28 Weeks Later

An excellent sequel to 28 Days Later.

I saw the first movie, 28 Days Later, and I thought it was a refreshing change from the "Living Dead" zombie movies where zombies were slow moving and stupid. Actually the zombies in 28 Days Later are still stupid. Let's say you are a guard in a prison with the keys to each cell. If you got infected, you would try to reach thru the bars. You would be so overcome with the rage, that you forget that you have the keys to every cell and the prisoners would be safe.

The virus is called the rage-virus and takes about a minute to fully infect you. The transformation is quite violent as you have spasms, blood vessels burst in your eyes and they turn red and you vomit blood. Once infected your only goal in life it to kill anyone who isn't infected.

I'm not sure why the zombies don't turn on each other. In Shaun of the Dead they were able to fool the zombies by acting like them. I wonder if that would work on these Zombies. You just need be drooling large amounts of blood and go into a rage chasing people.

Can the zombies work together? Can a zombie eat normal food? Can they drive a car? Shoot a gun? Oh so many unanswered questions.

I wonder if you could out-run the average zombie if you were really a good runner. They are limited by their own bodies after all. They are not the un-dead. They are simply infected with a virus which makes them very pissed off. I'm wondering if a virus-infected fat-guy who hasn't run in 20 years would give himself a heart-attack and die.

With the "living dead" zombies you had to destroy the brain but these zombies can starve to death, bleed to death and suffer from anything a normal person suffers from.

I had some problems with this movie. When they found the woman still alive in the red-zone, they brought her into the secure area. They also did not keep her guarded.

The island was also easily escapable. Nobody was allowed to exit the island yet the child and his older sister easily passed guards to escape.

I hate it when a movie relies on false scares and there are dozens of them in this movie. The scares don't happen when you expect them but they also happen when you don't expect them. Imagine someone sitting behind you in the theater who jumps up and screams in your ear at random times. That's what it was like. I'm more startled than scared and this movie startled me about a dozen times. I found that method of scare to be annoying.

There are some people that are not affected by the virus but can still be carriers. An examination of their blood under a microscope shows what appears to be blood cells being aggressive with other blood vessels. It is kind of a micro-world of what happens in a real life. The blood vessels are in a rage.

There was a scene where some kind of smoke was used to kill the zombies. They never explained what it was but I'm guessing it's some poisonous gas that would kill humans and zombies alike.

I love the music in this movie. During the first zombie attack, the music really amplified my feelings. It was used in a few other places in the movie. The volume gets turned up really loud and gets your heart pumping really fast.

There is not a lot of gore in this movie. I was expecting gore but besides seeing a lot of blood, there was not the typical limbs being torn off, guts being torn out, brains splattered, etc.

The characters in this movie had hard decisions to make. The zombies are about to get your wife … what do you do? Run or try to help her? Your little brother may turn into a zombie, do you run or do you stay with him? The infection has suddenly spread to the civilians. Do you kill everyone or just try to kill the zombies? You are a rooftop sniper shooting zombies in a crowd of running people. How do you know which ones to shoot? Decisions, decisions …

This movie has a great visual style. The acting was good. The story was good. I just wish the scares came from suspense instead of random screaming in my ear.

If there is a sequel it should be called 28 Years Later. I'd go see it because rage-zombies are actually quite scary.

My wife was too scared to see this movie with me. I tried to show her my review but the three pictures I included were all too scary for her to even look at. It goes without saying that you have to enjoy being scared at the movies to enjoy this movie. I often see people (woman especially) covering their faces to hide from the horror. I have never done that. I guess you can still enjoy a horror movie with your eyes closed. You cannot escape the sound unless of course you're deaf ... which my wife is.