28 Weeks Later

I was disappointed. But then, I wasn't crazy about the first, so maybe I shouldn't have had high expectations. Oddly, while I think it avoided the pitfalls of the first (e.g. bad-guy military stereotypes), I never felt anything invested in any of the characters this time around. Dad: despicable; army people: a little too darned nice, and you knew the whole time they're the Red Shirts in the story; the kids: way too cute. So it's a different set of stereotypes. Once the premise is set, do you ever have any doubt how it's going to turn out? I guess you could play it as a kind of tragic inevitability, but I didn't feel like it ever got to that point. It was more a "kids in peril" standard plot, but with zombies (and you knew darned well from the beginning that they were so cute there was never any danger that anything was going to happen to them, and the whole premise basically reinforced that impression). Like a lot of current movies, there's so much focus on cool-looking visuals and not enough on characters or the dynamics between them. And the cool visuals of an empty London, and of a fast, jerky "zombie cam" both wore thin early on. I'm actually getting more disappointed the more I think about it.

The end of the zombie craze?! Oh no! (Given the reviews, probably not, though given that my multiplex had it on the smallest screen on opening night while Spidey was on four screens makes me wonder.) Or the gauntlet has been thrown down for a new generation to revive the genre?! Oh, now I like that scenario much better! Wish me luck!