28 Weeks Later [spoilers aplenty]

[awayfarer]

28 Weeks Later

Lots of spoilers below!

I posted most of this in my LJ last night after Merkuri and I got back from watching this movie. Has anyone else seen it? It's not the worst film in the world but waht really kills it for me is we as viewers have to assume a heroic level of incompetence for the plot to work out the way it does. Anyhow, here's a list of complaints. I think a number of them will only make sense if you've seen the movie.

Again, beyond here there be spoilers.



--Where were the kids precisely? France? America? Mars?

--Two kids manage to slip by all that security?

--Gasp! I'm horrified, just not enough to stop me from looting this corpse!

--A moped that hasn't been used in seven months will start up immediately without any problems. (Apparently part of the virus causes people to periodically start up mopeds so that the batteries don't run down.)

--British civilians are given access cards to American military bases (I don't care what he was in charge of, I find his having complete access to EVERYTHING rather implausible)

--Wait wait wait, they've told you your wife is alive, thereby they must have told you that she's got the virus. Why are you bringing yourself into contact with her? Visiting I could maybe....maybe see, but kissing someone you (presumably) know to be infected?

--She's so important that there are no guards anywhere and no one watching the room, not even on camera?

--Wait, what happened to the 6 or 7 armed guards headed down to the sickroom? Did Dad manage to kill all of them?

--Merkuri mentioned this; why is everyone being herded into a room and locked up while there is another, easy to break through (apparently) exit? (Hi dad!)

--Why are they switching to emergency lighting? It's not like there was any reason to cut the power.

--Why are they locking mobs of people away in one tightly confined space? Doing this makes it very easy for one infected to create dozens more. Lock everyone away singly, say, in their rooms and then infected folks have to go about things one or two at a time and break down dozens of doors to do so. You've shown earlier that it is possible to lock down doors, was that just confined to ONE revolving door on the first floor or something?

--(Also suggested by Merkuri) Furthermore, was there no planning for how to distinguish an infected from a non-infected? Tell the non-infect to run with their hands held stiffly above their head or something. The infected will not do so and will be easy to distinguish.

--Wait a minute, so now dad is tailing them or something? Why did he not attack? They always attack, thats the idea. They cannot control the urge to kill.

--How did the infection spread so far? Did none of the other groups that were locked down manage to remain so? Again, we have to assume military incompetence for this to work.

--Now that they've had time to sit a spell, why has no one bothered to ask about or clean off the blood on the kid?

--People in military uniforms will shoot other people in military uniforms...with flamethrowers. (Bye bye Doyle) Wouldn't automatically, unquestioningly opening fire on people in uniforms make things difficult?
Example:
Military HQ: Guys, kill and immolate everyone you see on the ground.
Cleanup Team 1: You heard em'. Quick get those guys in uniform!
Cleanup Team 2: S**t! Stop you idiots!

Furthermore, if I saw someone I though was infected I'm not going to use the flamethrower first. Think of it, theres still a little time between them getting roasted and actually dying. Using the flamethrower means that instead of having an angry maniac you now have a flaming angry maniac. You now have to try and pull a guy on fire off of you. (Which never happens, just citing it as an example of incompetence.)

--Why is it that the night vision scope on the sniper rifle can only see 4 feet ahead all of a sudden? The soldiers on the rooftops could see several hundred feet away with them last night.

--Where did the kid go? I sure as hell wouldn't have run off if I had just fallen down a flight of stairs in the dark. Wouldn't his sister have fallen on top of him?

--Wait, they encounter dad AGAIN!? Where in the hell does he keep coming from!?

--You're not taking the rifle?

--So she never mentions that her brother was bitten, why? The kid never mentions it? The helicoptor pilot never asks if they're hurt?

--Where are they heading?

--Okay, the coptor is clearly down. So either...
1: They managed to get withing a very short distance of touchdown (presumably on the continent) and the kids turns and bites the pilot, leading to a short crash. Things quickly get out of hand. We have to assume that the pilot never contacts anyone of his situation or if he does, that no one takes any precautions for when they land.

