No, what set “28 Day Later” apart were its quiet moments and its disorienting stylistic flourishes (which, to be fair, no one does quite like Boyle). I think that’s part of the reasons the two films work so well together as two halves of the same story. Although I do personally prefer the more intimate setting of the first film, I think it was absolutely the correct decision for Fresnadillo to distinguish his film from Boyle’s by making the stage broader and the stakes arguably higher. And really, it has less to do with the differing approaches the two directors take with regard to action and scope. Having recently watched the two films back to back, Danny Boyle’s film simply has an artistry to it that’s missing from the sequel. I must admit, though, that I’m not quite as enamored with 28 Weeks Later as I was in 2007. That had to be a very difficult tightrope to walk, and this film does it better than almost any other sequel I can think of. In a way, it feels like a logical second chapter with a larger scope and a distinct and different vantage point, and yet it still plays as cut from the same creative cloth. Yet what makes the film work as well as it does is that it also does all of this without losing the feel of “28 Days Later” altogether.
28 Weeks Later could have stayed in the same vein (sorry, these puns are just too easy), but director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo does something risky here by skewing the tone of his picture just enough to establish it as its own animal, distinct from the prequel. “28 Days Later” was, for lack of a better description, the independent art house film of the zombie genre – something that, before seeing that film, I would not have thought possible. Danny Boyle’s “28 Days Later” was an impossibly difficult film to follow, to say nothing of managing to do so effectively while actually taking the story into a new and interesting direction. When I first saw 28 Weeks Later, I left the theater convinced that I’d just seen one of the best sequels ever made. Or maybe I simply found it too derivative of this film and its predecessor – films I don’t revisit all that often (for reasons I’ve already stated) but still highly respect for at least attempting to inject something new and fresh into what had honestly become a pretty tired concept.
#28 WEEKS LATER ZOMBIES SERIES#
While the series admittedly has very good production value, I could only stick with it for a few episodes. This is probably why I simply cannot wrap my mind around the universal adoration bestowed upon The Walking Dead. It’s just not fun but for so long – preferably in small, value-sized portions. Zombie stories tend to be, by very definition, post-apocalyptic in tone, and while I’ve got as healthy a morbid fascination as anyone, I find watching that kind of thing on a regular basis to have a cumulatively oppressive effect on me as a viewer. Personally, I’ve just never been much of a fan. And yet somehow, this bizarre concept just will not die (if you’ll forgive the pun). One would think that only so much could be done with the premise of mindless, flesh-hungry, virus-infected people. The zombie genre is certainly a bewildering phenomenon. Plot: What’s it about? Video: How does it look? Audio: How does it sound? Supplements: What are the extras? Plot: What’s it about?
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