28 Weeks Later

[Avatar]

Better than the first? Awesome. I look forward to it.

--A

[sgt.null]

I wouldn't say better than the first. but still a very good film.

[Warmark]

I wouldn't say better than the first. but still a very good film.

Yea i'd probabley agree with that.

Still excellent though.

[Tulizar]

Rented this one the other night. As far as sequals go, this one was excellent. I was glad to see that all of the violence and gore wasn't gratuitous. There was actually a decent story with some fleshed out characters.

Can't wait for 28 months later!

[Worm of Despite]

The move felt totally uninspired to me: no memorable characters, the plot a jumble of sequences trying to top themselves, and the soundtrack ripped off the original's.

The film devolved into a mindless bloodfest, and I stopped caring what happened to the characters after about 30 minutes.

[I'm Murrin]

Rented this film on my Archos to test the movie playing, watched it today.
A few minor quibbles with it:
-That music. In the first film, it was great--it set a really intense atmosphere for the climactic scene. The piece is good in itself for those kinds of scenes, and I didn't mind much when they used it again in the opening scene of the sequel. But when it's used for every action sequence and every atmospheric aerial shot sequence, it kind of gets a bit old.
-I found the dad's ability to keep turning up where the kids were over and over a little unbelievable.
-The soldier getting set on fire was just too much like a stunt done just for the sake of the visual. They could have given him a better death scene.

On the whole, the film was pretty good. Not great, but good. A lot of the characters only turn up to get killed, and there wasn't much character development--noone had a chance to develop. There wasn't really a climax, either--the subway station bit was just more of the same. And I felt that the final scene setting up the sequel was a little cheap. It would have been truer to the original film for them to have reached help on the other side.
Still, to just sit back and watch and not think much about, pretty good.

(As for the Archos, the picture was a little dark at times, and I think it went very slightly out of sync a couple of time (might have just been my imagination, though), but altogether great picture and even better sound through the headphones.)

[matrixman]

I've been wondering about the Archos -- not that I have any intention of getting one. (Sounds like famous last words, eh?) But thanks for your thoughts on it, Murrin.

I did not go see this movie, but what you said here tells me I need not have bothered:

I felt that the final scene setting up the sequel was a little cheap. It would have been truer to the original film for them to have reached help on the other side.

So this sequel kind of "forgets" where the original left off? There is still no contact with the "outside" world? They were just running around the same neighborhood?

I really liked the original film in terms of its atmosphere and its fresh interpretation of zombies. In my mind, there few things in movies as viscerally terrifying as fast-acting zombies who can run you down. Was 28 Days Later the first movie to make zombies into fleet-footed sprint champions in contrast to the slow, lumbering monsters of old?

I had more thoughts about 28 Days Later that I remember posting in a thread on that film, but I can't find those posts now. I'm guessing they were lost in that mass Turkish hack a couple of years back. Darn it.

[I'm Murrin]

So this sequel kind of "forgets" where the original left off? There is still no contact with the "outside" world? They were just running around the same neighborhood?

Not really. The film starts with the American army facilitating the repopulation of part of London after Britain is declared free of infection. What I meant about the ending was.. well, I was going to say precisely why in this post under a spoiler tag, but it really would have ruined the film entirely if you read it, so I took it out again. I'll just say... the first film had a tone of optimism about what would happen when the infection took its course in Britain. The sequel went back on that.

[Rigel]

I just watched the original again; I can't find a thread for it, so I'm posting in this one.

I'd forgotten how good of a movie the first was. The second quickly devolved into a mindless gore-fest; not a bad movie (especially if you like horror movies that actually try to scare you rather than just showing a bunch of blood), but the first one... there's something about it that just seems so artistic. The various points made about life, purpose, and hope... really, I think the first is one of the best films of the decade.

Of course, the intro to the second movie is one of the best openings of any movie ever

[Demondime-a-dozen-spawn]

The "unbridled rage" premise of the "28" films is so much more plausible than any of those reanimated dead movies.

Not that I don't greatly enjoy Living Dead movies. Return of the Living Dead is one of the best (not to mention funniest) movies of that type I've ever seen.