(2007)
Dir - Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
Overall: MEH
It may not derail itself in its third act the way that its predecessor 28 Days Later did, but the follow-up 28 Weeks Later offers up its own shortcomings instead. Spanish film director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo steps in for Danny Boyle with most of the previous creative team still on board, but the new story they have presented is hugely uninteresting. The military this round are not portrayed as needlessly barbaric villains, but once again they are outnumbered and go for an "execute everyone...no exceptions" route which simply results in half of the movie being people running around, crying, getting shot at, and either dying horribly or turning into the franchise's rabid zombie stand-ins. Sadly, one of the parties invited back is editor Chris Gill who does a thoroughly obnoxious job frantically cutting every action sequence at such a rate as to make it absolutely impossible to comprehend what you are looking at. This is not so much Gill's sole fault as this blitzkrieg editing style was all the rave at the time and even still rears its obnoxious head in many a film nowadays as well. It still makes the movie an unnecessary headache though. Adding insult to injury, the ending is just kinda "Wha...oh, OK I guess it's over", and at the end of the day, nothing is learned, there is no one to give a shit about, and same old, same old.
THE CHILDREN
(2008)
Dir - Tom Shankland
Overall: WOOF
Creepy kids in horror movies have long been a thing. As have kids and parents in general in movies that cause nothing from the audience besides face-smacking scorn. The second full-length from English writer/director Tom Shankland is the generically titled The Children which is one of the biggest offenders of the aforementioned tropes in recent memory. It is difficult to tell if the characters are in fact underwritten or if there are just so many screaming and crying kids mixed with frantic editing as to make it appear that way. Lacking a clever, inventive premise and pacing all of the stock, would-be tense moments at a slumbering crawl, Shankland is unable to elevate the lame material with any kind of captivating flare. It also cannot be overstated how obnoxious every person on screen is from the stereotypical, introverted teenager brat who does not like her stepdad, to the oblivious parents whose answer to everything their shitbag kids keep doing is to promise them gold stars and insist that they all run around and play more fun games. It does not really add up if in fact Shankland was trying to make some kind of critique on such detrimental parenting techniques as said parents are both overbearing and inattentive at the same time. Nothing works here and the quicker it is forgotten about the better.
(2008)
Dir - Tom Shankland
Overall: WOOF
Creepy kids in horror movies have long been a thing. As have kids and parents in general in movies that cause nothing from the audience besides face-smacking scorn. The second full-length from English writer/director Tom Shankland is the generically titled The Children which is one of the biggest offenders of the aforementioned tropes in recent memory. It is difficult to tell if the characters are in fact underwritten or if there are just so many screaming and crying kids mixed with frantic editing as to make it appear that way. Lacking a clever, inventive premise and pacing all of the stock, would-be tense moments at a slumbering crawl, Shankland is unable to elevate the lame material with any kind of captivating flare. It also cannot be overstated how obnoxious every person on screen is from the stereotypical, introverted teenager brat who does not like her stepdad, to the oblivious parents whose answer to everything their shitbag kids keep doing is to promise them gold stars and insist that they all run around and play more fun games. It does not really add up if in fact Shankland was trying to make some kind of critique on such detrimental parenting techniques as said parents are both overbearing and inattentive at the same time. Nothing works here and the quicker it is forgotten about the better.
(2009)
Dir - Gerard Johnson
Overall: MEH
The full-length debut Tony, (Tony: London Serial Killer), from writer/director Gerard Johnson is a fleshed-out version of his 2005 short of the same name. A deliberately subdued serial killer movie, the complete lack of insight given into the title character can be seen as either a detriment or an interesting angle to take, depending on how much the viewer wishes that they could delve into the psychology of a murderer. We are presented with Peter Ferdinando's protagonist/antagonist at merely a face-value level; he is crippled by social awkwardness, twenty years unemployed and mooching off of government hand-outs, obsessed with R-rated action movies, and a failure in all of his attempts at human connection. With no backstory or means to understand him, we merely witness a pathetic and broken man's lifestyle for roughly ninety-minutes as he gets away with violent outbursts, leaving the film with no more information than we had when it started. Ferdinando is compelling in the lead and the movie's frank, intimate style creates a dingy atmosphere that makes for a more somber than exploitative end result. Still, it is too narratively barren to resonate, with an anti-climactic ending that leaves our pathetic killer more room to go about his business, perhaps intentionally making the point that mental illness and evil sometimes simply makes tragic bedfellows.
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