(Viewed 751 times since July 2007)

The Insanity Of 28 Weeks Later

28 Weeks Later is the follow up to the Danny Boyle directed "zombie" hit 28 Days Later, and deals with an attempted US reconstruction of the UK after almost the whole population is wiped out by the Rage virus.

FILM SPOILER: 28 WEEKS LATER

The film starts very well, with Robert Carlyle abandoning his wife when the house they are sheltering in is attacked, leading to a very long and tense chase scene. We then move to a US army fortified Isle of Dogs (a small island in the London docklands), where selected Brits are slowly being reintroduced to London. Carlyle's children are brought back from abroad and are soon dodging the guards(!) to investigate the rest of London. Interestingly they find their mother hiding in the their old house, a bit mental but seemingly OK. Subsequent medical examination then reveals she has an immunity to the virus that means she is still a carrier, but not foaming at the mouth, vomiting, etc.

So far, so good, but then the film goes completely off the rails. It turns out that Robert Carlyle is a caretaker who has an ID card that gives him access to all areas(!). He then sashays into the top-security US base to see his wife, who, being perhaps the only living infected person in the world, is, naturally, unguarded. Carlyle uses his magic ID card to get in and then kisses his wife, becoming infected and leading to huge numbers of people being infected in minutes (any alarms are, of course, far too late).

Chaos ensues and the US army decides to firebomb the Isle of Dogs, an interesting decision when it is later revealed that gas kills the infected just as well as bombing does. OK, the effects are cool when the island is set on fire, but surely questions will be asked as to why a large area of London was unnecessarily reduced to a smouldering ruin. Some infected people manage to escape and break through the security cordon (COME ON army guys, try a bit harder).

Our escaping heroes (the children and some random people) walk through the Greenwich tunnel across the Wobbly Bridge (aka Millennium Bridge) (landmark) over the Thames, over the Strand to Trafalgar Square (landmark) to Regent's Park. This is a fair old walk, where they have a nice sit down and wait for the helicopter to pick them up.

For an unexplained reason, the park is full of loads and loads of infected people who want to eat our heroes. It is unclear how this is the case when seemingly only a small number escaped being toasted on the Isle of Dogs and presumably they spread out over all of London. It's unlikely they tracked them.

After a ridiculous, but cool, scene where the helicopter pilot decapitates lots of Rage-infected people with the blades (god forbid they would use the weapons on the military helicopter), they then agree to be picked up at Wembley Stadium (landmark) which is a HUGE (at an hour or two) walk away!

The heroes then walk to the Houses of Parliament (landmark), which is in completely the wrong direction, and a great big walk towards the place most of the "zombies" probably are. They enter a tube station and, after an interminable amount of dicking about in the dark, encounter rabid Robert Carlyle, who by an incredible turn of events both survived the fire bombing and happens to be at that tube station. After that nonsense they follow the light at the end of the tunnel (?!) to walk all the way to Wembley underground with no electrical lighting. No, really.

Whilst I will concede that film-makers often shamelessly tinker with geography to show landmarks (oo it's the Houses of Parliament again), it is particularly egregious in this film. This would be excusable if any of the second half of the film made sense.