28 Weeks Later (2007)

Posted on Oct 17, 2007 under "Hot", Horror, Sci-fi |

Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
Written by Rowan Joffe, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, Jesus Olmo, and E.L. Lavigne
Starring
- Catherine McCormack
- Robert Carlyle
- Amanda Walker
- Imogen Poots
- Mackintosh Muggleton
- Rose Byrne
Produced by Enrique Lopez Lavigne, Andrew Macdonald, and Allon Reich
Executive produced by Danny Boyle and Alex Garland

Given that this review is a part of Month of the Living Dead 7, the question that must be asked first is the one that’s been bandied about by every pedantic genre fanboy on Teh Intarwebs: Do the “infected” of 28 Days Later (2002) and this sequel count as zombies, and by what criteria? They’re obviously not the reanimated dead, which is the most common definition of the term; nor are they being held in a quasi-living state by voodoo rituals or some other mechanism. They don’t rot. They need to eat (although, thanks to the complete loss of behavioral control caused by the rage virus, they don’t do so). And unlike just about any zombie up until the release of the first movie, they’re fast.

But on the other hand, wherein lies the real horror of the zombie scenario? Whether by the original voodoo definition or by the model derived from George Romero and his successors, a zombie is something that once was human, but is now shorn of all vestiges of humanity. No thought. No social awareness, save the vague indifference which zombies usually hold for one another. No love or kinship or any positive emotion. A hollow shell, whose outward humanity covers a yawning emptiness where a person used to be. And worse, in most of these iterations, the zombie state is in some manner contagious; not only will a zombie kill you, but a zombie could very likely deprive YOU of your humanity, leaving you you animate but stealing from you everything that is you. A very literal fate worse than death.

I guess you can tell, by my inclusion of this movie here, that I find those arguments compelling. The scenario of these movies allows for use of all of the most powerful zombie tropes, without the mitigating distance of supernatural or sci-fi-tinged explanations. This is as close to zombies as the real world could ever get, and it’s all the scarier for that.

This movie opens during the time frame covered by its predecessor — in fact, during the 28 days skipped over to set up the first movie. Donald (Robert Carlyle) and his wife Alice (Catherine McCormack) are two of a half-dozen people who’ve taken refuge in a small country cottage, far enough outside London that, if this were a conventional zombie movie, they would be fairly safe. But the infected are fast, and can go anywhere they can run. After this group of survivors rescues a small boy on the run from his infected parents, the cottage is attacked wholesale by a dozen infected, who break through boarded windows and rip those they catch to shreds. Donald and Alice are separated in a moment of — I can’t call it “cowardice” on Donald’s part, as it may only qualify as a momentary lapse of will, or even as simple realism; whatever you want to call it, Donald turns away from her to save himself, and sees her vanish beneath the clawing hands of the infected as he only just barely makes an escape via a small motorboat on a stream. (The infected are just too heedless of their environment to be able to swim.)

As we fast-forward six months, we pass the end of the previous movie, by which time the infected are starving to death due to their simple inability to think of eating. In the weeks that follow, a US-led NATO reconstruction effort slowly lifts the quarantine and starts to clean up areas of London. By the timeframe of this movie, British expats are being brought back into London, to slowly repopulate and reclaim what they can, using the Isle of Dogs as a fortified Green Zone. Nobody expects there to be any more infected around, but there are still thousands of bodies to be cleaned up, and the military commanders are taking no chances.

(If there’s one element that mars this movie for me, ever so slightly, it’s the oblique topical references to current events — U.S. forces involved in “reconstruction,” a fortified “Green Zone,” etc. They must be intentional, and as such they would direct the viewer to look for a commentary on contemporary geopolitics, but I can’t figure out what kind of statement is being made, if any, that relates to the war in Iraq.)

