Back in June, I watched 28 Years Later with high expectations because it had a promising trailer, and the first two films in the series weren’t bad. However, spoiler alert: I hated it.
Okay, maybe I didn’t hate it, but it felt like I was on the edge of my seat for the entire movie to be let down and confused at the end. I’ll come back to this topic 28 paragraphs later. That was a funny joke. Laugh.
The trailer for the sequel 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple recently came out, but I’m not confident that I’ll enjoy the film. 28 Years Later shifted its focus from the horror aspects that I loved and to character-driven family drama. Additionally, it stripped away some of the originality that made it stand out in the first place.
Before this film, the franchise displayed rage-filled humans as zombies infected with the “Rage Virus.” There were set logistics. For example, the infected would starve to death in roughly five weeks without food. In this new film, not only did that seem to be ignored, but it unnecessarily introduced new variants of zombies with the explanation that they simply “evolved” to survive. I understand that it has been years since the outbreak, so of course the zombies would evolve in some way, but the way they went about it made everything feel silly.
The zombies were absurd and inconsistent. There were zombies introduced with the name of “Alpha,” and they strayed from the frenzied rage that I expected to see. Instead, they act like some sort of horror villain rather than the infected. Despite the fact they’re a stronger variant, they often fail to kill survivors and look stupid doing it. Seriously, go look up a picture of them versus a 28 Days Later zombie. Also, another variant that caught me off guard in this film was the pregnant zombie. Tell me how and why she gave birth to an uninfected baby? I swear, everything in this film felt ridiculous.
Moving on, this movie was all over the place with its inconsistencies and pacing. At times, it seemed like I was watching a bunch of different movies spliced together. If I had never seen the first two films in this franchise, I’d assume that this stands on its own completely. Well, technically it does, but at least the first two films maintained similar concepts.
As I mentioned in the beginning of this column, the ending was terrible, and that goes along perfectly with my point about this film being a bunch of movies mashed together. At the end, there’s a total shift in tone, and these random Power Ranger-looking guys come out of nowhere in vibrant tracksuits. Go watch it for yourself if you haven’t; it’s so cartoonish. Knowing that’s where everything left off, I’m reluctant to even check out The Bone Temple.
Leave a comment below on your thoughts. I’m interested in seeing your opinions!
