In the House - In a Heartbeat

[Kaelaroth]

Firstly, I want to say how much I loved the movies 28 Days Later, and 28 Weeks Later. I thought they were both incredible, and re-defined horror and zombie films. However, this thread is actually about this song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gxy5Q5OJrXs&feature=related) (apologies for cruddy video) which defines the films, and remains fantastic, in my opinion throughout.

So, what do you guys think of the 28 "" Later franchise, and more importantly, what do you think of the song?

It was written by John Murphy and the name of the track seems to stem from this scene, set in a country house, in which the character Selena is tested to make good on her promise to kill Jim "in a heartbeat" if he ever became infected, as she had earlier promised she would.

[Tweekinator]

28 Days Later was awesome; 28 Weeks Later could have been so much better had someone, you know, tried. There was waaaay too much "bouncing camera" effects. Believe it or not, I like being able to see what's going on and not from the perspective of panicked sufferer of Parkinsons disease.

Also, they should have had one or more characters act intelligently, perhaps thinking along the lines of,"Hm, maybe I shouldn't go down into the blacked out subway terminal where we will only be able to see with the aid of a night vision scope and where there are most likely infected.". Or maybe have medic woman realize that if everyone who has been infected is killed, they don't need a cure.

Other than that, I enjoyed it. Zombies and killing done well are a recipe for success.

[Cuddly]

I liked 28 Weeks Later for different reasons than 28 Days.

Days was like an updated version of Romero's Day of the Dead remake. The savagery of our fellow man, despite the lurking horros, make us our own worst enemy.

The low key, survival horror aspect was also really great. Fast monsters, relatively few plotholes (other than the 28 days later... bit at the end), good acting, good cinematography. The sped up film for the monsters made them appear very inhuman. Their noises, the chase scenes.

The sequel was too loud in its denouncement of the US's involvement in Iraq. Too heavy handed. I don't mind political movies, but something I've always enjoyed about the zombie genre is that their themes, other than undead corpses consuming the living, tend to be more... relevant (though some of the exploitation ones, like Zombie Ninja Gang Bang, totally lack any sort of that kind of relevance). Lord of the Flies relevant, as opposed to Tom Clancy topical.

Romero's series does well with these themes, parodying four or five decades of American life and culture. The patriarchy and bigotry of the 50s&60s (Night of the Living Dead- note the heroes are a woman and a black man), suburban America and their malls in the 70s (Dawn of the Dead), Reagan's industrial-military complex of the 80s (Day of the Dead), the corporatism of the 90s (Land of the Dead).

I thoroughly enjoyed the brutality, the big budget, army guys cutting down waves of infected, etc etc of 28 Weeks Later. But it lacked that special kernal the first one had, of men killing men for no other reason than being men, rather than political commentary on ephemeral events.

The subway scene was one of the most brutal I've seen in a long time. However, the film played the brutality and ruthlessness up not to show how senseless people are, that we're a savage bunch of apes, but really just to pick on the American military. They may as well have shown photos of bombed out Afghanistan suburbs after an American air raid.

They also played up the monstrous nature of the infected. Rather than infected humans, they were monsters, with monstrous strength and unholy resilience. Despite this straying from the original, a film that was frighting in its potential reality, I enjoyed the second because of the more undead aspect of the infected. Ignoring the social commentary, 28 Weeks was much more of a monster flick than the first. And a damn good one at that.

[Tweekinator]

Romero's series does well with these themes, parodying four or five decades of American life and culture. The patriarchy and bigotry of the 50s&60s (Night of the Living Dead- note the heroes are a woman and a black man), suburban America and their malls in the 70s (Dawn of the Dead), Reagan's industrial-military complex of the 80s (Day of the Dead), the corporatism of the 90s (Land of the Dead).

Which woman in Night of the Living Dead was a hero? The comatose one, the wife who did nothing but smoke, or the girlfriend who got herself and her boyfriend killed after whining a lot? I hope you're referring to the comatose one, Barbara, because at least she snapped out of it towards the end and tried her best to help.