2: They land safely on the continent, the kids and the pilot are scrubbed down but for some random reason are not kept contained. All hell breaks loose again. The heli is shown as is "just cuz." Consumption of croissants takes a nose dive.

--Great, so presumably the entire planet is screwed. Thank you for killing not only everyone on earth but by extension, also the survivors of the last film. Jerks.

 

[Piratecat]

Moved to the movie forum!

 

[awayfarer]

We have a movie forum?

I need to pay closer attention.

 

[Rackhir]

Lots of spoilers below!
--Where were the kids precisely? France? America? Mars?

IIRC, there was some mention of Spain.

--Two kids manage to slip by all that security?

Nope, they were spotted by one of the snipers. Apparently he didn't feel like shooting two recently returned kids to keep them from getting out of the zone.

--Gasp! I'm horrified, just not enough to stop me from looting this corpse!

Do you have a point here? Seems pretty normal and reasonable reaction for some kids.

--A moped that hasn't been used in seven months will start up immediately without any problems. (Apparently part of the virus causes people to periodically start up mopeds so that the batteries don't run down.)

Yeah, I wondered about that, but figured the petrol being volitile would be more of a problem. Still it is only 28 weeks later and that isn't that long. Presumably much of it was also cold weather which would tend to kill off the infected as well as reduce the boil off of the petrol.

--British civilians are given access cards to American military bases (I don't care what he was in charge of, I find his having complete access to EVERYTHING rather implausible)

It wasn't a military base. It was a civilian resetlement area. It did have a heavy military presence for obvious reasons though. Half a point. He probably shouldn't have had access to an area like the isolation wards for possible infected.

--Wait wait wait, they've told you your wife is alive, thereby they must have told you that she's got the virus. Why are you bringing yourself into contact with her? Visiting I could maybe....maybe see, but kissing someone you (presumably) know to be infected?

He wasn''t told she was a carrier IIRC. He was also kind of distracted over his kids having run off and by his guilt over abandoning his wife to be ripped appart. Not to mention how he was going to explain to the kids that he'd left her to be ripped apart. Besides, she wasn't exhibiting any of the symptoms of being infected remember? And that's one thing that would have been drummed into everyone's heads especially if they lived through the disaster. One drop of blood and you freak out turning into a killing machine and his wife was clearly calm, rational and not a berzerk killing machine.

--She's so important that there are no guards anywhere and no one watching the room, not even on camera?

This is more of a point. But it did look like it was the middle of the night.

--Wait, what happened to the 6 or 7 armed guards headed down to the sickroom? Did Dad manage to kill all of them?

He was shown killing several guards. But they were probably taking another path.

--Merkuri mentioned this; why is everyone being herded into a room and locked up while there is another, easy to break through (apparently) exit? (Hi dad!)

--Why are they switching to emergency lighting? It's not like there was any reason to cut the power.

--Why are they locking mobs of people away in one tightly confined space? Doing this makes it very easy for one infected to create dozens more. Lock everyone away singly, say, in their rooms and then infected folks have to go about things one or two at a time and break down dozens of doors to do so. You've shown earlier that it is possible to lock down doors, was that just confined to ONE revolving door on the first floor or something?

Yes this was probably the weakest point of the movie. But it is a movie horror movie. If all the security measures worked and the crisis was averted then you don't have a film.

--(Also suggested by Merkuri) Furthermore, was there no planning for how to distinguish an infected from a non-infected? Tell the non-infect to run with their hands held stiffly above their head or something. The infected will not do so and will be easy to distinguish.

Good idea, probably didn't occur to the film makers. They aren't going to think of everything. Also panicking civilians aren't always going to follow instructions either especially if they're traumatized people who have just been dropped back into a nightmare they thought they were safe from.

--Wait a minute, so now dad is tailing them or something? Why did he not attack? They always attack, thats the idea. They cannot control the urge to kill.

--How did the infection spread so far? Did none of the other groups that were locked down manage to remain so? Again, we have to assume military incompetence for this to work.

