28 Weeks Later (2007)

Monday, 01 October 2007 00:00

Reviewed by Lisa Fore
Halloween Edition: Issue 1007

Genre: Horror
Released: May 11th, 2007
Rating: R for strong violence and gore, language and some sexuality/nudity

Director: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
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DVD Features
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Commentary by director/co-writer Juan Carlos Fresnadillo and Producer/co-writer Enrique López Levigne

Deleted scenes with optional commentary by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo and Enrique López Levigne

Code Red: The Making of 28 Weeks Later featurette

The Infected featurette

Getting Into The Action featurette

28 Days Later - The Aftermath: Stage 1 "Development" animated graphic novel short

Theatrical trailer

28 Days Later - The Aftermath: Stage 3 "Decimation" animated graphic novel short

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When someone says 'one person can change the world' noone usually believes them, however Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo proves this theory with his amazingly executed extreme, 28 Weeks Later.

While Danny Boyle's landmark film 28 Days Later focused on an individual trying to comprehend and outlast the infection that razed his familiar world, 28 Weeks drops us straight into what we were also secretively waiting to experience—the cycle of the virus’ mobility throughout England entire.

Fresnadillo starts intimately in space and character development as we meet Don and Alice in a darkened center of a nuclear family's world: the kitchen. There’s a short but sensible glimpse into the hearts of this couple, from parental concerns about their children abroad in Spain to a warm moment of a kiss that’s interrupted by one of the owners of the home, illustrating the very sparse opportunities of normalcy that the characters will encounter. The situation's scope instantly spirals outward to convey more survivors are living with them, that the world of the film itself is bigger than the region of 28 Days, until the infected descend upon them leaving Don to face a devastating choice.

While the virus creates obvious differences between the populations, both groups manage to find a common ground in behavior: each Infected and Survivor acts like an injured animal, chewing off the dormant parts of itself that renders it helpless in its pursuit to survive. We experience the chilling, full range of all expectations being annihilated, from the personal to national level: protectors betray the trust of those who depend on them, facets of ‘family’ are torn to shreds (from the literal nuclear family to the military and finally, the nation) with a disturbing erasure of the hope — or arrogance — that something can be extinguished with a desperate affirmation and will, rather than concede that its enemy might have a will of its own.

The final coda of the film is out-and-out terrifying.

This ‘Survival of The Fittest’ story, and the true power behind the idea of this series, lies in the brutal frankness of human reaction and our natural baser instinct of survival being tested within the phenomenon of an epidemic. It's impossible to walk away from this film without honestly appreciating how plausible it all actually is.

Image/Sound
The eyes are the keynote to 28 Weeks, and Fresnadillo consistently amplified this concept by creating the film through the perspectives of its characters — his methodology of handheld cameras gives us a wonderfully natural flavor with the edgy, frantic realism of a documentary, and recaptures the speed and chaos of Boyle's innovative film. He also gives us moments to breathe along with the characters utilizing the calming movements of stationary camerawork in placid, yet emotional, moments.

The DVD preserves his vast scope and barren landscapes that the characters have to move through, with slow, broad sweeps that are instantly unnerving as we find London so inconceivably empty, and similarly his every close up stings with impact (a favorite case in point: as Don apologizes to his children for the loss of their mother, we suddenly cut to the look on Alice's face the last time he saw her; not from that desperate plea in her eyes as she screamed for him, but from his perspective of how she must have felt about him, or how he thinks she should feel—a cold, dark hatred that fills the screen before the picture snaps to black. Also emphasized are, (Director of Photography) Enrique Chediak's ingenious strategy of almost-too bright, too-white edges around the colors that seems to replicate a viewpoint experiencing full-bodied fear during the chase and attack scenes, along with the comfortless shadows of the outside world the characters are trapped in during their internment within the “safety” of the Zone. Chediak’s eerie vision behind London’s ‘twilight’ puts the final insinuating touch on England’s fate in the film.

The sound quality holds every snarl, scream and explosion in crystal clear resonance, but best of all John Murphy's primal scoring also makes its return, almost as another character, with its distressing essence of intensity and precise despair.

Extras Code Red: The Making of 28 Weeks Later is an entertaining look inside of the film's creation and the determination to avoid the popular trap of rehashing the same ideas, instead expanding on the intriguing journeys Boyle suggested with the close of 28 Days. There’s an interesting interview highlighting Boyle's continued captivation with the circumstance of an actual outbreak (and hopefully he will maintain his thoughtful decision to wait until there’s really great story behind the plan of creating another development as his did with this one), as well as extending a sincere pleasure (that we as an audience can certainly appreciate) in handing his concept off to Fresnadillo; Robert Carlyle’s laidback interview on creating his character, Don, is almost surreal while it’s flanked with footage of his on-screen rampages. Fresnadillo also describes a pact that he made with Carlyle for Don’s final scene with Alice: to bring the full weight of his rage against the small containment set where they were filming, and Carlyle obliged with an amazingly feral madness, having literally slammed his head into walls and doors over and over enough to sustain headaches for three days afterwards to give the audience a pure version of the transformation experience. The Director’s Commentary, is an impressive insight into the talent and endurance of the filmmakers and crew, with production details that make it a film student‘s dream blueprint on how to create an effective horror film.

Future filmmakers, please take notes.

THE BOTTOM LINE
28 Weeks Later is a raw, brilliant and visceral ride that stands firmly on its own, but is an equally outstanding expansion of the 28 Days Later storyline.

Overall Rating: 5

Originally published in dystopia Magazine's Halloween Edition (Issue 1007).
(c) 2007 dystopia Magazine. All Rights Reserved.

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