Rating: Summary: What clap-trap Review: A friend dragged me along to this, unbeleivably i had not heard or seen any previews for it, so i was in for a surprise no matter what. In fairness the movie starts off quite well and the concept is interesting. Man wakes up in hospital in the middle of London (or whatever british city it was) and the entire town is a deserted war zone, reminicent of Resident Evil, yes. Apparently a horrific virus has spread throughout the country turning everyone into enraged bloodthirsty zombies, the virus is called "rage" by the way. The movie is reasonable scarey until about half way through when the story takes a 180 degree turn from interesting zombie flick to an absurd lesson in military conduct and womens rights. While the ending is pathetic beyond words, whats actually scrarey is that the makers of this movie could take thier work seriously.
Rating: Summary: A horror movie that's actually ... scary? Review: To be honest I think most "horror" movies are just gore flicks nowadays, with sequels that must have greater body counts and no discernible creativity. This movie was awesome in that it didn't rely on gore for effect. It certainly had some blood spattering going on, but that wasn't the focus. If you want that I highly recommend a six-pack of Newcastle and "Jason Vs Freddy".What seperates this movie from the million zombie flicks out there isn't so much the fact that the infected are still alive, it's that they sprint at you instead of meandering slowing as they moan. You can't just push them down either. As for moaning, they either make no sound at all as they charge you from behind, or they scream at the top of their lungs. Both alternatives are pretty freaky IMO. The director made incredible use of point-of-view angles and the accompanying sounds, so you *see* the victim as the infected goes charging at them, and you hear the infected's footfalls and breathing at the same time. *Very* eery. The idea that an entire country was wiped out in a month was cool, and the vacant streets of London was nice in an apocalyptic sense. My only problem with this flick was the "stupid horror movie mistakes". The country is overrun with insane people who only come out at night and kill anyone they see, so as we walk down the street at night let's have a casual conversation in normal voices.... Or see that empty building? Let me go check it out alone for no reason.... I overlook the dumb mistakes of the main character and still give this movie 5 stars because it made me start turning on lights when I walk around my condo at night. It's a tad embarassing but this movie is ... scary.
Rating: Summary: Scared the (heck) out of me Review: I love horror movies, but not many frighten me. This movie scared the pants off of me. And I love to watch it and watch the other people's reactions.
Rating: Summary: nerve wracking and very frightening Review: I saw this movie in the theatres and it was very scary. I own over 200 horror flicks and this is definetly a favorite that will be added to my collection! From the beginning, the movie drew you in with its heart racing scenes and the "zombies" seem very realistic for my standards. The only thing I question is the ending...but you have to see it to understand me.
Rating: Summary: Over rated by media & ugly female lead actresses. Review: The promotion for this movie here in Australia was full on. It was sleek effective marketing. I suspect it appeals to people who are nilihist and somewhat fall for Nostaradmaus end of the world gimmicks. The marketing was also misleading. I thouggt I would get more bang for my buck with zombies flying left, right and centre of the screen. We didn't get this - it was very sparse. It was also very predictabee and stereotype, what with the British military soldiers being sex maniacs and wanting to rape the the two lead female actors (could this be a bad advertisement for our hard working army defence force troops?) The only moments which had an emotional impact on me was when the lead found his dead parents and sister in the house. It made me more kind towards my parents. Christopher Eclleston (The Others) was the best actor in the film. He exhumed a confident presence. Another unbelievable aspect of me for it was how the romance developed. Let's face it, the black actress and the 15 year old girl weren't the most attractive women you would see. I would rather they get more attractive people. I don't know how they could fall in love in a short amount of time. Fair enough she did save his life - but nor is she pretty, let alone my type. The ending was lame too. If you want a zombie feast I reccomend you read the vivid book by Simon Clark called Blood Crazy (check out my link - I reviewed this book). This book can be found on amazon. That is much better, more thought, philospohy and more blood. I'd also advice 12 Monkeys - Brad Pitt and Bruce Willis as an alternate better choice of movie with monkeys running amok and causing havoc with disease. Overall this movie ain't that bad. I appreciate the expense it took to evacuate London and make it look empty. But the effect wasn't strong. Vanilla Sky had an empty New York scene too and that had no impact on me too. Really filmakers have to work harder in that regard. All in all it just didn't gel together this movie. Good while it lasted though certainly overated by the critics and media. PS The best spoken words in the script for me was when they army dudes where philosphising when they were talking about the disease - "Man has killed man since Time Immermorial, you see it on the news everyday". That touched a raw nerve in me. Good stuff!
Rating: Summary: Dawn of the Dead-Class Zombie Film Review: One of the best horror movies to be released in a LONG time, really excellent film! We saw it in the theaters twice, all our friends loved it, and I can't wait to own it on DVD! It was refreshing to see a horror movie that went beyond the typical brainless hack and slash you see these days and chose instead to stand on ambience, skillful directing, and PLOT.
Rating: Summary: Great Horror/Thriller movie Review: First off the best thing about this movie is that it is in the tradition of a zombie movie but they never actually say the word zombie, they just say "infected" (Much in the style of the "vampire" movie Near Dark). Not to spoil anything in the movie, but the defining characteristics of a zombie is that they are DEAD and eat HUMAN brains/flesh/whatever! In this movie once something is dead it stays dead. The infected are exactly that, infected with a disease that makes them go mad and crave live meat/flesh. For those of us that were paying attention when we saw the movie, they don't just hunt people, but ANYTHING that is alive, such as rats (if you haven't seen the movie you will understand when you watch it). It is an original idea placed over a familiar plot. I have never seen a "zombie" movie where the "zombie(s)" can run as fast, if not faster, then their prey and then tear them to shreds in a matter of seconds. Like it or not you do have to admit that it is one of the best "zombie" horror movies in a long, long time. I say "zombie" horror movie because there are no other movies where there are people infected with a virus like 28 Days Later. It's the best category that we can fit it in at the moment.
