28 Weeks Later

28_weeksrating-4.0For all their talk of Grindhouse's reinvention of the exploitation style (or, more likely, their feeble attempts to mimic it on a $70 million budget), Tarantino and Rodriguez came up with a day-glo pile of shit forty stories tall. It was their temple built to retardation and featured not a whit of the low-rent style the few good movies they were paying homage to had in their heyday.

A movie like 28 Weeks Later comes along and shames them utterly, showing them how the modern exploitation film has progressed, how a small budget can now wrench excellent effects and fantastic stylistic touches from very little, and how good a fucking gory pseudo-zombie film can be, as opposed to the wretched abortion they birthed into the world.

Bloody exploitation comes of age and is very mature in this well-thought-out reversal of 28 Days Later. While the original was a restrained and insular character drama about finding your way and yourself after a disaster, moving from a scope of tight bleakness toward eventual hope, the sequel is its negative. Opening with a rememberance of the dark and savage past, 28 Weeks Later continues quickly with a brighter world, devoid of its previous horrors, where a guilty father is left to reclaim his two children and rebuild society in London.

But, of course, things are not that simple and, very quickly, things go terribly wrong and the Rage is back. Spreading quickly, the American military, in charge of restoring London, attempts to stamp out the illness with as much force as possible, which goes about as well as you would imagine.

Every turn leads to more death as the children try to escape, carrying with them the secret that may stop the disease. Their army guardians drag them across the bleak and bloody landscape of the city and the nihilistic film moves into its final act of dark fatalism.

Featuring a visceral brutality hinted at more in the intellectual attitudes of its predecessor, 28 Weeks wreaks bloody havoc and uses well its vibrating handheld feel to restrain the audience's view of the diseased humans that double for movie monsters. The film moves as fast as its would-be zombies and its 90-odd minute running time is pure thrift of activity, every moment feeling as full of purpose as possible. The style is as good as any horror movie in recent years and, despite its wealth of jump-scare moments and bloody thrill-ride tone, its heart is still as intelligent as its originator.

Many will surely heap accolades that will make it seem like Citizen Kane or tear and rend at the movie's flesh in angry retribution for not being directed by Danny Boyle or exactly like the original or some other stupid fucking thing. I will not be one of these. The movie was excellent, but it's very different. It's very good, but it's not the best film ever. Nor is it bad in any way. Not for the squeamish, surely, but anyone who tells you anything other than that this movie is a well-crafted film is a shithead.

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