28 Weeks Later

I find the concept of a politically relevant zombie movie...well, a bit of a stretch, usually. I’ve seen a couple George Romero movies, and I seem to remember finding the “message” kind of grafted on. And, really, that’s fine. We’re there for the zombies. Lay out your twist, and then just try not to be too dunderheaded about it.

What I liked about 28 Weeks Later was that the shrinking cast of protagonists wasn’t even fighting zombies half the time: they were up against their own government’s* arguably rational, if harsh, reaction to the zombie problem. They’re repopulating London, and the military’s big guns are on a hair trigger against The Sickness: anything goes wrong, and the military gets real killy, real fast. Shockingly, something goes wrong, and it leads to what are frankly some of the most disturbing scenes I’ve seen put to film. I’ve seen any number of atrocities committed in movies, but the just-following-orders aspect of modern-day American troops firing indiscriminately on their own civilians is jarring.

* Well, a US-led NATO force in London, but a body to which they had presumably submitted upon their return to the UK.