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I liked 28 Years Later, and I'm undecided if the ending was kino or pure dogshit. I do wish it had a little bit more substance; it ends sooner than i thought and it's very obvious its just setting up for the next two movies.
 
ACTUALLY.

dick brain said:
I was going to complain about the soldiers wearing plate carriers and helmets to an island populated by zombies who don't use weapons because that's a foolproof recipe for zombies wearing plate carriers and helmets, but it's explained that they weren't meant to be there and didn't know what they were doing so it's whatever. Still, that feels like a chekov's gun, like if you're going to show soldiers in bulletproof gear getting turned into zombies then that should be something that comes up again at some point. Would have been cool idk.
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You could 100% just replace the "alpha" bullshit with this.

Like, what purpose does the alpha serve in the story? It serves one function when it keeps Kraven and OneyNG from leaving the house at night. It serves another function when it chases them across the causeway -- it doesn't go down in one shot, but that literally doesn't matter because they have no arrows, the tension doesn't come from it being a big fuck, it comes from them trying to outrun it with no recourse. Then it serves another function when it wrecks the lone swede and again can't be put down from one shot. Then Voldemort shuts it down with tranq (not a tranquilizer dart, literally tranq, aka heroin and xylazine, a fucking street drug from east st louis). Then it comes back and does nothing and fucks off. Oh and it mercs some swedish seamen, but only after half of them get turned by regular infected.

Half of these things can be just as easily accomplished by regular infected, and the other half can be just as easily accomplished by a zombie in a plate carrier. Regular infected can keep them from escaping the house. A zombie in a plate carrier can take multiple arrows to the chest without being affected. And as we're shown, the seamen can be brought down by regular infected.

Do the scene where Kraven and OneyNG are stuck in the attic. Cut all the bullshit about alphas, just have them be pinned down and wait out the night. Show Kraven seeing the patrol ship, cut the part where he wakes OneyNG up as an excuse for a loredump, show the ship going down. Have regular infected chase them across the causeway, let the tension come from whether the watchtower NPCs can save them in time. Show the scene of the swedish seamen getting got, have some of them get infected, have some of them get away, skip the alpha bullshit, instead use this as a chance to establish that zombies in armor are a big deal by showing how ineffectual traditional weapons are against them. Then when something needs to wreck the lone swede, instead of a big retarded mongoloid monster paki ripping his fucking head off like Mortal Kombat, just bring in his old squadmates in plate carriers and helmets who are (practically) impervious to both his bullets and the kid's arrows -- this is already perfectly built up with all the "head and heart" bullshit they keep harping on. He can still go down to tranq, he can still come back and do nothing.

There. No more need for retarded Far Cry Tomb Raider zombie supermen, the swedes serve a purpose in the movie now, and we get an exploration of how preparedness for a zombie apocalypse differs from traditional preparedness for armed combat in a way I've personally never seen before since the standard gear that the swedes bring onto the island to protect themselves winds up being their demise. I can't fix the whole movie but I can get rid of a lot of stupid bullshit with a much more graceful and grounded and frankly fucking cool idea. Pay me.
 
I've only seen 28 Days Later (first in like 2008, then again two weeks ago), and it is far less impressive nowadays. The second half is a bit of a stumble and while I don't disagree that members of the military would set up rape camps, I don't think it would happen in less than a month. I also don't buy that fair elf prince Cillian Murphy would btfo them all.

I was going to watch the sequels in prep for the new one, but seeing the mixed reception has me less excited.
 
Big Miss Steak said:
I've only seen 28 Days Later (first in like 2008, then again two weeks ago), and it is far less impressive nowadays. The second half is a bit of a stumble and while I don't disagree that members of the military would set up rape camps, I don't think it would happen in less than a month. I also don't buy that fair elf prince Cillian Murphy would btfo them all.

I was going to watch the sequels in prep for the new one, but seeing the mixed reception has me less excited.
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I think 28 Weeks Later is better.

Fite me IRL.
 
Im interested in watching 28 years later but I dont trust modern hollyweird so I need to know if this is a "watch it" or "pirate it" or "dont fucking bother" sort of movie.