You only have so much time to spend in a movie. They could have devoted hours more to showing how the infection spread, but it wouldn't have made the movie better. The point was that the infection had broken free and was running wild and that was already estabilished. Time to move on to the next part.

--Now that they've had time to sit a spell, why has no one bothered to ask about or clean off the blood on the kid?

Don't especially know what scene you're refering too. It probably didn't bother me if it didn't. However, a better question is why didn't they tell the kids about their mother or why they were important.

--People in military uniforms will shoot other people in military uniforms...with flamethrowers. (Bye bye Doyle) Wouldn't automatically, unquestioningly opening fire on people in uniforms make things difficult?
Example:
Military HQ: Guys, kill and immolate everyone you see on the ground.
Cleanup Team 1: You heard em'. Quick get those guys in uniform!
Cleanup Team 2: S**t! Stop you idiots!

Furthermore, if I saw someone I though was infected I'm not going to use the flamethrower first. Think of it, theres still a little time between them getting roasted and actually dying. Using the flamethrower means that instead of having an angry maniac you now have a flaming angry maniac. You now have to try and pull a guy on fire off of you. (Which never happens, just citing it as an example of incompetence.)

You have a point here about the flame thrower. Not a great weapon againsts a berzerk target, but it does have the advantage of not spattering blood everywhere. Also they were using it in the cloud of poison gas, which should presumably slow down and kill targets. Think of it more as clean up for the gas than a primary method of killing.

RE: The uniforms. At this point in the breakout of the infection you'd have to assume there were a fair number of infected military running about. So the order probably wasn't so much shoot anyone as "Shoot anyone not in a chemical warfare suit." Which the good guy soldier was not.

My question is why wasn't everyone in the military wearing some sort of bio-chem suits? Given the kind of mission they were on.

--Why is it that the night vision scope on the sniper rifle can only see 4 feet ahead all of a sudden? The soldiers on the rooftops could see several hundred feet away with them last night.

If they were light intensifier scope they work off of available light, which there wasn't a lot of in the tunnel. Since you need something to amplify.

--Where did the kid go? I sure as hell wouldn't have run off if I had just fallen down a flight of stairs in the dark. Wouldn't his sister have fallen on top of him?

--Wait, they encounter dad AGAIN!? Where in the hell does he keep coming from!?

Perhaps he's tracking their scent? I don't know it's a movie, cut it some slack.

--So she never mentions that her brother was bitten, why? The kid never mentions it? The helicoptor pilot never asks if they're hurt?

To the guy who didn't want to pick them up, who was paranoid about being shot down? If he'd asked they'd have lied.

--Where are they heading?

Don't you know the white cliffs of dover? Famous English landmark. They were heading towards france across the english channel. Did you think they were going to Denmark?

--Okay, the coptor is clearly down. So either...
1: They managed to get withing a very short distance of touchdown (presumably on the continent) and the kids turns and bites the pilot, leading to a short crash. Things quickly get out of hand. We have to assume that the pilot never contacts anyone of his situation or if he does, that no one takes any precautions for when they land.

This is one of the most unclear parts. There's no obvious reason the pilot should have gotten infected, even if the kid was a carrier. So it's not clear why the copter should have crashed. He was worried about being shot down and he was violating quarentine. So he probably wasn't going to be contacting anyone on the radio.

2: They land safely on the continent, the kids and the pilot are scrubbed down but for some random reason are not kept contained. All hell breaks loose again. The heli is shown as is "just cuz." Consumption of croissants takes a nose dive.

--Great, so presumably the entire planet is screwed. Thank you for killing not only everyone on earth but by extension, also the survivors of the last film. Jerks.

Well, they obviously wanted to leave room for a sequel. However, the disease does have some significant limitations barring a mutation. The infected don't seem to take care of themselves past a desire to eat and kill. So they aren't going to survive hostile weather conditions and their ability to cross significant natural barriers would seem to be questionable. So I doubt humanity would be wiped out, but it might end civilization.

 

[awayfarer]

IIRC, there was some mention of Spain.

