28 Time Periods Later (Danny Boyle/Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, 2002/2007/2025)

[ranaing83]

I'm a big fan of 28 Days Later, and I went into this with a combination of hope and skepticism, but this really surpassed pretty much everything I had imagined. One of the best sequels that I can remember, and for my money, one of the best horror films of the past 5 years. The movie is relentless and aside from a couple of logical inconsistencies its everything you could ask from this sort of film. I heard someone describe it as Children of Men as a full blooded horror film, and that is as good a description as you are likely to hear.

[lord_clyde]

Wow, really?

[ranaing83]

For me, 28 Days Later was all about creating an atmosphere of dread. It is a mood piece above all else, as much good horror is. 28 Weeks Later builds upon the mood of the previous film, and really expands upon it. It doesn't feel as claustrophobic but it's a more relentless film. And Fresnadillo really has a skill for creating a sense of dread as well. So, if you enjoyed Boyle's film, I say definitely give this a chance. It's not perfect, but it's one of the biggest and most pleasant surprises of the year so far.

[pemmican]

It certainly works as a film, barring a few inconsistencies - it's dark, intense, disturbing, and has a very potent subtext. I think on the level of meaning, though, the film ends up - perhaps unintentionally - arriving at an immoral and troubling conclusion, and completely reversing the politically progressive aspects of the previous film. I've developed these thoughts at length - probably too much length - here,

I realize users of the Criterion Forum are far less bovine than the IMDB crowd, but if anyone quarrels with the idea that the film is meant to reflect recent history in Iraq, do check the comments section of that post.

Would love some intelligent discussion about what happened with this film - intending to make a provocation, the filmmakers appear to have produced the most vile work of fascist filmmaking imaginable, giving a big thumbs-up to napalming civilians. I really don't see how, given the ending of the film, any other conclusion could be reached.

P.

[Cinesimilitude]

I had high expectations for this one actually, and they were blown away. Some of the plot points were very predictable, but for the most part I found myself saying "Holy shit!" a lot.

The opening is intense and the film really makes you feel for some of the main players. I'm not going to read into the Iraq connection, but the film does deal with morals being tested within the confines of a battle, and how much one is willing to obey in order to get the job done for the greater good. The editing is frantic and the scares are paced well. There is a scene in this film involving nightvision, and not since Silence of the Lambs have I been as afraid for a character as I was in this film. the fact that you can see someones face when they dont know what it looks like and have no idea what is around them is truly terrifying.

All i can really say is

Spoiler

28 months later? yes please.

[Roger_Thornhill]

Would love some intelligent discussion about what happened with this film - intending to make a provocation, the filmmakers appear to have produced the most vile work of fascist filmmaking imaginable, giving a big thumbs-up to napalming civilians. I really don't see how, given the ending of the film, any other conclusion could be reached.

Thanks for the link above, I enjoyed reading your analysis of 28 Weeks Later. My feelings on the film are a bit different than yours.

Spoiler

I thought that the film was condemning Machiavellian decisions like the American military's decision to kill everyone with ruthless methods like napalm and nerve gas in the hopes of containing the virus. The primary characters in the film are disgusted with the military's decision and an American soldier refuses to follow orders to kill everyone and attempts to lead the small group of survivors out of the green zone. Moreover, I think the film even further condemns the killing of civilians to stop the virus because the virus gets out anyways despite the Americans killing virtually everyone in the green zone. Thus to me the parallels to the Iraq War and the US' fight in the so-called "War On Terror" is not that the film condones the American military methods to serve the greater good (eliminating terrorists is paramount even if it means the loss of innocent civilians), it instead condemns that notion and that a military response only to crush terrorism once and for all is futile and could make the situation much worse. I think the film is trying to suggest that there should be other means taken when dealing with terrorism, not just guns and bombs. To me the real villian in the film is the American military, not the infected.

[Roger_Thornhill]

Would love some intelligent discussion about what happened with this film - intending to make a provocation, the filmmakers appear to have produced the most vile work of fascist filmmaking imaginable, giving a big thumbs-up to napalming civilians. I really don't see how, given the ending of the film, any other conclusion could be reached.

Thanks for the link above, I enjoyed reading your analysis of 28 Weeks Later. My feelings on the film are a bit different than yours.

[Barmy]

Yes, let's be all PC so that some of the mutants can get away and infect France. How is this film anti-American in any way, shape or form? I came away from the film thinking that the Americans had been too soft. They should have nuked London the minute Robert Carlyle went postal. Because they didn't, all of Europe is now going to die.

