I saw the initial entry of this franchise in theaters a great many years ago. I was a dedicated movie fan but I was nowhere near as informed on as many things as I am now. I was young. I didn’t know Danny Boyle well. I was just engrossed in zombie culture at the time and I was eager to check out 28 Days Later. It had a lot more male nudity in it than I was prepared for at that time. And I say that because there wasn’t a lot of male nudity in that movie. There’s definitely some. And it was unanticipated. But whatever that first offering contained, this film put to shame in short order. The reason I’m being very up front about that is because there’s more penises in this movie than frights. Or value.
It should also be notated that I didn’t have a lot of desire to actually watch this film. It made the list more because it’s new than because I had been wanting to see it. From the first trailers I saw when it was in full swing promotion, there was no lingering 28 anything I was looking to satisfy. I didn’t really even want to spend 28 seconds watching the trailer. I was a bit surprised that they were able to resurrect the franchise after such a long time. After reading up on it while watching, I now know a lot of that had to do with who owned which piece of the franchise. Probably also why the physical media community went so nuts last summer noting in a number of video posts that the original blu rays were out of print at that time anyone who had one was some kind of low level celebrity. But now they started making them again. So that fanfare is gone. Fans of the franchise are no longer any kind of special. Just a bit daft for having made such a big deal about it in the first place.
I don’t want to just be unkind to this movie. There are some mildly redeeming pieces to it. Not many, in my estimation, but that’s why I wanted to be up front with the revelation that I don’t think I’m really the principle audience for these films anymore as it is. I enjoyed the first and second outing when they were new. Even revisited them years later. They were enjoyable. But I’ve since divorced myself nearly entirely from the zombie collective. It was a stage in my life where I really enjoyed just about any outing that could be made where the dead rose. I went and saw “Land of the Dead” as part of my bachelor party, which was clearly a good time had by all. But over the years, I’ve found the idea of survival in the wake of a global event such as a zombie apocalypse is just too depressing to find any emotional value in and the gore was never why I was in attendance in the first place. When you add in the amount of saturation the subgenre was a party to over time, it’s just too much all around. I couldn’t latch on to survivors because it became less about championing survival and more about playing with your emotions in a gamble as to who makes it out alive. There were pieces that got better. The makeup and practical effects have soared in recent decades when it came to the zombie flick. I will say that remnants still stick with me. The horror comedy stylings of Shaun and Zombieland are on the shelves. I also have some of the classics like the first two Return of the Living Dead installments. But aside from the ruins of a once great zombie affiliation, I’ve walked away from that style of horror for the most part. And I know, 28 days, weeks, and years are not technically “zombies”. But it was an interesting distinction in the first one. At this point, I don’t even know that there are rules anymore and without some kind of structure, the whole thing falls apart.
My first big problem with the movie is why do they have to be nude. It’s not that I’m trying to be a prude here. And i get that it’s been 28 years. There’s a piece of that where if I was reduced to animalistic survival over 28 years with no ability to launder my garments, they’d probably just wear right off me in the same fashion. But that’s kind of my problem, adjacently. It’s been 28 years since the outbreak took it’s last stroll in the limelight. The people in this movie do not strike me as folks who were around 28 years ago. Not that they are all children, but they would have had to be relatively young 28 years ago to be middle aged zombies now. I suppose if they were kids when they contracted the disease, and somehow managed to survive for the last 3 decades, which I’m still not entirely sure how that was possible in general, then maybe they were wearing children’s clothes that they just outgrew. I mean, this isn’t my primary problem with it, but it’s the means by which I begin to unravel the mystery of just who these zombies are and what are they doing here 28 years later? The premise seems to be that we’re just supposed to accept that they are and that they’re still tremendously spry and they’ve found a way to become tribal in nature. Additionally, we’ve had the rise of Alpha zombies, which implies a power structure to their organization, another feature that seems outside of the operating system of the “Rage Virus”. I know that was present in “I Am Legend” and it was just as weird then as it is now. I don’t feel like this is a nitpick really. These zombies are the lifeblood of this franchise. If they die off then that’s it. Gone. I know they need them to continue surviving for the films to make sense. But that was their derivation from the onset. By not actually being undead risen, they are just human people with a virus that makes them mimic the traditional zombie ideology. If they are uniquely human, they require the basic human needs to survive. They KIND of touched on this by implying that these rage monsters are subsisting on worms and deer and fish now. Which also seems counterintuitive since there’s a massively unrestrained deer population as well. So I don’t know. It’ just a lot of confusion that should be easily squared away up front if the story is well made. Saying zombies just survived on their own for the better part of a half century seems lazy and unrealistic.