Among the repatriated Brits are Tammy (Imogen Poots) and Andy (Macintosh Muggleton), the two children of Donald and Alice, who were on the Continent for a school trip when the infection hit. It’s Andy who bears the iconic mismatched eyes seen on the poster and DVD cover; its an inheritance from his mother, and the only thing he has of hers. They reunite with their father, who’s now the super-superintendent of most of the Green Zone, with an all-access pass. Huge kudos to Robert Carlyle, who fills the role of Donald with a very sincere pathos, as he constantly tries to find a way to go on while always wondering whether there really was no way to save his wife, or whether his cowardice cost her her life.

But because Tammy and Andy have no mementos of their mother, not even a photograph, they immediately sneak over the bridges to the main of London to make their way to their own house. They are, of course, tracked by the surveillance helicopters and the snipers, but aren’t intercepted until after they’ve gotten home and made a stunning discovery: Their mother is alive, and hiding in their house.

Immediately all three are taken back to the main base for quarantine, where mother Alice elicits the most interest, and not just because it’s been months since any lone survivors were found: As CMO Major Scarlet (Rose Byrne) soon discovers, Alice bears bite marks. A blood test confirms: She carries the rage virus, although she is unaffected by it — or mostly unaffected. It isn’t clear whether her withdrawn unresponsiveness is because of the virus, or the trauma of her last six months. Major Scarlet wants to study her in hopes of finding a vaccine or even a cure, but her commanding officer is adamant: If she’s a carrier, she’s an absolutely unacceptable risk.

But Donald hears that his wife has been brought in along with his kids, and uses his all-access maintenance card to bypass security and get into the lab where she’s being kept. He apologizes to her in tears, he kisses her tenderly… and that’s all it takes to start the infection propagating again.

Again, I am in awe of Robert Carlyle’s exceptional performance, though now his role is no longer heartbreaking; it’s brutal. In under a minute, he’s been transformed into a thrashing, screaming monster, bleeding from his eyes and vomiting blood. And he beats his wife to death with his bare hands in a scene that drew a cringe from even battle-hardened old me.

Nowhere in the movie do we stop for a metaphysical discussion, and I’m not complaining; no one ever wonders about the origin of the apocalyptic violence that the rage violence unleashes in the infected. Does the virus cause the destructive emotion? Or does it strip away all other conditioning and controls, laying bare the hateful, destructive chaos buried somewhere in each of us? One could make a case for a serious subtext in this scene which reintroduces the infection to England, that Donald’s murderous violence against his wife is at least in part an expression of the conflicted self-loathing he must feel at her reappearance, as he has to confront the spectre of his own cowardice.

And from there… Well, any physical structure meant to keep bad things out can unfortunately end up keeping bad things in. It doesn’t take long before the civilians in the nearest building in the Green Zone, herded into a single large room for their protection, are attacked and infected by Donald, and the virus passes through the panicked residents almost more quickly than they can run away. Inside of ten minutes, control has been completely lost by the military forces, and the rooftop snipers are instructed to start shooting every target, whether visibly infected or not.

Soon, our group of protagonists is reduced to Andy and Tammy, U.S. sniper Sgt. Doyle (Jeremy Renner of Dahmer (2002)), and Major Scarlet. The Major realizes that these children might bear whatever gene gave their mother her resistance to the virus (the green/brown eyes are a terrific visual symbol of this heredity), and that therefore their lives are the most important ones in Britain right now.

This sequel bears the distinct audiovisual hallmarks of the original. The hi-def digital video, which renders every frame crystal-clear without any motion blur, results in images that are etched almost too clean, too immediate; the effect makes the motion of the infected look like the result of caffeine saturation. Coupled with the stunning soundtrack, which eschews gaudy energy in favor of a a steady hopeless relentlessness, the aggregate effect is to put the audience almost into an altered state, in which there is no defense from the violence presented.

And the violence is intense and brutal. This is not the violence of the standard horror film, which concerns itself with the volume of red Karo syrup and the ways in which to deform latex; nor is it the violence of “torture porn” movies new or old, which play to a hidden sadistic fetish. This violence is neither casual nor lingering; it is sudden and complete and inescapable. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a movie which so drained me with its sheer demand on me.

Which is why, though I rate this film highly, I’m in no hurry to see it again; it packs a wallop and leaves a mark.