And the plot made zero sense. None. Nada. Nothing anyone did made any sense. Why did they leave the wife ALL ALONE? Why were people even coming back to London to begin with? Why why why.

It was fine as a popcorn flick, but that's it.

[Roger_Thornhill]

Yes, let's be all PC so that some of the mutants can get away and infect France. How is this film anti-American in any way, shape or form?

I don't think it's anti-American but more anti-US foreign policy. There are several "good" Americans in the film.

And the plot made zero sense. None. Nada. Nothing anyone did made any sense. Why did they leave the wife ALL ALONE?

I was wondering that myself and why the girl with the night vision scope was having the two children walk in front of her instead of behind?

[Barmy]

Yes, but my take is that it shows that American foreign policy isn't aggressive enough.

I also didn't understand why the helicopter dude didn't take the people when they were in the field, but maybe I just missed something.

And why couldn't the helicopter aim well enough to blow up the car when they were driving to Wembley? For that matter, how did the chick figure out how to get to Wembley? London streets are a bitch.

The plot is so nonsensical it's practically avant-garde.

[blindside8zao]

weird that people are liking this, I thought the trailers looked horrible. Might actually go see it now.

[pemmican]

I'm with Barmy. (It sounds like a t-shirt).

Bizarre that Boyle and Garland would get behind this - it's the antithesis of the previous film, which is all about defending human ties and human values against military overreaction and cold calculating pragmatism...

P.

[Nothing]

For once, I'm with Roger. The American military is the real enemy in the film, even though the individual faces within that machine are roundly humanised. At no point is it suggested that "the US should just have nuked London"; that is just is a crazy red-neck response. If the military hadn't been blindly executing everyone, it wouldn't have been necessary to fly the kids to France in the first place. But anyway, if you step outside the rather insiginficant narrative of the film, what you are left with is a cinematic impression of the horror civilians must feel in the face of the WoMD used by the US, such as white phospherous.

Yeah, there is a degree of ambiguity to the film and its interpretation, which must surely be welcomed after the overemphasised PC turgidness of the first film. The use of 35mm film is most welcome too, although you do wish they could stop shaking the camera around and reduce the shutter speed at times...

Still ultimately just a popcorn flick, of course.

[pemmican]

Mmmm.

Not sure about the function of scenes of people being caught on fire, frankly. The film DOES give the feeling of being caught in the airstrike, suffering on the ground. Before I saw where the film was ultimately going, I was admiring it a bit, for its gutsy approach to that. And it does it well, no argument.

I was also suspecting these scenes at the same time, though, because in many ways people go to movies to be STIMULATED. The desire to vicariously explore being burned to death is a desire to be STIMULATED, first and foremost. I think horror movies attract people who crave strong stimulus, frankly -- to awaken their senses, to awaken their minds, to jumpstart lethargic emotions and perceptions. The strong stimuli of painful experience in horror serves a function similar to that pain must have had in our ancestors, causing adrenaline to flow, endorphins, a rush, a quickening of the pulse. Horror movies ALSO stimulate moral thought and self-reflection, since the images in them are often troubling -- but I'm not sure that the prime desire isn't to be stimulated.

If so, could we not say that we're turning Fallujah (for instance) into a consumable, an entertainment? I'm not quite convinced enough of the moral seriousness of the filmmakers, here, to know that that isn't a fair verdict. If Ingmar Bergman had made the film, I'm sure the torched survivors flailing would be nothing but horrifying, but there's such an exploitive quality to films like this that I can't but suspect it. If the film had ended in some other way - if it hadn't seemed to imply that if he'd just killed the two kids, no further problem would be had - then I'd be less troubled. It's a provocative move, but I'm not sure it's not ultimately crass; I do not trust the motives of the filmmakers, because I do not trust the place they leave the film, the conclusion they seem to leave us to draw.

A completely different argument against the firebombing images, a variant of the old "desensitization" argument, cribbing here from my buddy/editor Adrian, who is absolutely RIGHT: they INOCULATE us, raise our body's psychic defense mechanisms to such a level that it becomes easier and more normalized to accept these images, when, for instance, we see them on the news.

In any event, it's fascinating that this film is generating such a huge diversity of response. At first I thought it was just boneheads who were going to deny the "fascist" reading of the film I and a few others are taking from it - the same people who deny a troubling racist subtext to the recent version of King Kong. But some fairly articulate people seem to be coming to the defense of this film, and seem to have come to a completely different reading of it than I have. The further I get from having seen it, I'm not so sure. It makes me wish more of my friends had seen it, or people whose tastes I trust, or at least whose opinions I find interesting. Could someone get Jonathan Rosenbaum into the theatre for this one? How about Robin Wood?