Fair enough.

Nope, they were spotted by one of the snipers. Apparently he didn't feel like shooting two recently returned kids to keep them from getting out of the zone.

Or yelling at them? There still the problem of how easily they managed to sneak out.

Do you have a point here? Seems pretty normal and reasonable reaction for some kids.

Digging through a corpses pockets in a place that reeks of decay seems normal and reasonable?

It wasn't a military base. It was a civilian resetlement area. It did have a heavy military presence for obvious reasons though. Half a point. He probably shouldn't have had access to an area like the isolation wards for possible infected.

Close enough. I don't care what they call it, It ain't exactly Disneyland.

He wasn''t told she was a carrier IIRC. He was also kind of distracted over his kids having run off and by his guilt over abandoning his wife to be ripped appart. Not to mention how he was going to explain to the kids that he'd left her to be ripped apart. Besides, she wasn't exhibiting any of the symptoms of being infected remember? And that's one thing that would have been drummed into everyone's heads especially if they lived through the disaster. One drop of blood and you freak out turning into a killing machine and his wife was clearly calm, rational and not a berzerk killing machine.

Okay but...

1: Why would he not be told this?
2: Would he not have been able to figure out that something was amiss seeing as she was in a containment area?
3: If the military is willing to tell him both that she is alive and where she is, why not tell him she's infected? I will not buy a theory that one person knowing this might have caused a panic either.
4: Even if she's not showing symptoms, why not tell her that she's got it? From there she can prevent the incident.

This is more of a point. But it did look like it was the middle of the night.

And? The potential for another outbreak has nothing to do with the earths rotation around the sun.

He was shown killing several guards. But they were probably taking another path.

Which is strange, because they show several guards walking along with the officer who gives the order to kill her.

Yes this was probably the weakest point of the movie. But it is a movie horror movie. If all the security measures worked and the crisis was averted then you don't have a film.

Yep, but I think they could have done better. How about something on a small scale? Maybe only a few infected break out in that scenario and it's difficult to find them. Admittedly, you have something closer to the movie Aliens in this case, but I think that would have still made a decent film.

Good idea, probably didn't occur to the film makers. They aren't going to think of everything. Also panicking civilians aren't always going to follow instructions either especially if they're traumatized people who have just been dropped back into a nightmare they thought they were safe from.

Even if not everyone follows through, this still gives a better chance of only targetting infected folks.

You only have so much time to spend in a movie. They could have devoted hours more to showing how the infection spread, but it wouldn't have made the movie better. The point was that the infection had broken free and was running wild and that was already estabilished. Time to move on to the next part.

It just felt like the filmmakers got a little too impatient. We've already seen the effects of an outbreak in the first film. Lets see one in progress and in a bit more detail. A lot of this movie is just more of the same.

Don't especially know what scene you're refering too. It probably didn't bother me if it didn't. However, a better question is why didn't they tell the kids about their mother or why they were important.

The scene I'm referring to is when they're sitting in the park near the merry-go-round. Blood on the kid means either A: He's wounded or B: He's come into contact with infected blood.
No one seems to notice much or care. The excuse could be used that they figure he's not infected and it's not a big deal, but I wouldn't want to be carrying any infected blood around if I didn't have to.
Oh, and agreed.

You have a point here about the flame thrower. Not a great weapon againsts a berzerk target, but it does have the advantage of not spattering blood everywhere. Also they were using it in the cloud of poison gas, which should presumably slow down and kill targets. Think of it more as clean up for the gas than a primary method of killing.

RE: The uniforms. At this point in the breakout of the infection you'd have to assume there were a fair number of infected military running about. So the order probably wasn't so much shoot anyone as "Shoot anyone not in a chemical warfare suit." Which the good guy soldier was not.

My question is why wasn't everyone in the military wearing some sort of bio-chem suits? Given the kind of mission they were on.

I suppose. I still think it stretches credibility to assume they'll fire first at someone in uniform who's survived a gas attack and is not threatening them. I guess you could use the excuse that everyone's in a "Shoot first, ask questions later." mood, which is very plausible. Meh, I still don't like it.

