28 Weeks Later
I wasn’t particularly grooving on the idea of a 28 Days Later sequel without Danny Boyle at the helm, but when the local reviews came in as raves, I got on board and I’m glad I did. Got to give it up for a sequel that takes the world of the original in a new direction, rather than simply trying to revisit all the signature moments of its predecessor. This one sets aside the eerie idylls of the first one in favor of more sustained action and carnage. Both the slow build, where you know it’s all going to go horribly wrong and are waiting to see when and how the shoe drops, and the sustained fleeing are handled adroitly. The extremely coincidence-averse might quibble with one notable detail of the climax. It does not violate my coincidence meter, in that the Somewhat Unlikely Occurrence is not a contrivance necessary to the resolution of the story, but simply ups the emotional resonance.
It reminded me why I’m fond of the zombie sub-genre (apart from the brain eating, of course): that the roots of its unease are inherently political. Zombies are such a flexible framework for social commentary.
(Other movie monsters and the variety of unease they evoke:
Kaiju: environmental
Frankenstein: spiritual
Vampires, werewolves, mummies: sexual
Not sure where ghosts fit in this matrix. They may just be ghosts, the way sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Maybe that’s why there are comparatively few top-drawer ghost movies.)