Nvm there is the element that even if its good now, it will get anally fucked by the sequel's She Boon director

BrunoMattei said:
They should have just kept the ending of 28 Weeks Later where the infection spreads to the rest of Europe and presumably the rest of the world. Then the post-apocalyptic setting (clearly aping The Walking Dead) would make sense. I also liked that Weeks introduced the idea that the infected will eventually starve to death which makes the situation just that much more plausible.
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Technically Days did that first by having the infected already dying of hunger at the ending (when honestly they would've died of dehydration much much sooner).
 
The handsome tard said:
Nvm there is the element that even if its good now
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Don't worry it's not.

I'd say it's worth watching for free. It's neither good nor so bad it's good, moreso it's a perplexing set of cool ideas and bad decisions that feels like trying to piece together a crime scene of "where did it go wrong" and "what were they even trying to do" and "was this an accident or a suicide".

Although I did see several people walk out and at least one person ask for a refund so if you're just trying to kick your feet up and enjoy yourself I don't think this is the one.
 
Despite having a zombie obsession as a kid, I never got around to watching 28 days later. I just did, it was kino. Despite the 2 hour running length it was brisk, well shot and acting was excellent. Noami Harris and Cillian Murphy were beautfiul as always, and I was glad to see the greatest modern doctor make an appearance as the sus survivor warlord. I do concur with tbe venerable members of this thread that the premise for a 28 year sequel is weak, it was shown they were already in starvation mode at the 56 day mark at the ending. Its never established they eat humans never mind anything else. Trying to decide whether to watch 28 weeks, as it had a different director and writer or jump right into 28 years. Either way I'm ready for the Jimmy Saville ninjas
 
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BrunoMattei said:
I think 28 Weeks Later is better.

Fite me IRL.
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I would've fought you based on my memories of them (not that I actually gave that much of a shit to fight about them), but on actual rewatches, I think you're right. Weeks is just all the good parts of the first one, but also with Jeremy Renner being peak Jeremy Renner and no one pretending an ugly sheboon is actually fuckable.

Days has better music though.
 
I really like 28 Days Later.

I have a particular brand of autism called PTSD and a result of that is that whether I find a piece of media scary or not depends entirely on how plausible it is. Ghosts and ghouls bore me to death, but shit like Poughkeepsie Tapes or The Conspiracy or Red Rooms are electrifying to me. So 28 Days was the first "zombie" movie that really held my attention. Not only is the virus and its origin and the mechanism of transmission and the behavior of the infected all believably plausible, but it's also way more fucking terrifying. There is very little more innately terrifying than an ordinary human being who cannot be reasoned with; a person capable of all the violence and cruelty that we have established ourselves to be capable of, with none of the reason and compassion that keeps those things at bay. A single person like that is scary enough. An endless horde of them is fucking terrifying.

I like the narrative framing -- having the audience stand-in being only a month removed from the outbreak but seeing such drastic changes. The complete abandonment of civilization. The other survivors. Did it take only a month to harden these people so much, to turn them into resilient nomads capable of violence? Or is it survivor bias; that these people persist because they already possessed these otherwise-antisocial qualities?

I like the themes of man's relationship with society, of the protagonist's need to relinquish the qualities that allowed him to thrive in civilization and adopt qualities that society rejects -- violence, ruthlessness, stoicism -- in order to thrive in the absence of civilization; and the further notion that these very qualities that civilization rejects are the very qualities required to build it, to facilitate its existence and defend it.

I like the direction and cinematography, how as the protagonist embraces his "rewilding" he begins to be portrayed with the same shots that were used to portray the infected -- out of focus, out of frame, moving quickly through the foreground in glimpses or briefly illuminated through a window by lightning, the same shots that used to build tension or jumpscare you when applied to the antagonist instead being so god damned fucking hype when applied to the protagonist, reflecting how he now occupies the opposite role in the conflict -- from ordered defender of civilization against chaotic attacks to chaotic attacker of ordered civilization. And how quickly one may find themselves on the other side of that line.

