Am I one of them?
28 WEEKS LATER - Let me first say, before I go any further, that this is the most violent, depressing, and frightening movie I have ever seen. Maybe my view is skewed by the fact that I saw it alone in a theater with two other people, but I have never been more horrified in my life. It was ten times more frightening than 28 Days Later, and I will tell you why. There were certain topics that 28 Days Later shied from showing. Some characters would say that they watched their parents turn into Infected, but it would not appear, not even in a flashback. And when Hannah's father turns into an Infected in front of her, he's shot dead quickly by the army before anything nasty can happen. 28 Weeks Later shows family members turning Infected, and unlike the efficient survivalist team of Serena, Jim, and Hannah, the Infected are not immediately and mercifully put down. They're allowed to destroy - their children, their spouses - all shown with unflinching blood and gore. That is the most harrowing part of this movie. The destruction in this movie is also on a much grander scale, partly because the United States, in its Reconstruction gear, has arrived to put London back on its feet. The movie tag line - "Maintain the Quarantine - Deadly Force Will Be Used to Protect this Area" - is dogma for this military.
The New York Times astutely pointed out the hidden political allegory here - the safe area called "The Green Zone", and of course "we had to destroy the country in order to save it" - it seems that this movie shows what would happen if a zombie attack occurred during the Homeland Security era. District 1, the Green Zone, is bombarded with bullets, fire, and chemicals after chaos breaks down, and yet it is unsuccessful - the "biological terrorists" (because that's really what the Infected are in this movie) slip through the cracks and propagate. I think that the Orlando Sentinel's claim that this movie promotes genocide (because, presumably, not
enough deadly force is used, and this enables the Infected to survive?) is a little amusing given that I think anyone who knows anything about security studies knows that the U.S. military in the movie acted exactly how the U.S. military would, with all reason on their side, react if confronted with this kind of an outbreak - we've lost control: kill everyone - be they visibly Infected or not. It may be genocide, but I think it's also standard operating procedure. It's surrealist in that sense. No, it doesn't make sense in the movie, but if you look at it from the perspective of a military trying to contain an extremely contagious virus that has the capacity to wipe out entire populations... "genocide" is rational, isn't it? It does make sense. Right?
This movie is very, very different from its predecessor. It starts off quite similarly, using the cinema verite and all, but that fades as it becomes a slicker, crisper picture with much more grandiose special effects - it makes sense, actually, because this is what I would like to call an "Independence Day" movie, not a "Signs" movie. You see, I separate action/sci fi/horror movies into those two groupings - the "Independence Day" types focus on the decisions of the people in power and cover large casts and many locations. The focus tends to be systemic breakdown or systemic success, with the actions of individuals serving as wild cards that the system may or may not be able to accommodate. Examples include: Independence Day, Jurassic Park, Men in Black, 28 Weeks Later, Kairo, Mars Attacks. "Signs" types focus on the decisions of a small group of regular joes and janes and follow their efforts to understand a phenomenon that is usually not explained or analyzed. The focus tends to be on individual survival, on emotions, on psychology. Examples include: Signs, Shaun of the Dead, 28 Days Later, Alien and Aliens, The Hills Have Eyes, the Descent. So yes, 28 Weeks Later operates on a bigger scale, with bigger machines.
The scenes of an empty London remain beautiful in an awful way, however, and the characters of the two children orphaned by Rage who carry a genetic "immunity" of sorts to it were quite poignant, all the more so because they were children, and they don't understand or care about the system or "the greater good". The system fails because of them, but if the system can't tolerate wild cards that they themselves introduce into the mix, then the system fails overall.
It is a colder, harsher movie. There's no time to wonder what Rage really is in an artistic sense the way there was in 28 Days Later. There's only time to run, and not enough time for that. The devastation comes because you are still allowed to get close to the characters, but they cannot be saved. 28 Days Later is uplifting in comparison - there people's actions can matter, and "it's not all fucked". Here, one character even says, "It's all fucked, that's what they keep saying, it's all fucked". I see why The Journal Star and The Orlando Sentinel were not fans of it, and dismissed it as a gore-fest. No, no.
Hatchet is a gore fest. 28 Weeks Later is massively apocalyptic and nihilistic. It's about breakdown, not survival. And if that's your thing (it is mine, but I'm obsessed with systems), this movie will prove extremely interesting.
At one point in the novel
The Lost World, a character suggests that perhaps mankind is a plague designed to wipe the Earth clean. And I've heard environmentalists and writers discuss the probability of a real plague being the tool of our extinction. The religious among us might wonder why - would Earth create a disease to kill us all? Or God? And why? In 28 Weeks Later, when Code Red (the kill everything moving command) is initiated, one of the gunmen on the roof fires indiscriminately as he's told and then stops and wipes his eyes, saying, "fuck, fuck, fuck." There's an incredible disjuncture in this movie between the emotional capacity of humans as sensitive biological beings and the technological capacity we have to create widespread destruction and death. Maybe we can't handle that kind of power, and maybe we're not supposed to be able to. It is ironic that Rage, the virus, was created by exposing monkeys to violence, and that even the awesome annihilating violence of the military is unable to wipe out Rage. Maybe we're going to wipe the Earth clean of ourselves. Maybe our brains got too big, and our mitochondria are subtly realigning our DNA to create maximum vulnerability to a contagious, deadly virus. - Highly Recommended.
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