I’d also be a little remiss if I didn’t visit a really pivotal part of the second half of the movie. So this is your spoiler warning. I’m about to ruin something that is just pretty dumb on it’s own. There’s a pregnant zombie. Yup. Full on pregnant zombie. Now if this was 28 days or maybe even 28 weeks later, I can buy that. Totally in play. 28 years later? Much harder pill to swallow. Now I get that maybe a lady WAS pregnant and turned into a zombie. But she’s got the no clothes thing going on. I don’t think these zombies just became nudists because it warmed their souls and allowed them to commune with nature. If we are saying they just eventually ditched their clothes because it became superfluous to their animal nature then fine. But there is also no correlation to them becoming organized in their animalistic nature. The terror came from their unrelenting bloodlust and sheer numbers. The fact that the virus spread so effortlessly through a busy train terminal in the first movie was horrifying. It rolled through like a tsunami of carnage and turned the masses into vicious, violent, and virulent within moments. The inescapability of it was a nightmare. Survival wasn’t just a longshot. It was near impossible. It worked. But here we are, sometime later. For the zombies to be thriving the way they seem to be in 2030, there almost has to be a structure or it just seems unlikely. There’s too many natural occurrences that would have dwindled the populations considerably. I know evolutions would purport that it’s a dual case of survival of the fittest but the line of demarcation came in cognitive functionality. Zombies were rage filled vessels that either tore you apart or converted you straight away. There really wasn’t a middle ground. For them to behave the way they did in this movie with no real explanation, it makes it a pill a little too hard to swallow and for the movie to really be viable, you have to swallow that pill. I just couldn’t in the end and I think it’s why I struggled so vehemently with the majority of this film.
The last piece I’ll attack is the character of Spike. I’m not going to get into the whole story because it would take me too long. I know it would strengthen my points on why I hate him, but I think you’ll still get the reasoning regardless of exposition. The high notes are that Spike is 12. His dad is Jaime and his mom is Isla. His dad takes him back to the main island of the UK to go on his first hunt and get some zombie kills under his belt and make him a man. Some things go awry but that was necessary for us to learn how these new zombies work, namely the emergence of Alphas. Spike’s mom, Isla, is sick. Bad. Spike finds out that there may be a doctor surviving on the mainland and is desperate to get his mom better. There’s a sweetness and a nobility in his desire to help cure his mother. I’ll at least give him that. But outside of that, he’s a piece of shit. He starts out the movie too terrified to be of much use to his dad on their hunt. Several times he either needlessly hesitates and puts them in harms way or he’s just useless in being able to do much of anything. Like running. That’s important. And he’s really, really bad at it. Additionally, his plan to get his mom better is super selfish. To create the distraction to allow him and his mom to leave their mini island, he sets the general store on fire. That’s their main storehouse of goods that are tremendously scarce. I get that you want to help your mom. Totally do. I get that you’re 12 and don’t understand how gigantic of an asshole you might actually be right now. But you are. You’ve screwed over the whole village. And you suck at life. It’s the selfish, shitty, kid who ruins everything for everyone else thinking he’s doing something noble plot device. I hate this. It’s a lazy and frustrating vehicle by which to create drama and tension. He’s a shitty character and I don’t like him. I’m actively cheering for an Alpha zombie to rip his head and spine out through the majority of the movie.
In addition to this stupid protagonist, he incredibly lucky. Somehow he put on a brave face for his mom, that’s great. But he’s not gotten some jolt of skill or ability. He’s not a much better shot or hunter. He’s 12 and he’s never left his island until that day. And he messed that up too. But all of a sudden he’s supposed to be leading this valiant trek to save his mother. Spoiler alert number two: He doesn’t. She has cancer and super dies. It’s meant to be heartfelt and dramatic. It’s not. It negates the entire side quest of the second half of the movie. But somehow through it all, Spike becomes an incredible survivor. Over like 2-3 days. That’s it. By the end of the movie I think he’s been on his own for like a month. Find any 12 year old alive today. Put them in a small town with actual resources and they’ll be dead in less than a week because they are stupid and they are 12. I know this kid was raised in a post apocalyptic society, but in the words of George Bluth, “He was just such a turd…” The first night, he falls asleep on watch. Almost dies. How does he survive? His cancer ridden mother has a moment of lucidity and mama bears a big fat zombie, preventing it from eating her kid. She seems to have completely forgotten what she did by the next morning. The next day, they are running from zombies in a field and get pinned down in a gas station and are about to die, cue a Swedish navy man who saves the day. Spoiler alert 3: he does get his head and spine ripped out of his body by an Alpha. He’s just there to save Spike and his mom when they get pinned down a second time. There’s no real reason he’s there. There’s just a pack of these Swedes who are introduced in a scene so we know they are there. The rest of the soldiers all get demolished and Erik is the only one that makes it out a live. For a while. Then he dies too. Erik did not deserve to die. He wasn’t great but he was at least handy. Spike survived though. Shitty ass Spike. Whatever. Eventually he gets his third strike of luck-ning when Ralph Finnes shows up and Spike and mom barely avoid being ripped apart by Samson, the aptly nicknamed Alpha that Dr. Kelson, Finnes, has dubbed such due to his similarity to the Biblical counterpart. That’s 3 times Spike’s ineptness is outweighed by fortune. Not a solid means of story development in my book.