Perhaps he's tracking their scent? I don't know it's a movie, cut it some slack.

Maybe they should have given him the power to bestow amnesia through kissing like a certain superhero in Superman 4.

Something I mentioned to my GF last night: The farther away I get from a movie I didn't like, the less I like it. I would actually say that it's not bad for a rental. In any case, I have fun beating up soft targets like mediocre movies.

In any case, it's a movie. I refuse to show mercy to bits of celluloid. If this movie had a supervisor I would ask to see it.

To the guy who didn't want to pick them up, who was paranoid about being shot down? If he'd asked they'd have lied.

Maybe

Don't you know the white cliffs of dover? Famous English landmark. They were heading towards france across the english channel. Did you think they were going to Denmark?

I am familiar with the phrase "white cliffs of Dover." Other than existing somewhere in England, I have no clue what their exact location is and no pressing need to pin it down. And hey, whats wrong with a little danish?

Well, they obviously wanted to leave room for a sequel. However, the disease does have some significant limitations barring a mutation. The infected don't seem to take care of themselves past a desire to eat and kill. So they aren't going to survive hostile weather conditions and their ability to cross significant natural barriers would seem to be questionable. So I doubt humanity would be wiped out, but it might end civilization.

I could imagine it only spreading in Europe but I get a nasty feeling that that's not what's in store. Maybe they'll only manage to reduce the worlds bratwurst and spaghetti consumption before dying out.

 

[WayneLigon]

We have a movie forum?
I need to pay closer attention.

Boy, do you.

 

[Rackhir]

Or yelling at them? There still the problem of how easily they managed to sneak out.

Well, arguably they were looking much more for people trying to get in who were yelling and screaming and trying to kill people more than two children sneaking out. Also he was far enough away that he could only see them through his scope. I think he was probably the person who tipped off the force that went after them.

Digging through a corpses pockets in a place that reeks of decay seems normal and reasonable?

For kids who were motivated and determined to get to their house to recover some mementoes of their dead mother. Sure. They weren't doing this just for a lark. The son was tormented by the fact that he was forgetting what the mother looked like, remember.

Okay but...

1: Why would he not be told this?
2: Would he not have been able to figure out that something was amiss seeing as she was in a containment area?
3: If the military is willing to tell him both that she is alive and where she is, why not tell him she's infected? I will not buy a theory that one person knowing this might have caused a panic either.
4: Even if she's not showing symptoms, why not tell her that she's got it? From there she can prevent the incident.

They didn't have the time to tell the husband. First not everyone knew what she had or what her condition was. IIRC, the doctor figured out that she should probably be infected, ran tests to determine if she was, found out that she did have it, told the head Military guy and he decided on the spot that she should be killed. From what I could tell, while this was going on the husband got told about her and went there directly as far as I could tell. So there wasn't a chance for anyone else to fill him in or warn him.

I assume that it would be standard proceedure to quarentine anyone in a situation like this. Aside from the threat of the rage virus, there are plenty of other nasty diseases people living in unsanitary conditions can pick up. Presumably he would know this if he was as important as it was implied he was.

And? The potential for another outbreak has nothing to do with the earths rotation around the sun.

People are basically daytime creatures. There are generally much fewer people about during the night, especially late at night. It is entirely reasonable for there to be far fewer people around the quarentine area late at night, especially if there was only one person in there. Perhaps the one guard on duty had to go to the bathroom and the person monitoring on the camera was perusing playboy instead of watching the monitor. Like I said, it is not one of the stronger points of the movie that there was nobody around.

The scene I'm referring to is when they're sitting in the park near the merry-go-round. Blood on the kid means either A: He's wounded or B: He's come into contact with infected blood.

No one seems to notice much or care. The excuse could be used that they figure he's not infected and it's not a big deal, but I wouldn't want to be carrying any infected blood around if I didn't have to.
Oh, and agreed.

