Movie Review: 28 Weeks Later

28 Weeks Later (2007) 

Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo

Written by Rowan Joffe

Starring Robert Carlyle, Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner, Imogen Poots, Idris Elba 

Release Date May 11th, 2007

Published May 10th, 2007 

There is something horribly insidious about the creeping terror of modern horror. A creeping lack of hope and humanity. Directors like Eli Roth revel in it. Movies like Roth\'s Hostel and soon Hostel 2, Rob Zombie\'s Devil\ 's Rejects, Greg McLean\'s Wolf Creek or Alexandre Aja\'s High Tension, exist to profit from the exhibition of this newfound lack of hope and humanity.

Some have theorized a political motivation. A reaction maybe to the Bush administration\'s leadership that has bred a hopelessness for the future. He has made us less secure with his policies and this has led to hopelessness expressed as artful horror violence. I think this kind of intellectual leap of faith gives these filmmakers far too much credit.

The real fact is that these filmmakers thrive financially from out grossing, literally and figuratively, their predecessors and the lack of humanity is merely an extension of the directors, producers and studios, avarice.

The latest exhibition of this avarice comes in the sequel to the cult hit 28 Days Later. 28 Weeks Later is an ugly, hopeless exhibition of humanity at it's lowest point. While some critics perform the intellectual gymnastics necessary to find politics in this horror, all I see is the kind of lack of humanity that simply does not belong in mainstream cinema.

Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, 28 Weeks Later is a grotesque exercise in grisly violence. Robert Carlisle is the ostensible star of this mess as a father who is reunited with his children following what the American military believes is the end of the viral outbreak that devastated much of England. 28 weeks earlier the so called rage virus turned citizens into blood thirty zombies. Now the infected citizens are assumed to have all died and life is being restored to the continent.

Don (Carlisle) was one of the lucky ones. While he hid out in a farmhouse with his wife and a few other survivors, his children were safe on a trip to America. Now that he is reunited with his daughter Tammy (Imogen Poots) and his son Andy (Mackintosh Muggleton), he has some explaining to do as to what happened to their mother.

Turns out, mom didn't die at the hands of the infected. She, in fact, is of a rare breed of human who is resistant to the rage virus. When she is discovered and brought to the Americans for testing, a scientist, Scarlet (Rose Byrne), uncovers the possibility that her children may also be resistent and thus able to provide a cure for the virus.

That sounds like a hopeful plot but as played out by director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, 28 Weeks Later is just a grim exercise in Hollywood cannibalism and the lowest aspects of humanity. Where Danny Boyle\'s original 28 Days Later had a visceral artistic quality, 28 Weeks Later attempts to leech some of the viscerality of the original but fails miserably, falling back on the mere exhibitiion of the ugliest forms of violence.

This ugliness would be excusable if there were a point to it. Give us something to hang on to, a good performance, a charismatic character, or even a shred of artfulness. Unfortunately the whole effort is so slapdash that the only thing the film has to fall back on is the violence. The filmmakers simply throw a bunch of blood and guts at the screen and hope that no one notices how empty the whole thing is. Needless to say, they fail miserably.

The oppressive air of hopelessness hangs over 28 Weeks Later from the beginning and never lifts. The film lurches from piece of disturbing, bloody violence to the next. Some may argue that blood and guts violence is a hallmark of the horror genre and of course they are right. However, great horror movies have ideas behind them. The first Nightmare On Elm Street played on the fears expressed in our sub-conscious.

The Saw films deliver a complex examination of the meaning and importance of life. Jigsaw is unquestionably a villain and a psychopath but there is a deep method behind his madness. Teaching those that do not take care with the gift of life, how tenuous that gift can be is a rather deep message for your average mainstream horror film.

28 Weeks Later has some alleged political pretensions but god help me I couldn't locate them. The kind of intellectual gymnastics necessary to bring politics to bare on 28 Weeks Later are simply beyond my capacity. Instead, all I witnessed in 28 Weeks Later was the continual explication of the most vile and disturbing violence.

What was the purpose of this film? Is it meant to be entertaining? Titillating? Horrifying? If someone is entertained by this that worries me. It takes a pretty twisted mind to find this level of viscera entertaining. The same goes for those who may be titillated by this. Horrifying? Not really. The film is supposed to be tense and breathtaking but as directed the story is so hopeless and the characters so thin, what tension there is can only be wrung from the cheap plot device of children in danger.

And even the cheap trick child in danger plot fails to hold us because you never for a moment feel that director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo would have a hard time killing children in this movie.

I don\'t understand the purpose of a film like 28 Weeks Later. Hopeless, ugly, mean spirited, 28 Weeks Later appeals only to the darkest parts of the human mind. What entertainment is to be gleaned from watching human beings tear one another limb from limb? What are we supposed to take away from the oppressive hopelessness of this plot?

Movies like this and Hostel and Devil\ 's Rejects, et al, revel in the worst of humanity, the ugliness of the world recycled onto the film screen without any purpose. Can someone please explain why?