Monday 7 April 2008

28 Weeks Later

Criminally under-rated outside the world of media, zombies are one of those incredibly essential aspects to films. There is a formidable quantity of horror films, well-known for their often natural talents in frightening and petrifying the audience, and zombies have played an immense role in the pointless scare entertainment of the world. '28 Weeks Later', the interesting title to the sequel of '28 Days Later', follows in the trend of blending typical horror and zombies. It's not an atmospheric, weirdly-angled horror film, though, with jump moments at every available opportunity. Is it better or worse? It's difficult to say, really.

'28 Weeks Later' shows how the victims of a zombie threat have slowly recovered and rebuilt their lives. There are restricted areas all over the place, but the film focuses not on curious characters venturing out into dangerous locations (although some of the main characters do wander out in search of a picture of their mother). The birds-eye views of the city help give an idea of the setting, as the film is pretty much how that recovered city falls once more to the might of the damned.

'28 Weeks Later' looks awesome in Blu-Ray quality, with the aforementioned birds-eye views really bringing out a tremendous feel, but what of the audio? You can be sure to expect some pretty clear zombie roars and gunshots, but as far as music is concerned, the soundtrack is pretty non-existant. This can be seen as both a good and bad thing. Granted, there is no music in the film which will make you want an audio CD, nothing really memorable and legendary, but there is a good bit of very repetitive music from the guitar and a few other instruments. This repetition lends some atmosphere to the film, helps build tension. The film doesn't really need these aspects, though.

As I've said before, '28 Weeks Later' is not successful for atmosphere. Rather, it's successful for the destruction of a small, recently-revived city. It's typical, though, because just as a potential cure is found, with this cure comes the virus, whose host obliterates the source of the cure and goes on to infect practically every other denizen of the city. Much of '28 Weeks Later' is seen of around six characters trying to escape from the disasters which would kill them if they stayed in the city, two of these characters intent on delivering the final two sources of a potential cure to safety.

This is about as tense and dramatic as it gets. '28 Weeks Later' terrifies its audience with the horrific concept of the virus and its victims' transformations to the vicious, hostile monsters which spell doom out for mankind. Some sections are so bloody and violent, so sadist and vicious, horrifyingly unbelievable, it's difficult to not consider switching the entire film off. You won't switch it off, though. And why? Because it's a damn good film. Despite the blitzes when it comes to soundtrack and a general feel of pointlessness in the antagonism (although terrifying, they don't really show off any intimidation, and aren't otherwise awesome), you'll enjoy nearly everything in the film.

Four Out Of Five.