They were there for a very short time IIRC. It seemed like they got there, were trying to catch their breath, talked to the guy in the chopper and then the infected showed up. The blood on the kid did bother me a bit, but I guess they figured (like with the wife) if he was infected he'd have gone berzerk already and they'd spent more than enough time around him for him to have been going berzerk if he was going to.

I am familiar with the phrase "white cliffs of Dover." Other than existing somewhere in England, I have no clue what their exact location is and no pressing need to pin it down.

Well, they had specifically mentioned a couple of times in the movie that they were going to try and cross the channel in the chopper. The white cliffs I got the impression were part of the "Hey Look! We got to film a bunch of landmarks in London/England. Isn't this cool!" that seemed to drive chunks of the plot.

And hey, whats wrong with a little danish?

Haven't you heard the phrase "There's something rotten in the state of Denmark."

I could imagine it only spreading in Europe but I get a nasty feeling that that's not what's in store. Maybe they'll only manage to reduce the worlds bratwurst and spaghetti consumption before dying out.

Oh, I agree. I think that's probably where they'll go for "28 Months Later" or possibly "28 Years Later", even though I don't think that's the logical result of how the virus seems to function. Also there's the question of how they managed to isolate the virus to England in the initial outbreak when presumably there was far more traffic in and out, with far fewer precautions, but couldn't stop it this time.

 

[Merkuri]

I don't have a laundry list of why I didn't like the movie much, like Awayfarer, but it just didn't sit right with me. I commented to Away as we left the theater that this movie felt like it was written by someone else, and sure enough when we got home we looked it up and though there were three writers for 28 Weeks Later they did not include the original writer for 28 Days Later. I don't doubt that they wanted to piggyback on the sucess of the original but couldn't get the writer on board for some reason, so they decided to grab three other people and told them to write a move using the same "forumla" as the first.

28 Weeks Later is missing the meat that 28 Days Later had in spades. Seriously, if 28 Days Later was a novel I could see them giving it to kids to read in high school English classes to debate on what the Rage virus represented and what the characters' behaviors tell us about humankind as a whole. It was thick with meaning, love, and treachery. I felt like they skinned 28 Days Later, filled it with paper stuffing, and tried to serve it up as a sequel. It was set in the same universe, but that was the only similarity it had with the original.

28 Days Later was a horror movie with soul. 28 Weeks Later was just a horror movie.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

--Where were the kids precisely? France? America? Mars?

Spain.

--Two kids manage to slip by all that security?

The sniper spotted them and notified over radio.

--Gasp! I'm horrified, just not enough to stop me from looting this corpse!

She saw she was at a pizza delivery joint. Noticed the keys were not in the mopeds. Reasoned that the keys for the line of delivery mopeds were inside the restaurant. She found the corpse of an employee with a keychain on his belt.

--A moped that hasn't been used in seven months will start up immediately without any problems. (Apparently part of the virus causes people to periodically start up mopeds so that the batteries don't run down.)

Unless they were petrol scooters.

--British civilians are given access cards to American military bases (I don't care what he was in charge of, I find his having complete access to EVERYTHING rather implausible)

Not a base, a civilian resettlement area. Heck, there was the info dump by the female soldier on the train ride to the Isle of Dogs telling everyone what sort of civilian amenities there were. Pubs, restaurants, etc. Not a base.

--Wait wait wait, they've told you your wife is alive, thereby they must have told you that she's got the virus. Why are you bringing yourself into contact with her? Visiting I could maybe....maybe see, but kissing someone you (presumably) know to be infected?

They discovered the wife was still infected much later in the evening. You can assume he was told she was infected, but the movie never showed there was an opportunity from when it was discovered the wife was still infected until the moment his guilt motivates him to visit his wife.

--She's so important that there are no guards anywhere and no one watching the room, not even on camera?

That bothered me. But not too much.

--Wait, what happened to the 6 or 7 armed guards headed down to the sickroom? Did Dad manage to kill all of them?

Yes, the scene of the camera over the father's shoulder showed him munching on soldiers and passing over other corpses.

