The Case for Rage

The first twenty minutes or so into 28 Weeks Later, and I was convinced I had made a mistake. This film looked scary, tense, depressing, and fairly gory. I was certain that I was going to have a hard time trying to watch it, so intense it seemed.

Luckily for me (in a way), the movie quickly degenerated into something approaching rubbish. The two kiddie protagonists turned out to be the cause for the whole resurgence of the outbreak of Rage virus so skilfully played out in the original film (28 Days Later, a superior film despite a much minor budget), and were very hard to sympathise with as desperate survivors. Actually, every character in this film was fairly hard to sympathise with. I was cheering for the zombies at certain points, though they didn't really need any encouragement.

I had heard mention that some people found the portrayal of the American taskforce as trigger happy and quite dismissive of the local populace as a bit disturbing. Personally, I find that, in the face of a deadly and fairly disgusting virus like Rage, a "Nuke the Entire Site from Orbit - its the Only Way to be Sure" policy is always the best. So it enraged me when stupid decisions were made, security was unbelievably lax, and the tough measures were taken only after about a gazillion Rage-infected zombies had broken the perimeter.

Yep, I can't claim this one will go down as one of my favourite movies ever. And it is so easily dismissed it won't go into the "worst" pile either. Disappointing really considering how much better the first one was (not sure if it ever reached "good', but it was definitely interesting). And I think I have seen enough of Robert Carlyle for this year, and possibly 2008 too...

Verdict: Britons never will be slaves, but they may be zombies