Review: 28 Weeks Later (2007)

Stars: Robert Carlyle, Rose Byrne

Budget: £15 million

Directed By: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo

The inevitable sequel to a film that was a breakthrough hit and pretty much exposed us to terrifying fast infected type zombies.
The rage virus infects you in seconds then causes you to go insane finding others to attack then infect others as they attack them too.

With a near double the budget it was a mammoth under taking by the studios and stars a lot of upcoming fresh but familiar faces. Both British and otherwise, From Idris Elba to Jeremy Renner.
How do you improve then expand on a story that was pretty unique for it's time?
Broaden it's scope then add in some variables.

Those variables make it weeks later (28) the UK is now clean and being cleaned out by NATO services. You add in immunity too. Where as it wasn't as praised the first film it was very successful still, making $64 million back on it's budget. This does not follow anyone from the end of the last film in that sense it is a different story told twenty eight weeks later.

We see the outbreak of the virus in the first few minutes of this film, we join a new family, Don (Carlyle) as the father. His wife Alice (who have two children who are thankfully out of the country at the time) they are holed up in a house when the infected strike.
Don is forced to run from the scene when the infected break in separating him and Alice. Him along with Jacob escape on a boat, though Jacob falls overboard then gets overwhelmed by infected. Don escapes as the seemingly sole survivor of the group.

Then as we see at the end of the last film the infected start to die off through starvation, then ahem.. 28 weeks later thanks to NATO intervention the reopen the UK to returning residents. Is 28 weeks long enough is that a real possibility in the real world?
We'll hopefully never know, all i know is at the moment we're in lock down over a VERY semi deadly virus, so anything more deadly or worse than that?
Who knows.

Alice's children return on one lot of survivor returns to the country, Tammy and Andy. They are reunited with Don, who has survived too, though he makes up some story about their mother so he doesn't seem so much of a dick.
When Andy is afraid (due his younger age) of forgetting what his mother looks like, Tammy and him find a way out of the quarantine zone (yeah amazing security right?). They decide to go to their old house to get some photos for memories.
While there they discover Alice, their mother is still alive but in a weird delirious state, they put down to 28 weeks of surviving alone. Soldiers break in discovering them, Alice is quarantined and the kids are sent to be berated by the leaders.

While Alice's blood is being worked on, Don feeling remorse gets in to see his wife. He's genuinely sorry for leaving Alice, as he was fearing for his life. Alice is silent and a little bewildered as Don strides around apologizing, he then kisses her.
Right at the same time scientists discover that due to some reason Alice has become the first known asymptomatic carrier. This maybe something to do with her eyes being different colours too, one brown, one blue one does show symptoms of the virus (bloodshot etc).
At this time we get Don who has just has some major fluidic transference in the shape of a french kiss with Alice. Within seconds like we've seen before, he begins to fly into a rage as the virus takes hold of his mind. He violently attacks Alice tearing into her in a violent rage, killing her he turns on the soldier just outside the room.

General Stone (the leader of district 1) orders a purge of the area along with Alice. Don has however found a way out where he starts infecting lots of people. This of course means more and more turn soon overwhelming the base. Tammy and Andy are rescued by army scientist Scarlet, the soldiers are also told to start shooting anyone infected or not.
Don seemingly slightly more in control of his actions than other infected (newer strain perhaps?) appears to follow Tammy and Andy. General Stone orders the whole area firebombed, Scarlet says the kids genetic material could hold a cure so they have to get to a chopper to get away.

The pilot says he will not take the civilians as they'll be shot down right away without getting to explain. Doyle another soldier says he's help them escape by ground to Wembley stadium. While trying to escape some nerve gas and flamethrower equipped other soldiers Doyle is burned alive when he helps Scarlet and the kids escape.
Some point later Don finds the trio, kills Scarlet then infects Don, Tammy kills him. We'll leave it there as the films well worth watching, it is more of the same as the film, you know the virus, it does take a while into the film before it resurfaces. This raises the tension of the situation a lot, it is flawed though on a few levels but if you ignore those it's a fun watch.
The movie does however end with it open ended to allow for a sequel, 28 months later perhaps?
Although this 13 years later has not happened yet, though it keeps raising it's head in the news every now and then.

THN awards 28 weeks later a solid 3 stars out of 5 with a recommendation to watch.

