THE END IS EXTREMELY FUCKING NIGH
Hello, new favorite!
While I’m very understandably frustrated that the long-awaited third installment in this series is titled 28 YEARS Later, skipping over “Months” entirely, I’m still most excited for it! Even though the first movie here was leagues better than the second.
28 Days Later (2002)
In retrospect, I probably should’ve waited eight days to watch this, right?
28 Days Later opens with three animal rights activists attempting to free a group of test-subject monkeys from a scientific facility. Despite the scientist they encounter telling them the monkeys are contagious with “rage,” the activists unlock the cages and are subsequently attacked by the monkeys, their eyes becoming yellow and wild. (Like Sith eyes, y’know?) And with that, the opening sequence ends and starts up again… 28 days later.
The protagonist of this movie is a young Cillian Murphy, which was a delightful surprise! I like this guy. And the suspense and unsettling atmosphere as he walks out of the hospital into a Great Britain completely void of human life… creepy, man! The tight time frame of the entire city being destroyed in less than a month sounds hard to believe – until you realize these are fast zombies, yikes!
Early on, Cillian joins forces with two survivors, one of whom I recognized as Tia Dalma from Pirates of the Caribbean! She’s so pretty. And when her travel mate accidentally picks up the rage virus, she doesn’t hesitate!
Do I get the logic of killing someone who was infected as soon as possible? Yes. Do I think you should at least give them the chance to be consensually killed? Yes again. Is there a better way of killing said person than brutally hacking them to death with a blunt machete like you’re in a Friday the 13th sequel? Also yes!
But hey, I’m not here to claim that I’d be any better in an apocalypse scenario. I’m just here to adore the cute romance forming between Cillian and Tia! Or, Jim and Selena, to be more accurate.
Oh man, the scene where the two of them team up with a father and daughter and proceed to raid a grocery store together was so fun. The found family and character bonding is so well done that you’re dreading their inevitable negative outcomes!
And things take a sharp turn when they’re picked up by a cadre of soldiers led by Christopher Eccleston, who I didn’t expect to see twice in my horror movie lineup this month!
Despite the flesh-eating zombies everywhere, this movie quickly becomes far darker and more disturbing than I expected. It wouldn’t be an apocalypse movie without women being treated as sex objects, right?
My live note “Well, you’re all terrible people” certainly holds true. Gah, the way everything shifts the moment Eccleston tells Cillian “I promised them women.” Shudder!
But despite this uncomfortable turn, the next scene is the coolest and most badass of the movie! Cillian freeing the chained zombie and fighting his way through the compound over that fantastic rock synth goes so hard. And then we get that sweet moment of Tia Dalma hesitating before killing Cillian – such good shit!
In this scene, I realized why their romance was so damn perfect. It’s the best of all setups! From the beginning, Cillian is untrained and squeamish and a novice to this suddenly changed world, whereas Tia Dalma is skilled, stoic, and brutally efficient when she needs to be. But as the movie progresses, their roles reverse, and they both learn new ways to survive.
Simply put: she becomes softer, and he becomes harder, and it is only in this way that they are able to survive.
Wow, I love them.
My last live note was “Great beginning and ending, the fuck was that middle?” And yeahhh, I kinda wish the movie didn’t go quite that far, but I’m always here for a good “humans can be the real monsters” story. And I certainly didn’t go into this expecting a top-tier romance! Honestly, I didn’t originally intend to knock out both movies in the same day, but I like this one so much I was eager to check out the sequel!
28 Weeks Later (2007)
I watched movie #1 and went “hey, Cillian Murphy!” Then I watched movie #2 and went “hey, Rumplestilskin!” Honestly, I did that a lot in here; there are recognizable actors around every corner! Hawkeye, Rose Byrne – and Idris Elba, doing an American accent for some reason!
28 Weeks Later focuses on a different group of survivors and their reintegration to Britain – which seems a bit fast, given the timeframe. And that’s foreshadowing, by the way, because don’t make the mistake of expecting things to get better! One of my live notes was “Is this the Purge again?”
Speaking of Rumplestiltskin – you know how, in Once Upon a Time, his first wife called him a coward and that was a huge part of his early characterization? It’s the same thing here! The opening scene of this movie is sufficiently tense, with him making some rough choices, but I’ll argue that closing the door on his wife felt like a step too far! At least we get that same cool music from the OG here!
I’ll give him some credit, though – when I realized Rumplestiltskin was the dad of those two kids, I understood his actions a little bit more. Not like that helped, though, when things had to keep getting worse and worse as the plot progressed and the bodies piled up! I kept hoping Hawkeye and Rose Byrne would survive as they fought to keep those important kids safe!
Okay, bear with me here. 28 Days Later came out in 2002. And 28 Years Later is coming out in 2025. So, if they had just titled that one 28 Months Later instead, they could make a sequel to that one called 28 Years Later in 2030 – 28 years after the OG! And five years between the two movies would work perfectly, too, because the original sequel, 28 Weeks Later, came out five years after 28 Days Later!
Anyhow! On that note, I’m very much looking forward to the next movie, although I’m wondering if they’re going to refresh the cast again! Oh, I’d kill to see Cillian and Tia Dalma onscreen together. I’m still thinking about how a terrifying zombie movie produced the best romance I’ve seen in a while!