Rating: Summary: A piece of master postmodernistic horror movie Review: Several horror or SiFi movies in the past years have tried to show how it would be if man kind would fall into a fatalistic future but as far as I've seen these is the first movie who sucessfully combine scary creepy gore-horror, current political arguments and a truly insight of the human bean in actual extreme situations that drives to madness. Just imagine yourself awakening in a post-traumatic room of a cold hospital and find yourself alone therein and even in the whole city, apparently no rational human bean to make contact with and suddendly trying to escape from been kill by rabish "infected" people coming from everywhere. Action is plenty of improved almost-realistic gore horror, rapid camera shots that will hardly let you think the next scene combined with normal speed scenes of first-level performances. The argument is solid and even have a political and social insight, wrapped in the most ferous irony: meaning justifies objective. The path to find a cure to the disease, rabish "infected" people as the less of the menaces for the survivors when compared with apparently normal but really malicious army people that "caught" them for non-sense human kind preservations goals.
Rating: Summary: Scary, Yes. Interesting, No. Review: What was this? I couldn't tell if it was horror movie, or a movie like Signs, where it's a drama and the aliens were just to make the religous story more interesting. And the brief comic relief scene in the supermarket didn't even go into place. One second there's suspenseful scary music and the next there's comical music with "funny" scenes. It was very confusing and just not right. I love the idea. That is what drew me to watch this in the first place. If they kept going with that, this would be a great horror film. Every horror film they make nowadays has the combination of horror, drugs, and sex, and it normally doesn't work. The movie starts off with newsflashes. A monkey is connected to this machine and he's watching the news, bad news, causing him to be infected with rage. That's alright, untill an animal rights group comes in and free's all of the infected monkeys, ignoring one of the scientist's warnings. One of the monkey's kill a member of the group and... 28 Days Later... We see a nude man waking up in a hospital bed. This is Jim. After putting on a robe and walking outside he finds a deserted city. Unaware of anything that has happened in the past 28 days, Jim walks around the empty city yelling "Hello?!" and getting no answer. Thats is untill he opens the door to a church and finds the pews filled with zombie like creatures(still good, so far)and gets attacked by a rabid priest. Running away into the night he is cornered by more of the zombie creatures, but is saved by Selena and Mark, two uninfected people who inform him never to go out at night, which is when the infected come out. Jim discovers that his parents are dead. He joins Selena, who killed Mark after he became infected, and the two meet two more surviors Frank and his daughter Hannah, who have locked themselves in thier apartment. After a few days of staying with them, they hear a radio broadcast from Major Henry West, promising a sanctuary of some sort, and the four head off to get there, whilst dealing with the monsters who now roam the U.K. in the messed up world. The film went down under sometime during their quest to get to the sanctuary. I'll give you the clue of about two minutes after Frank kicks a fence. The last forty five minutes in the miltary retreat was pointless. It changed the entire point and plotline of this movie. Nothing happened but useless conversation and a non-suspense rape subject sequence. The most gory scene is when Selena kills Mark about he becomes infected. It comes almost at the very beginning so it's not like I'm ruining anything for you. It was horrible. Extremly graphic and horrify, I was shocked about that. Just the idea is horrible, and not the actually blow. The movie isn't scary after the first half hour-forty five minutes. It's just plain disturbing. So is the part I liked. It's becomes to a point where the content of the film is scary, but the plot. Just the idea of it all. Wait for the video. ENJOY! Rated R for strong violence and gore, language and nudity.
Rating: Summary: Huntingdon Life Sciences responsible for apocalypse too... Review: 28 Days later is a pleasing diversion from the toils of everyday life. It sets up an interesting premise, but really tries to cram too many different plot lines into 2 hours. The start of the movie (after the terrible "teaser") is fascinating - what would you do if you woke up one day and everyone else was gone? The shots of the empty streets of London are fantastic and the menacingly fast and terrifying "zombies", for want of a better word (come on - they're mindless, self-replicating monsters, what else are we going to call them, "French"?), really make this seem like it could be a great horror movie. However, presumably cautious of stealing too much from Romero, the movie turns into "Road Trip" meets "Maximum Overdrive", and then tries to recreate the claustrophobic atmosphere of "The Thing". The climax is too short, and too well put together to be really believable and yes, the ending sucks. My main complaint against the movie is that it relied too much on the cheap shock. Things jumping through windows and monsters movie really quickly are good but somewhat obvious techniques. For this to be a truly 4 or 5 star movie I'd like two more things; One - some buildup of suspense - only when Jim wanders off at the truck stop do we really feel horrible things are about to happen, and two- some deeper meaning. The "Rage" is so all-consuming that we can't really draw parallels between it and AIDS or communism or the rise of the inner cities. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but if the movie truly was seeking to be "art-house" some deeper levels might've been nice. This movie is chilling in parts, amusing in parts and sickening in parts, but on balance it never really adds up to a brilliant whole.
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