Review: I Spit on Your Grave Deja Vu (2019)

Stars: Camille Keaton, Jamie Bernadette

Budget: Unknown

Directed By: Meir Zarchi

wow what can I say about this film?
its a sequel no one asked for or needed.
Made by the originals director many years
after the last film.
I spit on your grave has quite a convoluted
sequence of remakes and sequels of its own
too. I think the remake has 2 sequels to it also,
the original has an unofficial sequel.
then this is a direct sequel to the original
film. Got that?
Pretty much done on a shoestring budget
I wouldn't call it micro budget, but it wasn't a big
amount.
It does star the original actress from the first movie
too. it does however have some of the worst acting
coupled with worst writing on a film I've seen in
a very long time.
I can't even be bothered to explain the movie it's so bad I don't know how I made it through the whole film, but I did. It's a massive convoluted mess of a film. One of the guys from the first film, family take revenge on the original woman's daughter, throughout the film one of the families members feels remorse and tries to help.
The daughter is the only one left at the end but there's another weird twist as the some of the other members of the town take revenge too, it's really very messed up. Not in a funny way like troll 2 either it's just BAD. 2 and 1/2 hours of bad too.

THN awards I Spit on Your Grave Deja Vu 0 out of 5 stars, really don't watch it.

Review: 28 Days later (2002)

Stars: Naomie Harris, Cillian Murphy

Budget: £8 million

Directed By: Danny Boyle

In a world where pandemic is the new normal, crazy and almost movie-like as it seems. Films like this are finding new leases of life with people.
Teasing how a virus can quickly overtake a populace and kill people, or this instance turn them in raving infected nutcases.

28 Days Later was possibly one of the first films to introduce this type of 'fast zombie' though not 100% true zombie as in they aren't dead and decaying they do like to bite and spread on the disease like our old rotten pals.

This film despite me being 20 was one of the first films in a long time to genuinely bring back the fear in me. The rate also ease at which you can be infected and change is terrifying. Also thankfully totally inaccurate, nothing in nature can infect you at the rate this does (virus wise).

This film has some of the best tunes and tracks on a soundtrack too, not something I talk about much on reviews but good music can make some situations or just a good/tense feeling to a scene. You all know the tunes I mean too, it's used in everything bleak these days. John Murphy's 'In The House' in case you've been living under a rock.

The film we see some self righteous fucknut activists freeing what they believe are poor monkey's in a testing lab. Only for self said fucknuts to be attacked by our rage infected simian friends, to then burst into rage infection themselves. We then join Cillian's character Jim's floppy penis and balls waking from a coma after some accident, lol. Bewildered he finds out he's been locked in his hospital room. Thankfully the key is slid under the door, he looks around finding no one around the place is deserted.

Getting clothed and finding his way out into London he finds the streets deserted, it's been twenty eight days since some catastrophic event has seemingly cleared the streets. Doing a little looting and pillaging himself for food etc he is attacked by infected humans.
He is saved by two other people Selena (Naomie)and her friend, they tell Jim that the virus spread rapidly and they've heard nothing from the rest of the world for weeks. Jim asks if they can travel to his parents which they agree, they find they've taken their lives. Later on Selena's friend gets infected begging to only cut the infected arm off she kills him. Explaining to Jim it moves to fast to even try to amputate, as they've tried it before.

Travelling around the pair come into contact with a cab driver Frank (Daddy Gleeson) and his daughter Hannah. They inform the two that they've received radio contact from military up in Manchester. With supplies running low anyway(which he confides in Jim) they decide to travel up there in Franks cab.
Almost there they find it hard to find the blockade, then in a spate of shit luck some infected blood falls from a dead infected person right into Franks eye. Within seconds he is spazing out turning into a rage infected. Jim has to put him down for their own sake but before he does a bullet takes Frank out. Seems that the army folk found them, they invite them all back to where they are holed up.

It already has that air of being ominous and 'to good to be true' the moment they step in the fortified mansion. This is doubled by the way the soldiers are acting including keeping infected around too. The soldiers and their leader Henry West (Christopher Eccleston) are luring women to the base in order to 'use them' as breeding tools.
Jim gets wind of this then the soldiers try to kill him, he escapes with a minor wound to the head. He manages to infiltrate the camp a bit later and frees the infected soldier he was shown earlier. All hell breaks lose as infected start to overrun the facility. Jim saves Selena and Hannah but he's turned kind of feral in his attempt to free them. Selena hesitates killing him for just a second long enough for him to say he's fine.
They escape back to Franks cab, to have one more surprise waiting for them.

I won't spoil anymore as there's a twist in that moment and then the actual films ending further on from that too. The film does have two or three alternate endings too on the DVD and BluRay also I believe when it's shown on TV now it features one of the ending after the credits, don't quote me on that though.
28 Days Later is a very strong film and a refreshing new view on the zombie genre, it's a masterwork in all areas, writing, visually and audio wise too. THN awards 28 Days Later 5 out of 5.