28 DAYS LATER

Director: Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, The Beach, A Life Less Ordinary)
Starring: Noah Huntley, Megan Burns, Bindu de Stoppani, more

What a teaser of a movie! Okay, this flick started with a short and very silly scene involving monkee research, but right after it wowed me with a few incredible scenes set in central London. It wowed me with some very spooky scenes showing absolute emptiness and quiet in central London. These shots of quiet and emptiness were probably the creepiest thing in this movie. I'll say it again: "Wow".

Then, and very, very unfortunately, the movie got immensely silly. People did stupid things around flesh-eating zombies - and that's just not a good idea. Even worse, after they'd realized that they'd done stupid things, they thought it would be a grreat idea to do more of the same stupid things. Sometimes they seemed to think it was ironic if they noted that they were doing stupid things, alhough there were zombies attacking them at the time ... and that was fun (Aargh!) In the end, whether ironically noted or not, they were still stupid things.

Then all of a sudden, the film turned again. Just when I'd given up on the movie, a really interesting twist took us in a new direction. For a brief 30 minutes in the 2nd half of the story I thought that the early stupid parts were just setup for the reality that this movie was going to be a very interesting take on human frailty and animalism in times of stress - a Lord of the Flies horror film about adults. Right when these aspects began to form in the movie, BANG - it decided to end with a silly action/zombie sequence. Very troubling, my friend. Very, very troubling, because this could have been a truly excellent movie. But it wasn't. It had its moments, but it just wasn't.

Standouts: A truly terrific scene or two tucked in amongst the flesh-eating zombie attacks.
Blowouts: Very uneven structure to the story. It didn't quite make it where it wanted to go.

Grade: B