Brains! Brains!
My ongoing obsession with post-apocalyptic disaster movies continues unabated. This past weekend a friend and I watched 28 Weeks Later, the sequel to one of my favorite movies, 28 Days Later. The premise of both films is that the entire island of Great Britain has been infected by a virus known as rage. Wait, it reads better if you call it RAGE, and it even helps to say it out loud in a devil voice, or at least a bronchitis voice. That makes RAGE sound scary, which it is.
Symptoms of RAGE include reddening of the eyes, loss of coherent speech, severe mood shifts, aversion to daylight, uncontrollable twitching, neglect of proper hygiene, spontaneous ejection of blood from the mouth, an overwhelming urge to savagely murder any person not infected with RAGE, and mild heartburn. Those infected should refrain from operating heavy machinery or using motor vehicles.
It's kind of like restless leg syndrome but with more killing.
Anyone unlucky enough to contract RAGE will exhibit symptoms in under five seconds. It doesn't take long for the virus to turn its victim into a homicidal zombie maniac. Though I lack the biomedical training to accurately comment on this it seems to me that this is a little fast. Don't viruses usually have to reproduce a zillion times in your body before they start to mess with you? I don't know. Sounds like a question for my scientist brother. He knows all sorts of shit like that.
One of the great things about the films is that these aren't your grandpa's homicidal zombie maniacs. These are zombies of a different breed than their lackluster, stiff-jointed, brain-eating cousins of lore. They are fast, sporty, aggressive and driven by a bloodlust that is unrivaled in the world of zombiedom. Truly, they are zombies of the Gatorade Generation for the Gatorade Generation.
Anyway, after the virus is released accidentally by an unnamed animal rights group (they were liberating the chimpanzees on which the virus was developed*) it rapidly spreads throughout the population of London and quickly to the rest of the Great Britain. The first film tells the story of a bike messenger who wakes up in a hospital after twenty-eight days in a coma to find the city of London completely abandoned. He soon discovers that things aren't so simple and bands together with other survivors to make do in a world gone to restless leg syndrome hell. It's scary in the good way and was shot on digital handheld cameras, giving it a more realistic, almost low-budget documentary feel, which adds to the intimacy you develop with the characters throughout the film.
The sequel, 28 Weeks Later, is about a botched attempt to repopulate the island after all the infected have supposedly starved to death. A child with two different colored eyes may hold the key to solving the RAGE problem, as he is the son of a woman who appears to be infected but is not exhibiting symptoms. She is a carrier. Unfortunately she gets offed by her husband after he accidentally gets infected and goes on a fairly predictable zombie rampage, infecting and killing others along the way. There's lots of running and screaming and some explosions and military dudes and dark hallways. No intelligent robots, however, but I wouldn't expect such a thing in a zombie movie, although it would have been nice...(hint hint producers of 28 Months Later!)
Whatever. It was a pretty bland sequel, all in all, suffering from many of the things that make sequels the under-performing siblings they tend to be: predictable, slightly corny, more of the same. It was the TV dinner version of the first movie and was entertaining in a similarly vacuous way. I give it a C+, which sounds a lot scarier if you say it in a devil voice, or at least a bronchitis voice.
Damn, wrote too much. I was going to make this entry about my obsession with post-apocalyptic movies and other cultural consumables. Cormac McCarthy's The Road comes to mind. An exciting subject, I know. I'll get around to it sooner rather than later. After all, none of us can be sure how long this pre-apocalyptic world is going to last.
*Lesson for you burgeoning extremists animal rights groups: always check the apes for zombie viruses before letting them out of their cages.
Symptoms of RAGE include reddening of the eyes, loss of coherent speech, severe mood shifts, aversion to daylight, uncontrollable twitching, neglect of proper hygiene, spontaneous ejection of blood from the mouth, an overwhelming urge to savagely murder any person not infected with RAGE, and mild heartburn. Those infected should refrain from operating heavy machinery or using motor vehicles.
It's kind of like restless leg syndrome but with more killing.
Anyone unlucky enough to contract RAGE will exhibit symptoms in under five seconds. It doesn't take long for the virus to turn its victim into a homicidal zombie maniac. Though I lack the biomedical training to accurately comment on this it seems to me that this is a little fast. Don't viruses usually have to reproduce a zillion times in your body before they start to mess with you? I don't know. Sounds like a question for my scientist brother. He knows all sorts of shit like that.
One of the great things about the films is that these aren't your grandpa's homicidal zombie maniacs. These are zombies of a different breed than their lackluster, stiff-jointed, brain-eating cousins of lore. They are fast, sporty, aggressive and driven by a bloodlust that is unrivaled in the world of zombiedom. Truly, they are zombies of the Gatorade Generation for the Gatorade Generation.
Anyway, after the virus is released accidentally by an unnamed animal rights group (they were liberating the chimpanzees on which the virus was developed*) it rapidly spreads throughout the population of London and quickly to the rest of the Great Britain. The first film tells the story of a bike messenger who wakes up in a hospital after twenty-eight days in a coma to find the city of London completely abandoned. He soon discovers that things aren't so simple and bands together with other survivors to make do in a world gone to restless leg syndrome hell. It's scary in the good way and was shot on digital handheld cameras, giving it a more realistic, almost low-budget documentary feel, which adds to the intimacy you develop with the characters throughout the film.
The sequel, 28 Weeks Later, is about a botched attempt to repopulate the island after all the infected have supposedly starved to death. A child with two different colored eyes may hold the key to solving the RAGE problem, as he is the son of a woman who appears to be infected but is not exhibiting symptoms. She is a carrier. Unfortunately she gets offed by her husband after he accidentally gets infected and goes on a fairly predictable zombie rampage, infecting and killing others along the way. There's lots of running and screaming and some explosions and military dudes and dark hallways. No intelligent robots, however, but I wouldn't expect such a thing in a zombie movie, although it would have been nice...(hint hint producers of 28 Months Later!)
Whatever. It was a pretty bland sequel, all in all, suffering from many of the things that make sequels the under-performing siblings they tend to be: predictable, slightly corny, more of the same. It was the TV dinner version of the first movie and was entertaining in a similarly vacuous way. I give it a C+, which sounds a lot scarier if you say it in a devil voice, or at least a bronchitis voice.
Damn, wrote too much. I was going to make this entry about my obsession with post-apocalyptic movies and other cultural consumables. Cormac McCarthy's The Road comes to mind. An exciting subject, I know. I'll get around to it sooner rather than later. After all, none of us can be sure how long this pre-apocalyptic world is going to last.
*Lesson for you burgeoning extremists animal rights groups: always check the apes for zombie viruses before letting them out of their cages.
posted by ET @ 3:06 PM
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