Ralph Finnes is the only redeeming part of this movie. I, personally, thought he would be in it a good deal more. The trailers made him seem like he might be the leader of a cultish faction bent on cleansing the land of the zombies to make way for some made up lizard deity they’d all started worshipping. But he’s not. He’s just a doctor with a penchant for latin phrases and pearly white skull decorations. He’s got an air of sophistication to him, despite looking very much like a crazy person, that overwhelms you. I think it’s because everyone else in the movie is so incredibly useless and here is this one person who seems like they can actually be of some use. He ends up diagnosing Isla with cancer and euthanizes her benevolently. This is the big dramatic conclusion before the finale of the film. Spike brought his mother to be healed and instead she’s dead. It was going to happen either way. This put a pleasant little spin on it for everyone. Doesn’t make Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s character of dad look all that great. But I don’t care because they should all be ripped apart by an extremely well endowed, and entirely nude Alpha zombie like Samson. That’s what should have happened all throughout this movie. Everyone should have their heads and spines ripped out by a giant crazy man covered in blood, hair, probably feces and sporting a massive dong. They put it out there and you just have to deal with it.
So then there’s the conclusion. I’m not even getting into the baby they pick up along the way. Remember that pregnant zombie? Yeah, she gives birth to a normal baby somehow. “The magic of the placenta” is quipped by crazy Dr. Kelson and that’s apparently what we’re going with. I’m also pretty sure it’s implied that Samson is the one who impregnated her and is pissed that they killed his zombie chick after stealing her baby. It’s a whole thing. Spike drops the baby off mysteriously at his home island with a note telling his dad to take a hike and that he’s totally good to go live on his own as a 12 year old in zombie country on his own. Great. Do that. Be dead in a week. I do not care. I wanted him dead the whole movie. I’m certainly not seeing a sequel to this which they definitely left it open for in the end. There’s a callback to the opening of the movie. It opens with an introduction to Jimmy. We get one or two nods to him being a thing throughout the movie and then he shows up with his band or Aryan Ninjas at the end to stylistically beat up zombies in a twisted sort of way. By that point I was just happy it was over.
This movie was only briefly not horrible for me and that’s when Ralph Finnes was on screen. I think the sequel coming out next year seems like it might be based more on that character but I’ll probably never know because this movie was just 2 hours of horseshit. It was honestly quite devoid of zombie elements. These new zombies aren’t even representative really of what they once were. There’s no flood of victims meant to overwhelm the crowd. It’s just a smattering of naked crazy people living in the woods and they attack people. I don’t even think you need the rage virus for that. I think if you’re naked and in the woods just living life, you’re probably cool with hunting people as is. The characters were unlikable and the story was gibberish with horrible plot points that served itself entirely. I couldn’t recommend staying away form this nightmare more. If you’re a fan of the franchise, I’m guessing you were excited to revisit this world but I can’t imagine this was what you were hoping for. If it was, then good for you, I guess. I just can’t imagine ever being appreciative of such poorly executed drivel with no real heart. If they’d have utilized the masterful nature of Finnes more in general it would have been much better. The sprinkling of his general likeability and professionalism shone brightly from the pile of excrement the rest of the movie was for me. But that’s just me and my opinion. I thoroughly did not enjoy this movie in the least. I gladly give it a 2.0 our of 10 because it’s just pointless. The 2 points it gets are all because of Ralph Finnes and he could have easily carried this movie much higher if it was written better. There truly was a much better movie buried in this. Nicholas Cage made a very similar kind of film that I reviewed last year, “Arcadian”. It was much better executed than this one and I didn’t love that movie. But it shines far brighter than this with a much better presented story and characters. I can’t wait to get the taste of this atrocity out of my cinematic mouth and watch something different tomorrow. I’m very eager to catch you on the flip side this time.
