28 Weeks Later

It is impossible in this day and age to make a military film that involves the USA and not have it be about Iraq.It could be the text or the subtext, but it will be there. And all you really need over the course of the text or subtext is to have a well formed argument. Pro or con, it doesn't matter, just as long as it makes sense and can stand up to a little scrutiny.

Zombie movies have a long history of having social commentary thrust onto them. Most of the blame for this has to do with George Romero's accidental trick casting in Night of the Living Dead. Shoving political discussion into the gaping maw of gore films is generally the worst thing you can do. Sexual politics, sure I can buy that. Economics? Sign me up. Race relations? Erm what? American Foreign Policy? Better make it good.

And that is the problem with 28 Weeks Later. Every bit of subtext in this film is trying to be critical of our current idiotic expedition in Iraq, but every parallel the film makes is completely specious. Like most claims of "we are fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here," the vast majority of Iraq policy commentary in fiction tends to be knee jerk criticism of a bad situation by people that lack the information needed to really address it properly.

And that is 28 Weeks Later's greatest flaw.

First lets take the main idea behind the film--America leads a NATO mission to rebuild and repopulate the United Kingdom after a viral outbreak decimates the population and to get a start on it, the US Army sets up a "Green Zone" in London. The plan falls apart when a woman is found in London who is a carrier for the virus, but not infected. She infects her husband and gory man eating ensues.

We did not invade Iraq to rebuild and repopulate. We needed to rebuild the country AFTER we invaded, but as a reason to set up shop there that wasn't it. We went into Iraq to take out Saddam Hussein. The Green Zone part is the obviously trying to be a corollary to the Green Zone in Iraq, but instead of keeping terrorists out, the London Green Zone is keeping civilians in, which is precisely the thing the virus needs to spread quickly--bunches of people to infect all in one place.

In the film, the General in charge, trying to control a rapidly deteriorating situation, promptly and correctly launches the Code Red plan. This is the right thing to do to protect the rest of the world. Strategically the idea is sound and it is the morally correct thing to do to keep the virus from spreading.

The two main regular Army characters, a doctor and a sniper, see this liquidation of the population as a bad situation and try to get the children of the carrier out of the city to be studied for the possibility of a cure--all against orders. Also the right thing to do until the boy gets infected which is when they should've killed him.

None of this works as Iraq criticism. Showing the General in charge as a competent man and the individual soldiers as people with faces and families does not do the job. If you are criticizing the Iraq situation, where are the parallels in the story to the Bush Administration? If it doesn't fit into the milieu of the film, then why is their so much obvious Iraq imagery (the main character's sniper rifle is painted with a desert-scheme camouflage--Green Zone--US Army shown mowing down civilians--etc)? If it isn't, then you have the problem then that the overall message of the film is that it is better to stand around and do nothing in the face of the annihilation of the human race than to try to fight it because the person trying to find the cure for the disease ends up causing the virus to spread to other countries. One cannot assume that any artist in this day and age would be enough of a sanctimonious prick to suggest apathy in the face of a preventable apocalypse.

On top of this, the film as a dearth of internal logic. Why are the civilians herded into holding areas at the outbreak of Code Red? Why weren't they told this would happen? Why aren't the doors sturdier? Why aren't their soldiers guarding the doors? How does a guy manage to go into a biohazard situation and not get noticed by the guards? Why was a potentially infected individual brought into the Green Zone in the first place? She just as easily could've been triaged and assessed and disposed of outside the safety area. And then you have the soldiers positioned in a perfect Odessa Steps position to slaughter fleeing civilians in a situation where, if the civilians are all corralled into holding areas, the civilians were under control. Why was the electricity cut?

This film suffers from the worst case of idiot plot I have ever seen.

On the other hand, it has its moments of genuine scariness and suspense; something that most zombie movies don't have. And yes, these movies are zombie movies no matter what Danny Boyle says.

The film shoots for the topical and misses and falls into the same trap that most horror movies that try fall in to: inconsequence. If you are a filmmaker, and you want to make a movie that is a commentary on some current event, please think it through.