It's just a really fucking good movie. It's a good zombie movie, it's a good post-apocalypse movie, but it's also a really interesting exploration of the relationship between man and society versus man and nature, the utility of civility and savagery and the qualities that underly them, in a more graceful way than most pieces of media that comment on the same ideas. And all in such a low budget presentation. It's not a masterpiece, but I think it earns its hype.

That's part of why I'm so critical of this "sequel", it's a pretty bad movie in its own right but as a sequel it's fucking sacrilege. It feels like Far Cry 3, which if you don't know portrays all these themes on a surface level but was intended by the writer to be a mockery of them and an indictment of the people who find them compelling. Like this is an intentionally over-the-top and juvenile depiction of these themes designed to chastise the members of the audience who would dare to consider that there is a circumstance in which violence and ruthlessness and stoicism and isolationism and self-reliance and independence and rage have utility. A complete backpedal on the themes of the source material. An insistence that this is fictional and a denial that it could ever reflect reality.

Which maybe that isn't the intention, but it feels like the result.

But also why are all the zombies naked? Why are there fat zombies? Why are there pregnant zombies? Why are there goliath berserker paki zombies? It's just so dumb. They could have done and said so much with the setting and just squandered it completely. Gay.
 
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Watched 28 Years a couple hours ago and I have to say it was one of the very few movies which I've ever seriously considered walking out on, which started around the time of the pregnant zombie scene. Somehow managed to force myself to stay until the credits started rolling and talked to a trio of the other moviegoers (There was only about two dozen others at the theater) and they all agreed that it sucked.
 
Curious Lurker said:
I watched 28 years later, i think it was fine (not great, not terrible) with exception of the sequel-bait ending that was just waaay too goofy
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But the ending probably "subverted expectations". The time from 2015 to now is truly the era of terrible "entertainment" with bad endings because they're trying to "subvert expectations" that come off more like the directors and screenwriters flipping the bird at the audiences and saying "fuck you".
 
There's a remake of Witchboard coming out. Early reviews are positive and it's a hard R. I'm not a fan of the original but what piques my interest is that it was written and directed by Chuck Russell, a Frank Darabont collaborator and director of Elm Street 3, The Blob, The Mask, Eraser and -of course who could forget- The Scorpion King. He fucked off from Hollywood for the better part of 20 years but came back last year to do a direct to Redbox Bruce Willis movie. So I'm wondering if this Witchboard remake is just a paycheck to him or something he dedicated his time too since he also wrote the script (albeit without Frank Darabont).
 
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Wasn't there like a whole series of Ouija movies? I mean, there's not like a huge cult following on the original, but also I guess they got the license pretty cheap, so why not. Looks like they at least got hot actresses instead of the typical assortment of uggos and shitskins, so that's something at least.

This is probably just me, but I always get Witchboard (meh) and Warlock (great!) mixed up. In fact, I immediately thought you were talking about a remake of Warlock, which would be impossible to do because there aren't three actors as good as Julian Sands, Richard E Grant and Lori Singer (ok, she's not actually great but she was great in Warlock) in the horror sphere any more.
 
Your Starter for 10 said:
This is probably just me, but I always get Witchboard (meh) and Warlock (great!) mixed up. In fact, I immediately thought you were talking about a remake of Warlock, which would be impossible to do because there aren't three actors as good as Julian Sands, Richard E Grant and Lori Singer (ok, she's not actually great but she was great in Warlock) in the horror sphere any more.
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I did too for the longest time. We rewatched Warlock the other night on Tubi and it's still great. That movie had some balls, skinning an unbaptized kid to use his fat as a flying potion. We need more crazy witch/warlock movies like that.
 
dick brain said:
I have a particular brand of autism called PTSD and a result of that is that whether I find a piece of media scary or not depends entirely on how plausible it is.
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Forgive my possibly insensitive question, but what does having post traumatic stress disorder have to do with finding a realistic/plausible premise more frightening than an implausible one? I think a huge portion of the population shares that view.

Saw AvP the other day with my aunt and she was complaining that the main character is female. I didn't think she kicked too much ass, tbh. It was fine.
 
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