make it even more frustrating when people did idiotic things -- e.g., kid's all "boy, I wish I had a picture of mom" and two seconds later they're sneaking off to get it, not even a beat of justification in there -- but the flip side is that I basically hated those kids and spent the entire movie wishing someone would kill them. As soon as they were on the bridge and in that sniper's sights*, it was just like ... shoot them already.

(* = in a fanciful creepy conservative reading, the sniper's view of their bridge-crossing is a deliberate echo of long-distance shots of illegal immigrants crossing the Rio Grande)

Argh, see, that makes it sound awesome too -- this is probably the first film ever that made me wish I could be there, for the sole purpose of MURDERING CHILDREN

I'm still convinced that how much the movie punished the characters for following the tropes of action films (familial love, group laying down it's life for "humanities hope", soldier protecting children from harm, etc.) was far more intentional than it might seem at first.

In fact, now that I think of it, my main problem w/the movie plotwise (Begbie-zombie maintaining his attempts to reach his family) might work into that same sort of approach.

Maybe it would have worked better on me if I'd sympathized or empathized with the people's noble / heroic impulses. But I am coldhearted and scared of zombies, much like Carlyle in the opening, and so I spent most of this inwardly screaming: "What are you, retarded? Just kill that kid already! Kill him! They're orphans and there's zombies everywhere, nobody will give a fuck."

I is a conservative, but only w/r/t zombies :(

I mean, I know it's not trying to be creepily conservative, and it probably doesn't even end up there -- but still, the horrible end result is basically the cause of soldiers not following orders (traitors!) and people thinking they know better than the government command. It kinda begs to be dissected in a Colbert style, you know?

no, the movie is like: jesus what the shit is the US government doing trying to resettle the kids, what a bunch of fucking retards.

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my main probs were:

wtf happened to scarlet? and why didn't the zomb that killed her then immediately kill tammy?

also:

how in the fuck could a maintenance guy use his key card to get ni a quarantine room in a medical center? even if he had had to knock a security guy out, it would have been more believable.

I was hapy to see Robert whipping ass again.

luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuved this movie

i dont neccessarily disagree w/ nabisco's points above but i thot the message was less "obey or you will destroy france" and more "you cant contain the zombie menace no matter how hard you try" (or whatever the zombie menace is standing in for--capitalism? militarism? containment society?)

i thot the message was less "obey or you will destroy france" and more "you cant contain the zombie menace no matter how hard you try"

They could have! Easy! Just plug the kids when they're sneaking out of the zone! Problem solved!

A little tweenicide goes a long way!

this was great

ya

This movie is awful.

This movie is awesome.

this movie is automobile.

This movie is abdominal.

"GAS! Get in the Volvo and CLOSE THE AC VENTS!!"

logic gaps like that are in every single movie ever made

this was intense.

http://you-hiphop-adventure.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/images/562747862.jpg
28 weeks later
Go see the doctor

This movie was so dull, I could hardly be bothered to keep my eyes on the screen. What a fuckin' disappointment.

logic gaps like that are in every single Leslie Nielsen movie ever made

-- omar little, Wednesday, November 7, 2007 10:59 AM (10 hours ago)

Tried to fix it but I'm still not sure.

this got my pulse going a little bit ... and 30 days of night sent it spiraling back into naught

Vampires have no pulse.

Did you just come out of the coffin?

"30 Days of Night" is godawful. I thought it was intersting that "30 Days" clearly modeled the aesthetics of the vampire attacks on the zombie ones in "28 Days" - the super fast shutter speed*, the whip pans, a specific type of choppy edit - but they had absolutely zero tension or intensity.

* (of course, this has become a recent horror cliche in general, but "28 Days" essentially trademarked a really specific look with it)

Finally got around to watching this. Liked a lot more than the first movie (which I was more or less positive on)... Not all zombie movies have to be veiled social commentary - just hop on the twisted train and kill as many people as possible.