28 Weeks Later (Widescreen Edition)

This disc is Region 4 and the special features (or lack thereof) may not be on DVD’s from different regions, you have been warned.

It wasn’t that long ago that the zombie movie was thrust back into the limelight, not since the days of Romero had the flesh eating villains of horror been given such notoriety. Zombie movies are my absolute favorite movies of all time (with Monster movies coming in a close 2nd) I guess I have the Resident Evil video games to thank for my love for out cannibalistic counterparts.

So along came 28 Days Later, an instant classic if ever there was one, violently bleak (aside from the off beat ending), it was a welcome breath of fresh air for our genre.

The inevitable sequel was soon announced…

28 Weeks Later kicks off kind of where 28 Days left off, with the last infected long since dead, the empty streets of London are gradually brought back to life as the United States attempts to re-populate the crippled country.

Don, a widowed husband whose wife is downed in that fucking amazing opening scene (…or so we thought!), is reunited with his son Andy, and his daughter Tammy at the rehabilitation facility outside of the abandoned city. Shit hits the fan and eventually the rage virus makes its way home (hee hee, that was in all honesty unintentional) and BAM, shit hits the fan yet again in one hell of a breakout scene. What follows is the Aliens of 28 Days Later, worthy of every tidbit of praise it has even and will ever receive, and considering how this biatch ends (I don’t know how they got there but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t cool) I eagerly await the next sequel because I can only see it getting bigger and better.

Unless you are mentally retarded you will have probably guess that I love this movie, and you would be very, very, very correct. 28 Weeks kicks ass in a major way, it’s bigger, better and badder then any horror or action flick of late.

The acting is above par, Robert Carlyle plays a double role as father (tell me you don’t feel for the guy in the opening) and infected, and let me just say, never has an infected looked as killer as Carlyle. There’s even a somewhat part for a token black guy (who DOESN’T get killed! It’s a sign of the coming apocalypse!) and he’s played by Harold Perrineu (so that’s what happened to Michael after he got off the island!).

And finally I find a movie with young actors I DON’T hate, they are Imogen Poots and Mackintosh Muggleton and I swear to god I didn’t make those names up

Oh the gore, the gore of it all. Hmm…how to describe…wet! It is bloody as all hell, each major effect is memorable. If this picture doesn’t give you a genre induced erection then you don’t deserve to be here;

A few plot holes aside, 28 Weeks Later is just as good as its predecessor, if not better, it’s just as dark and just as shocking whilst still having some subtle little statements to make if you’re paying attention. Jeremy Renner said it best; “…it’s everything the first one was, on crack.”

Okay so now we reach the special features.

Normally I don’t go into talking about the audio options on a DVD but I have to do it here because of the films soundtrack. If you have one, watch this on your 5.1 surround sound setup because if you don’t then you are depriving yourself of one of the greatest soundtracks of all time, the music in 28 Weeks is as big a part of it as the infected!

Kicking the disc off is an Audio Commentary with Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (director and one quarter screenwriter) and Enrique López-Lavigne (producer and also one quarter the screenwriter…I think. There’s a screenwriter credited as E.L. Lavigne, it’s only logical people!). Anyways, the commentary is a little bland as far as being a good time to listen to, it is informative but like many Frenchmen on commentaries they just don’t have any life!!! Thankfully they knew their shit and kept it going, even cracking a joke or two here and there.

Next on the chopping board (pun intended) is the Deleted Scenes portion of the DVD, if I was hungry and this section was cake I’d starve to death! There are only two scenes here, an extended cut of the cafeteria scene at the beginning and a dream scene near the end, both have commentary by Fresnadillo and Lavigne.

Code Red: Making 28 Weeks Later is the discs meatiest behind the scenes feature, I’ve noticed that recent behind the scenes features for other movies focus on star power, to this I say NO LONGER! Code Red does look at the actors at some point but for the most part it focuses on the concepts of 28 Weeks, the story, set design and the characters themselves.

The Infected is a look at just that, the infected, who have become characters unto themselves, we get to see the process they go through to be the vicious beasts they become as well as some of the effects that go into making an infected. Watching this I couldn’t help but think of the same feature on the Resident Evil: Apocalypse DVD, guess which one was better!

Let’s face it, 28 Weeks is a masterful blend of badass action and hardcore horror, which is exactly what Getting into the Action, is about. Showing us how some of the action scenes were done because there are a lot of them. We see how the filmmakers used action not for actions sake but also as a tool to reinforce the overall frenetic feel of the film.

28 Days Later: The Aftermath: Stage 1 “DEVELOPMENT” and 28 Days Later: The Aftermath: Stage 3 “DECIMATION” are two of the adaptation/spin off comics, the first of which was already on that damned ‘Limited Collector’s Edition’, the latter is the better of the two because it’s an interesting concept akin to the prison life in John Carpenter’s Escape from New York, where two survivors are essentially playing a game of one up with each other in an infected London (too bad it was so short). I don’t have a clue where ‘Stage 2’ is however, that one has me puzzled.

Rounding off the DVD is the films bad-motherfucking-ass Theatrical Trailer.

-Danny

MOVIE: 4 out of 5

DVD: 3 out of 5

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