Carol J. Clover?

P.

[che-etienne]

The use of 35mm film is most welcome too...

From the looks of the trailer that certainly doesn't look like 35mm to me. It looks more like high-def, though I could definitely be wrong.

[Nothing]

Digital Intermediates have a habit of making everything look a little bit digital these days... IMDb says it was a mixture of S16mm, S35mm and HDV, which sounds odd to say the least.

[John Cope]

What I liked about this and really value is the above discussed ambiguity. I was quite surprised by it to tell the truth. Personally, I thought the airstrike sequence was startling because it did not imply a critique of any kind. It's a brute response, yes, but to a brute situation. If it resonates as some kind of knee jerk reaction that's a fair response but I would argue an irrelevant one. To get stuck on the immediate ethical implications of the act or to put it in opposition to the soldier who refuses to go along with it simplifies things unduly.

What came across most vividly to me was the sense that order was perversely fragile and tenuous and very clearly indicated as imposed and maintained by militaristic force. That kind of blunt depiction may not be nuanced but it is powerfully put forth and I give Fresnadillo credit for that. On its own terms it allows for better, richer responses by not taking up an advocacy position that is immediately legible.

One other thing. Catherine McCormack's final scene is rough, deep stuff, carrying as it does the sort of freight most movies like this never touch. Another surprise.

[Antoine Doinel]

Rented this tonight and I agree with the rest of the praise in this thread. The film does take some obvious roads at times, but Fresnadillo really stays true to the relentlessly grim nature of the original and even amps it up it a bit. While it doesn't deliver the same number of sheer jolts of 28 Days Later, the film in nearly exhausting (in a good way) as we follow these kids through what they will probably end up talking about on their therapists' couch at some time. Additionally, Frenadillo masterfully handles a couple of sequences (Code Red and the "night scope" portion at the end) masterfully, turning what could've been really video game like scenarios into really taut, finely edited pieces. Yeah, the camera could've slowed down and the over-the-shoulder stuff got a little out of hand at times but it was never distracting.

And the ending makes perfect sense as it was something I was thinking about throughout most of the movie. By air and by boat aren't the only ways out of the UK, and if the filmmakers hadn't have addressed it (though I don't think we really need another sequel) it would've been a major plot hole.

[Grand Illusion]

Just saw this. I thought it was an excellent sequel, and a damn fine film by its own merits. That's not to say the political readings aren't warranted. Personally, I saw almost every action that the US military takes as unmeasured and disproportionate to the infected. Which seems to ring extremely analogous to the current "GWOT."

If you're making Triumph of the Will, you certainly don't show the devastation and burning victims of firebombings. The film advocated (and at the very least raised the question of) "who is left to save?" In fact, the lead soldier takes out one of his own squad early on to protect civilians. Even the surveillance at the beginning is given a creepy voyeuristic approach, and the nerve gas crept villainously around corners like a coming storm.

The only way you can label this film fascist is if you are so ideological as to disagree that the military actually shows any remorse over "collateral damage." 28 Weeks Later is more mature, and it doesn't portray the military as the cackling rapist villains of Boyle's first (and otherwise superior) film. Instead, they behave as well-drawn characters do, realistically and towards their own interests.

The only part I truly disliked is the set up for a sequel at the end. If the filmmakers wanted to draw attention to the chunnel, there were a number of ways to do it rather than a throwaway epilogue.

[Lino]

I already watched this movie 3 times since I bought it and I've been showing it to some friends of mine with equally enthusiastic results. Definitely one of the better sequels to come out in a long time but I sensed this was going to happen when I knew that the guy directing it would be Fresnadillo, from Intacto fame, a film I adore.

He's off to a great, great future now, I'm sure.

[brundlefly]

Danny Boyle's 28 Years Later. Alex Garland returns to co-script.

[colinr0380]

Looks like a bit of a melding of the earlier films with a doubling down on John Wyndham-elements mixed with Garland's recent turn into gender-based rural ritual horror with Men (or going back as far as outsiders to the main community becoming its downfall that might trace as far back as The Beach). Also is that a cameo by a skeletal Cillian Murphy?!

[eerik]

Danny Boyle's 28 Years Later. Alex Garland returns to co-script.

