28 Weeks Later: Disjointed, But Visceral

It may be some persisting, semi-latent effect of the ADHD, but I've grown bored of writing reviews for movies I've already seen. That's not to advertise that I'm completely abandoning the initiative - I'll merely pick it back up when I feel like it again. Meanwhile, I and probably half the internet are gearing up for the imminent release of the long-awaited and much-belated 28 Years Later, and what better way to prepare than by watching its two prequels? I had to put my hand to the digital shovel and do some serious digging to find 28 Weeks Later, a movie that has slipped through the grasp of every last streaming service imaginable due to a rights war. Nevertheless, I'm a film major, and film majors have their uses. Having now seen it, 28 Weeks Later is a movie better experienced than seen, a step down in quality from its predecessor in probably every way, and more prone to meandering than moving. But that's not to say it's ineffective, and far from it. It's also one of the most visceral and intense movies I've ever seen, to the point where I briefly wondered if it was taking things too far - take that last statement how you will.

28 Weeks Later doesn't always play out the way you might expect, and this unpredictability adds weight to every choice our characters make. An undeniable freneticism sets in when mistakes are made, scenarios go sideways, and the infected come knocking. Decisions become cold, and situations become dire. 28 Weeks Later can be incredibly visceral and even believable, a movie that makes many respectably bold decisions in its first half. Nevertheless, it doesn't always have the presence of mind to follow through with its big swings, to know what to do or where to go with these decisions. The setups of the movie are great, but as intense as the payoffs were, they're also hopelessly forced and clumsily handled. For as obvious as it is that zombies are eventually going to run all over the place once more, 28 Weeks Later has a hard time finding a good excuse to make that happen, abandoning a lot of things that were working for it in the first half in favor of a more spectacle-centric but disorganized and disjointed action-horror.

Oftentimes, watching this movie feels a lot like watching some great scenes from great films out of order, though I would be out of line to refrain from acknowledging that its action and suspense sequences are top-notch. From a high-octane, frantic escape from the infected on the outskirts of London to a suspenseful night-vision-lit foray into the London Underground to an absolutely merciless code red where soldiers are ordered to turn on those they're protecting and then firebomb their now-very-unsafe safe zone, it can't be said that 28 Weeks Later doesn't know how to thrill. And thrill it does - over and over again.

The bottom line is this: I have conflicting feelings about this movie. On one hand, it's an undeniably intense experience that should leave you feeling a bit shaken. On the other hand, its patchwork plotting can't match this intensity. 28 Weeks Later experiments with a lot of bold narrative decisions, but loses its grasp of its own story when it starts to run out of ideas on where to go with those choices. It might be too harsh to say that this movie gives up, but note that the operative phrase is might be. Nevertheless, the vision of 28 Weeks Later is jarring, and it features more than enough well-executed thrills and chills to please both action and horror fans up and down the board. With one or two notable exceptions, this movie accomplishes what it sets out to do, and maybe it's unfair for me to demand more of it, though I could never outrun the sense that it had so much more to give.

I'll see you all in 27 years and some change.

28 Weeks Later - 6/10

Leviticus 26:37-42