28 Weeks Later

28 Weeks Later...

Jeremy Renner, Rose Byrne, Robert Carlyle

Franklin Roosevelt said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, but he didn’t know anything about zombies. Zombies, people. Maybe it is that we are living in the aftermath of 9/11. Maybe it is the fact that we live in a culture of fear. “There are wild-eyed, brown skin terrorists everywhere.” “Mexicans everywhere, they are going to destroy our culture.” “Homosexuals want to get married, boo.” “Man-fish hybrids.” “Your social security is not going to be there.” We have a news media that loves to spike their ratings be warning us what might be in our kitchen, bird flu, mad cow, and the other, the teenage kid, the black man sitting on his stoop, and there is always Michael Moore. It seems that the moment you walk out your front door, you’re screwed and there is nothing you can do to stop this wave of destruction. Whatever is going to take us out is like a band of swarming zombies. These undead are the personification of our fear. While vampires are always sexy, witches will make a comeback about the same time as feminism or if Hillary is elected President, and werewolves await their day in the sun, right now, zombies are the kings of the monsters and how they got there is an interesting story.

Almost every culture has tales of zombie-like creatures, of undead armies and men who return from the grave to avenge their deaths. It is easy to see how such tales arose given the almost universal human fear of being buried alive mixed with stories of people thought dead who returned to their villages. It would have all gone down as superstition and old wive’s tales until 1929, when W.B. Seabrook published his book on zombies. It was called The Magic Island which told of humans that have died and been brought back to life by a mambo or bokor, a practitioner of the black art of voodoo and shamanistic medicine. The mambo maintains complete control over these zombies because they have no will or spirit of their own. In other words, the body has been brought back to life but the soul or spirit has not. Most critics placed these tales of walking undead who inhabited the swamps of Louisiana and the island of Haiti as colorful myths until Zora Neale Hurston encountered one in Haiti and after talking with local villagers wrote that she suspected these zombie-like humans were probably under the control of some strong combination of drugs. It would take almost four decades before Canadian ethnobotanist Wade Davis would provide the answers in his books The Serpent and the Rainbow (1985) and Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie. What he discovered was the chemical tetrodotoxin which is found in pufferfish will make a person appear as if they are dead. Once revived, the voodoo priest feeds them large doses of hallucinogens that keeps them almost catatonic for the rest of their lives as long as they ingest the drugs. Yet, by this time, the fantasy zombie had taken firm hold in western culture thanks to our movies and a couple of seminal works of literature

Within three years of the publication of Seabrook’s book, Hollywood peddled out its first Zombie film, White Zombie. Hugely popular with pre-World War II audiences, these zombie tales were always stories of mindless creatures under the control of a madman (think Hitler and the German people). There was also a strong sexual component to their mass appeal. Yet, it was writer Richard Matheson in his 1954 novel I Am Legend that changed the zombie mythos. In his fictional story, a pandemic has hit the nation, affecting almost everyone. Those unlucky enough to survive become undead vampire-like creatures. Only one man remains unaffected and spends his days hunting down these bloodsuckers. A young man named George Romero read this book and was deeply influenced by it. In 1968, Romero made the cult classic Night of the Living Dead. While never using the term “zombie” he really defined the rules of zombie cinema. His decomposing, cannibalistic undead moved slowly in an almost trance-like stupor, moaned, and could only be killed by a severe head wound. They can affect and transform living people through a scratch or bite and usually an isolated band of remaining humans have to battle an overwhelming wave of these creatures. Altogether Romero made 4 films featuring these walking dead. Children of the 1960s and 1970s responded to Romero’s vision by making a whole host of movies of their own. Sparked on by the dvd/vcr revolution, over a hundred zombie films have been released since then. There have been so many zombie films that in 2004 the genre was ripe for parody with Shaun of the Dead. Zombies have been pro wrestlers (ECW), danced with Michael Jackson, battled the Federation in Star Trek (the Borg basically just high-tech zombies) and Harry Potter, and have done guest spots on The Simpson and South Park. Thanks to Robert Kirkman, they have also become a staple of the horror comic field.

With a zombie television series about ready to invade television, it is time for a sequel to one of the most successful zombie films ever 28 Days Later. Like Bend it Like Beckham, this low budget horror film was financed by proceeds from the British lottery. This little English film went on to net $82.7 million worldwide and received almost universal praise among critics. It went on to be a smash hit on dvd and made the careers of Cillian Murphy (Batman Begins, Red Eye, The Wind That Shakes the Barley) and Naomie Harris (Miami Vice, Pirates of the Caribbean 2 & 3), and further established director Danny Graves (Trainspotting, Millions, Sunshine) as one of the brightest lights in cinema. The movie told the tale of a viral disease only known as the “Rage” which leaves its victims violent and irrational, basically Ann Coulter on steroids. While technically not zombies because the victims are still alive, the infected’s actions mirror those of traditional zombie fare. England and much of the rest of the world is almost wiped out by the end of the film. Although Graves and none of the original cast are back, 28 Weeks Later picks up the story seven months after the final scene in the original film. (For those truly interested, the graphic novel 28 Days Later: The Aftermath details the events that have occurred between the two movies.) Little known Spanish film director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (Psicotaxi, Intacto), who received numerous awards for his short film Esposados, is given his first crack at the big time. With a budget of just $6 million, they have nothing to lose with this sequel because even if it bombs, it’s money in the bank.

As the movie opens, the US military has quarantined the British Isles, killing any of those stupid enough to escape across the English Channel. With more than 60 million dead and only roughly 7,000 survivors left, believing the virus has died out, dividing the island into zones controlled by the Marines, the US has started to repopulate their former ally. Yet, in the process, the military discovers a living specimen, discovered in an aquarium, General Stone (Idris Elba) wants a sample for antibodies. You know where this is going. All hell breaks out. From there it is basically a repeat of the first movie, survivors having to band together to defend themselves against the onslaught of the infected. The only question this time around is how the disease is being spread.

It is what it is, a typical low budget zombie movie. It is entertaining, but not as good as the first film, a B- effort with all the camera tricks from the first film. It will be interesting to see if conservative critics will pick up on the underlying commentary about US imperialism in Iraq from our former mother country. Still, it’s zombies, people, ZOMBIES!

Verdict: A B- Sequel