I have to confess something: I’m a big zombie guy. I love the goofy undead bastards. Unlike the purists, I’m a supporter of fast-moving, human zombies. Even though George Romero’s 1968 original Night of the Living Dead was the first movie to really genuinely scare me, in my opinion, fast-moving zombies just make for good action. Also, I specify human zombies because I feel big, devilish, mutant demon zombies cease to be zombies. Plus, the Resident Evil movies suck ass.

When 28 Days Later came out, I was at first mesmerized by its chilling reinvention of the zombie, and eventually a little disappointed upon further viewings. Why director Danny Boyle is still so infamously against calling his zombies anything other than “infected persons” is beyond me; there’s no shame in it.

A Lucky fan with one of the Philadelphia Eagles Cheerleaders

28 Weeks Later promise more of the same, this time boasting a slightly more international cast, headed up by Spanish-born director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, and starring Robert Carlyle (stripper protagonist in The Full Monty), Catherine McCormack (Bill Wallace’s doomed lady friend in Braveheart), and Harold Perrineau (paraplegic inmate Augustus Hill in HBO’s prison drama OZ). The US Army leads a NATO force into Great Britain, still quarantined. The zombies, er, infected have all starved, probably because of the extremely short amount of time that the virus takes to completely invade a body.

The first 10 minutes or so are an absolutely hair-raising example of what fast moving zombies can bring to the table.

SPOILERS BELOW

The survivors are attacked by a swarm of the infected humans. After a harrowing escape, the movie begins its slow and gradual decline into ill-defined logic and mind-numbingly idiotic decisions made by the characters and hence, the creators of this movie, and that‘s why I‘m not summarizing for you anymore. These aren’t your everyday bad judgment calls in every horror movie ever made, which include classics such as ‘that guy at the abandoned gas station gave us great directions, huh!” and “you know, I think I will poke my head into that hole and see what made that noise”. No, these are glaringly awful sequences that served only to anger me as I watched the wheels come off of the movie.

Aside from the fact that I wanted to scream ‘bitch, stay out the basement!’ at the top of my lungs, I don’t want to reveal too much. Suffice it to say, there are some major problems that we can all be, ahem, enraged at. For instance, if you are the only person with a night vision scope, it’s pitch black, and there are probably blood-thirsty infected lurking around the corner, should you a) lead the way, quickly and quietly, having the others in your group follow in a train, or b) insist the others in your party walk in front of you as you look through your scope, screaming vague directions at them (Left! Right! Stop!) and watch as they stumble and trip over corpses. And since when does night vision only illuminate three feet in front of you?

The presence of the army, it seems, ruins otherwise good zombie movies with the number 28 in them, although the damage is more severe in 28 Weeks Later. Army scientists have done the research, they know how long it takes someone to turn into a full-fledged undead (a matter of seconds), and they know that an infected person’s range of actions is limited to running, biting, gurgling, and vomiting. So, if I’m on the rooftops, reconnoitering an area, and I see a person a) holding a gun, b) firing a gun, c) holding a mirror, d) driving a car, or e) not fucking eating anyone around them, I’d like to think my Army training might have prepared me for the possibility of not shooting them.

If the army let's this guy in, London's goose is cooked.

In closing, I’d like to reiterate that I’m a zombie guy. The idea never tires for me. That said, just because something has zombies in it doesn’t mean that life’s a great big gravy boat. There’s something to be said for movies that don’t use up all of their ‘Get Out of Illogical Situations Free’ card. 28 Weeks Later was promising from the very start, but unfortunately I couldn’t suspend my disbelief for the whole thing.

Oh yea! Spoilers. Here you go.

In the end of the movie, everyone fucking dies. I think. And zombies apparently love French tourism. RANKING: 5 OUT OF 10