"Aw, man, this is FUBAR!"
What I Learned From '28 Weeks Later' (SPOILERS)
1) No matter how badass you think you are, saying 'fubar' is an instant stamp of Dorkdom. And yes, the subject line of this post is a direct quote from one of the army men. While they're shooting screaming people running from 'zombies' (Rage victims).
2) The zombie plague could be stopped in its tracks if only more people had heterochromia. Or rather, the disease could spread unseen and thus faster if more people had different colored eyes...? Either way, these people are our answer...and our doom. Therefore, they obviously should all be locked in concentration camps/medical facilities for study/disection/target practice. For the good of the human race. Trust me.
3) The American military have a three-step plan for everything, and every plan's third step is "If steps 1 & 2 fail, exterminate absolutely everyone." That includes unarmed civilians, children and even other members of the military.
4) The military really has no idea what "Emergency Safe Zone" means. When you lock hundreds of people in an underground room, the least you can do is make sure it doesn't have an easily broken-down back door where all the zombies are standing.
5) Kids buck authority and thereby doom the world. This may seem obvious, but it's apparently not something the military understands, since it a) lets kids into a high-risk-of-zombies zone, b) allows them to run past checkpoints into unguarded Dangerous zones, c) doesn't follow them but instead sends for backup that takes twenty (28?) minutes to get there, and d) doesn't confiscate their possibly-infected belongings. Hey, army, a hint: try looking up Quarantine before you try to set one up. Also, possibly worth it to blow up bridges connecting civilian centers to Danger Zones. You know, just in case.
6) Some time in the past, the military (either British or American, possibly both) raped and killed the sister/mother of the director of these movies. Perhaps they also shot his dog, burned down his house and mass-murdered his countrymen. What I'm trying to say here is that the guy tends to negatively portray the military, and all (rare) saintly military personnel die horribly anyway, usually at the hands of other evil, unthinking soldiers of hate.
7) Fathers have an unerring sense of where their children are, and this persists even after contagion by a zombie-like disease. This creepy dadar allows them to instantly be wherever their children are, allowing said fathers to brutally murder their children's bodyguards.
8) Blurrily whipping the camera around, then splicing that with random clips of shrieks and confused pipe-organ-tickling, is still not as scary as slow, staggering crowds of unstoppable classic undead. However, it does make for easier cutting room decisions, and it requires far fewer takes.
9) Cutting back and forth between closeups of defunct carnival rides and long shots of refugees walking, with the cuts being in time to the mildly techno-ish soundtrack, does not come across as good cinema. Instead, it just makes you try to remember the last time you saw a Kylie Minogue music video.
10) Blood that has been spattered across walls, floors, ceilings, dripping from eaves, mixed in with groceries and generally coating every visible surface in the wake of a zombie apocalypse...that can all easily be cleaned up by tossing it all into yellow biohazard trashbags and piled in the streets. No real scrubbing required. Good to know that you don't have to, I dunno, level the place and start again. Speaking of which...
11) If a city/country/island falls prey to a zombie plague, don't move 15,000 people back into the area, allow an outbreak to occur, shoot the civilians and not the zombies, and THEN firebomb the city to the ground. JUST FIREBOMB THE PLACE UPFRONT. It'll save on paperwork in the long run. Seriously. We're the USA. We bomb foreign people's private property into the Stone Age all the time; it's, like, our day job.
I guess the overall lesson is that '28 Months Later' is totally going to have its work cut out for it... although now everyone in it can have a French accent.
.
1) No matter how badass you think you are, saying 'fubar' is an instant stamp of Dorkdom. And yes, the subject line of this post is a direct quote from one of the army men. While they're shooting screaming people running from 'zombies' (Rage victims).
2) The zombie plague could be stopped in its tracks if only more people had heterochromia. Or rather, the disease could spread unseen and thus faster if more people had different colored eyes...? Either way, these people are our answer...and our doom. Therefore, they obviously should all be locked in concentration camps/medical facilities for study/disection/target practice. For the good of the human race. Trust me.
3) The American military have a three-step plan for everything, and every plan's third step is "If steps 1 & 2 fail, exterminate absolutely everyone." That includes unarmed civilians, children and even other members of the military.
4) The military really has no idea what "Emergency Safe Zone" means. When you lock hundreds of people in an underground room, the least you can do is make sure it doesn't have an easily broken-down back door where all the zombies are standing.
5) Kids buck authority and thereby doom the world. This may seem obvious, but it's apparently not something the military understands, since it a) lets kids into a high-risk-of-zombies zone, b) allows them to run past checkpoints into unguarded Dangerous zones, c) doesn't follow them but instead sends for backup that takes twenty (28?) minutes to get there, and d) doesn't confiscate their possibly-infected belongings. Hey, army, a hint: try looking up Quarantine before you try to set one up. Also, possibly worth it to blow up bridges connecting civilian centers to Danger Zones. You know, just in case.
6) Some time in the past, the military (either British or American, possibly both) raped and killed the sister/mother of the director of these movies. Perhaps they also shot his dog, burned down his house and mass-murdered his countrymen. What I'm trying to say here is that the guy tends to negatively portray the military, and all (rare) saintly military personnel die horribly anyway, usually at the hands of other evil, unthinking soldiers of hate.
7) Fathers have an unerring sense of where their children are, and this persists even after contagion by a zombie-like disease. This creepy dadar allows them to instantly be wherever their children are, allowing said fathers to brutally murder their children's bodyguards.
8) Blurrily whipping the camera around, then splicing that with random clips of shrieks and confused pipe-organ-tickling, is still not as scary as slow, staggering crowds of unstoppable classic undead. However, it does make for easier cutting room decisions, and it requires far fewer takes.
9) Cutting back and forth between closeups of defunct carnival rides and long shots of refugees walking, with the cuts being in time to the mildly techno-ish soundtrack, does not come across as good cinema. Instead, it just makes you try to remember the last time you saw a Kylie Minogue music video.
10) Blood that has been spattered across walls, floors, ceilings, dripping from eaves, mixed in with groceries and generally coating every visible surface in the wake of a zombie apocalypse...that can all easily be cleaned up by tossing it all into yellow biohazard trashbags and piled in the streets. No real scrubbing required. Good to know that you don't have to, I dunno, level the place and start again. Speaking of which...
11) If a city/country/island falls prey to a zombie plague, don't move 15,000 people back into the area, allow an outbreak to occur, shoot the civilians and not the zombies, and THEN firebomb the city to the ground. JUST FIREBOMB THE PLACE UPFRONT. It'll save on paperwork in the long run. Seriously. We're the USA. We bomb foreign people's private property into the Stone Age all the time; it's, like, our day job.
I guess the overall lesson is that '28 Months Later' is totally going to have its work cut out for it... although now everyone in it can have a French accent.
.