Ten Statements About....28 WEEKS LATER... (2007)

You hang your head, Imogen Poots!  YOU KILLED
A FRANCHISE!

"It all makes sense. They're executing code red. Step 1: Kill the infected. Step 2: Containment. If containment fails, then Step 3: Extermination."

1) You can see how badly this film gets it wrong in the opening sequence, where we see an Infected biting and, it is implied, eating a victim.  These Infected act like, well, conventional zombies, which implies that the four writers who wrote this sequel didn't understand the rules Alex Garland set out in the first film.

2) And another thing the script didn't understand about the first film was how the characters came first.  Instead of the small group of people we got in that film, we get a family of unlikable characters surrounded by a group of military ciphers.  We learn nothing about Jeremy Renner's Doyle and Rose Byrne's Scarlet and are expected to sympathize with them solely because they buck the system and decide to protect the kids we're expected to sympathize with solely because they're the main characters.

3) I guess an argument could be made that Robert Carlyle's Don is the most effective of a pretty sorry lot of characters, and he effectively pulls off his Janet Leigh-ing at midpoint...but it's hard for Carlyle to overcome the way Don was so badly written.  He's never quite able to add enough nuance to justify the fact that he was a cowardly dickhead who acts purely on selfish impulses.

Robert Carlyle tries to run away from his commitment to
star in this movie.

Plus he's there for far, far too long after the big change in his status quo solely so...well, we can get more sympathies for his children.

4) ...and don't get me wrong, Imogen Poots (still the most unfortunately named actress in the world) and Mackintosh Muggleton are downright awful as Tammy and Andy.  Andy is a rather one note character, and Tammy is petulant and unpleasant throughout.  And they end up making a decision--much like the decision Don makes when confronted with his wife--that's so stupid as to break the suspension of disbelief.

5) But then, that's the core problem with the script--it is moved solely by stupidity that's not profound, not illuminating, but just...stupid, starting with the way the writers have Tammy and Andy sneak out of an armed encampment by...ducking behind a wall on a bridge?  Hell, we have Doyle noticing their escape, reporting it to the main command center, only for the troops to do...nothing?...for as long as it takes for the kids to discover their mother.  The plot is built on stupid choices which are made solely to expedite the plot and are not supported by the logic of the film's set-up.

"I'm planning on taking up the bow...how does 'Hawkeye'
sound as a codename?

6) Why do you hire Indris Elba as Stone and then give him absolutely nothing to do except call 'Code Red' and order all the snipers to kill everyone and let God sort 'em out?  Is that how you waste an expectional actor like him?

7) I have nothing against characters being used as plot devices....except, you know, when the script doesn't bother to give Catherine MacCormick, well, anything remotely resembling a character other than 'concerned mother.'  Hell, once she re-enters the story, she's there solely to be washed up, have the big reveal about how her blood fights the infection, and get killed off.  We never even learn how she survived the Infected attack at the beginning of the film, or how she didn't starve to death; the implication is that she spent the intervening six months cowering behind that facacta couch.

8) Maybe it's the fact that they're using a different method to depict the Infected, or maybe it's because director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo saw The Bourne Identity and thought shaky-cam was a good idea, but the Infected attacks are not as scary as in the original.  They're messy, confusing and just not exciting in the least.

9) Given all the negativity I have for this stupid, stupid film, there is one moment that captures the feel of the original.  The sequence at the carousel manages to give the film its one breath in between the endless stretches of carnage, and manages to give us one of the best chills in the films as its punctuation.

10) Look, I know that the original script is contradictory about this fact--but it is mentioned by Selena in that film that there were reports of outbreaks in France.  So why is the revelation at the end (brought about, presumably, by the selfishness of Tammy) so shocking?

Overall...Almost everything the first film gets right, this film gets wrong, resulting in a film that does not innovate on the Zombie Film Formula, but slavishly imitates it.

Ten Statements About....INSIDIOUS CHAPTER TWO (2013)

Don’t look now, Barbara Hershey! Don’t look!

“It’s been so long since I felt pain. I forgot how much I enjoyed the sensation. Not as much as I enjoyed inflicting it."

1) This, ladies and gentlemen, is a well-made script for a sequel. It builds on the original, doesn’t contradict it, gives some secondary characters room to shine, and even clarifies some of the hazier concepts from the first film. It works seamlessly as a ‘true’ second chapter to the story and not another adventure hastily tacked on to pull more money out of fans of the first film.

2) Patrick Wilson is really having fun with his part in this. The script by James Wan and Leigh Whammel gives Wilson an opportunity to play the kind of part I don’t think he’s ever had the chance to assay before, and boy does Patrick dig in!

3) I am somewhat surprised at how much time Barbara Hershey gets in this part of the story, given how she was almost incidental to the first film. But then, Wan and Whammel’s creation of that second layer to the story justifies her taking the position as major player. Hell, she’s practically the female lead, which works because...

This is the extent of Rose Byrne's contribution to this film.

4) As much as I love Rose Byrne, her Renai is a bit, well, drippy in this one. There are long stretches where she’s there only to be The Girl School Screamer to be menaced by the evil entity of the piece (which, come to think of it, makes her the inversion of Barbara Hershey’s character in The Entity, which was nowhere near as good as this film). When she finally takes up a pot in the final act to try and brain the bad ghoul, I only thought ‘what took you so long?’

5) Whoever Lindsay Seim is, she’s made the list of Actresses I Need To Watch. In her small turn as the younger version of Lin Shaye’s Elise at the beginning of the film, she does an uncanny approximation of Shaye. I knew exactly who she was the showed up on screen, and she creates a strong continuity between these past scenes and the present ones.

6) Here’s something Wan does that he should teach Producer Oren Peli. Wan manages to incorporate some ‘found footage’ sequences that enhance the film without drawing us out of it. The moments, like when Leigh Whammel’s Specs and Angus Sampson’s Tucker investigate Elise’s Reading Room, are integrated subtlely and add to the atmosphere Wan is trying to achieve.

7) There is an attempt to create a method of reaching the spirits for Steve Coulter’s Carl that is effective, but it doesn’t have the retro-creepiness of Elise’ bizarre gas mask apparatus from the first film.

Boo! I's a ghost! A ghooooost!

8) I love how Wan and Whammel’s script ties up all the loose ends from both this and the original, although I am of two minds as to how effective it is when Shaye’s Elise at one point literally faces the camera and mutters, ‘so that’s what that was all about.’

9) I rather like how Wan has enough faith in us as an audience that he allows some of the apparition appearances to come without fanfare, never drawing attention to itself. Some of the creepiest moments have one of the two ghosts just cross across the background while the actors in the foreground, giving us just enough to doubt what we saw.

10) I like the ultimate evil entity that is the cause of all the trouble, although the mythology behind it may be the one weakness of the plot. If this entity, when it was on earth, was notorious enough to get itself a nickname...why didn’t anyone discover the room with the bodies of its victims until Hershey and company stumbled across it.

Overall...a really, really good follow up to Wan’s really, really good original. Fans will not be disappointed by it, and the way it ties up the Lambert family’s story while opening the door for new stories in this mythology is very satisfying.

I saw this at the Loews Village 7, taking advantage of AMC’s $7.50 matinee-before-noon policy. The trailer package was almost identical to the one I saw when I saw The World’s End save for the extended trailer for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug that made me sad that Peter Jackson is overextending that sliver of a book in the name of branding rather than, you know, doing films that are important to him, and Pompeii, which apparently seeks to Zack Snyder-ize that volcanic disaster. And I still don’t get the appeal of the Ron Burgundy character. At all.