New trailer

[Mr Sausage]

28 Years Later (Danny Boyle)

I've never seen the other two, but the trailer was good enough I went to see this one. This is a pulse-pounding, efficient thriller for, oh, 30 minutes? 45? The first act works as a self-contained unit, the man and the boy venturing out on a male right of passage, a coming-of-age ritual, that goes badly and offers just the right level of scarring to be salutary over simply traumatic. But with a loss of innocence comes knowledge, and the boy's newfound maturity is keener than anticipated. He sees now the cracks in the adult world, the hollowness inside the social bonding rituals, and his view of his city and especially his father is not what it was. Perfect. Blunt, but perfect.

The rest of the movie is a deflation. It's a meandering quest picaresque, none of whose incidents are as exciting or well constructed as the action scene of the opening. And even its motivation is shaky for all sorts of reasons--you just have to accept that the characters make their choice because otherwise there'd be no plot, rather than because it's a logical or inevitable outcome. You also have to accept that for this section to work, things just have to go swimmingly. Not 100%, but to a degree that contrasts sharply with the overwhelming danger the opening third impresses on you. At the start, excess noise is danger; by the middle, people chatter away endlessly. It's hard to square the early intensity with the sudden placidity of the last two acts. And then you have to deal not only with the intrusion of a crowd-pleasing but manipulative sentimentality at odds with the film's unsentimental world, but also the lack of a satisfying ending. The film's ending is more appropriate for the end of a second act, or the end of the third episode of a television series. As the ending to a pulse-pounding horror thriller, it's limp. I know this is meant to set up a trilogy, but the film gives up on being exciting, preferring to be low key for most of the run time after an explosive, visceral opening. How could that be other than disappointing? If form is the construction and then fulfillment of audience expectation, as Kenneth Burke has it, than the lack of a proper payoff marks the crumbling of the movie's basic structure.

Disappointing, too, is how the themes broaden out into another lesson in doctrinaire second-wave feminism. The opening did a good enough job of showing the cracks in certain kinds of male bonding. The rest is an improbable attempt to argue for the superiority of more feminine values, like gentleness, connection, nurturing, none of which make a good fit with the environment as given. It leads to a couple ridiculous scenes whose message outweighs their plausibility. We're getting social arguments in a movie that takes place almost entirely outside society, so it's hard to know where the critique is being directed exactly. Gentleness and nurturing may well be the superior values, but it's hard to see what they have to do with pure animal survival such as we spend the movie witnessing. The setting demands manly virtues. It's fine to show the limits of those virtues, which the film does. But for the filmmakers to reject them in favour of feminine virtues that the setting, as created, renders inapplicable, ie. without any identifiable use or benefit, is just daft. It's absolutism: feminine-coded virtues are good in an absolute sense, not because they offer better outcomes in a particular context. Virtues, male or female, ought to be provisional, and I don't get the sense the film agrees.

Oh, and the ending of the film has the sharpest, most inexplicable change in tone I've ever seen in a movie made outside of Hong Kong. It's utterly bewildering. I don't know what the filmmakers were going for, but we go from two hours of dead earnestness to people in blonde fright wigs doing kick flips over zombies set to jaunty rock music. It's bananas. Are the filmmakers giving us the middle finger? I stayed to the end of the credits just in case there was something, any little thing, to explain that scene.

The first 35-45 minutes would make an amazing pilot for a tv show. Just terrific. The rest was meh.

[Monterey Jack]

Oh, and the ending of the film has the sharpest, most inexplicable change in tone I've ever seen in a movie made outside of Hong Kong. It's utterly bewildering. I don't know what the filmmakers were going for, but we go from two hours of dead earnestness to people in blonde fright wigs doing kick flips over zombies set to jaunty rock music. It's bananas. Are the filmmakers giving us the middle finger? I stayed to the end of the credits just in case there was something, any little thing, to explain that scene.

Tell me about it. Especially following the emotional gut punch of Jodie Comer's plot arc, it was a confounding choice, like the directorial reins were suddenly handed over to Robert Rodriguez, turning 28 Days Later abruptly into Planet Terror. People online have been saying "It's a British thing", but that doesn't make it any less jarring. For 98% of the movie, I thought it was utterly fantastic, but the last two minutes really took the shine off what preceded it. The only thing I can think is...

Spoiler

The lead kid picking up a Power Rangers toy at the beginning of the film, before putting it back, indicating that his encounter with the color-coordinated ninja zombie slayers was just how he was imagining the encounter with the survivors...?