Wednesday, June 01, 2005

28 Days Later

I heard good things about this movie, it was supposed to be frightening, had several alternate endings, and was the british take on your traditional zombie flick. So yes, I was excited to buy the DVD and watch it.

This could have been good. It started interestingly enough, with your lead character waking up to discover himself in downtown London overtaken by flesh-eating zombies. Lots of violence, running around, and occasional glimpses of news reports that suggest the total collapse of society. You gain sympathy for the father and daughter characters and desperately want them to escape. The events and people seem genuine. So far so good.

Unfortunately it goes downhill fast. Without spoiling the plot, there is a senseless death in the middle that felt very soap opera-ish and insulted my intelligence. The part with the soldiers starts alright and for a second I thought we would be able to salvage this film. But it was at this part where the story takes an incredibly unrealistic turn which blew it for me. Don't get me wrong, the battle and action scenes are fine, but they ruined the movie with this so-called plot turn. The actions of the soldiers along with Jim's (the hero) actions near the end are just totally unbelievable. The alternate script and endings available in the DVD are just as bad. I guess they ran out of ideas.

Shucks, this could have been a winner.

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars * *
Zombies 1, Humans 0

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