--Merkuri mentioned this; why is everyone being herded into a room and locked up while there is another, easy to break through (apparently) exit? (Hi dad!)

That bothered me.

--Why are they switching to emergency lighting? It's not like there was any reason to cut the power.

Don't see the problem. Except turning off lights give the soldiers with night-vision a significant advantage.

--Why are they locking mobs of people away in one tightly confined space? Doing this makes it very easy for one infected to create dozens more. Lock everyone away singly, say, in their rooms and then infected folks have to go about things one or two at a time and break down dozens of doors to do so. You've shown earlier that it is possible to lock down doors, was that just confined to ONE revolving door on the first floor or something?

This whole locked into tight quarters bothered me. We heard in the intro's info dump that there were some 15,000 civilians there. I wondered where they all went to while this alert was in effect. Surely not all in the same room.

--(Also suggested by Merkuri) Furthermore, was there no planning for how to distinguish an infected from a non-infected? Tell the non-infect to run with their hands held stiffly above their head or something. The infected will not do so and will be easy to distinguish.

Not so much a big deal, and partly a point of the movie I felt. The infection was supposedly proven to be exausted, all carriers were throught dead from starvation. No transgenic leaping had been discovered so they had all reason to believe the infection was over. Plan for something that shouldn't be possible? Sounds like a moral to the story. Almost like they are obliquely connecting it to recent events.

--Wait a minute, so now dad is tailing them or something? Why did he not attack? They always attack, thats the idea. They cannot control the urge to kill.

Tailing them? *shrug* we are never given any insight into just what thinking is possible by the infected. Clearly some vestige remains based on the infected father's primal reaction to his wife's eyes, something that deeply haunted him after he ababdoned her. Not so out of bounds to imagine some survival instinct remained that allowed him to stalk his prey. We also say the infected father go so far as to use a tool to bludgeon a target, the blunt end of the rifle.

--How did the infection spread so far? Did none of the other groups that were locked down manage to remain so? Again, we have to assume military incompetence for this to work.

Civilians have an amazing ability to get places they are forbidden, see the children sneaking out of the quarantine zone.

--Now that they've had time to sit a spell, why has no one bothered to ask about or clean off the blood on the kid?

Why? They were fleeing for their lives, priorities like racing from human-eating mobs place hygene at a lower priority.

--People in military uniforms will shoot other people in military uniforms...with flamethrowers. (Bye bye Doyle)

I figured the flamethrowers were around to toast the corpses of the dead infected. The soldier they fired on didn't have a gas mask on, so it was a good bet he was not uninfected. They could have done better explaining why the soldier helping the kids escape didn't have his gas mask on him. In a situation where chemical weapons might be used soldiers are required to have some level of NBC protection near or on them. He should have had his gas mask on him while he was on duty up on the roof top.

Wouldn't automatically, unquestioningly opening fire on people in uniforms make things difficult?
Example:
Military HQ: Guys, kill and immolate everyone you see on the ground.
Cleanup Team 1: You heard em'. Quick get those guys in uniform!
Cleanup Team 2: S**t! Stop you idiots!

The ROE could have been better explained. It was less than adequate but the audience were given some insight what Code Red entailed.

Furthermore, if I saw someone I though was infected I'm not going to use the flamethrower first. Think of it, theres still a little time between them getting roasted and actually dying. Using the flamethrower means that instead of having an angry maniac you now have a flaming angry maniac. You now have to try and pull a guy on fire off of you. (Which never happens, just citing it as an example of incompetence.)

I may have missed it, but I thought that we saw there was only one flamethrower flanked by two soldiers with M-16s. Flame away, and if the body keeps coming your buddies get him next.

--Why is it that the night vision scope on the sniper rifle can only see 4 feet ahead all of a sudden? The soldiers on the rooftops could see several hundred feet away with them last night.

Night vision only enhances ambient light. At night outside there is ambient light from the moon, buildings, etc. In the Metro tunnels the only ambient light, I believe, came from a dim light on the sniper rifle.

--Where did the kid go? I sure as hell wouldn't have run off if I had just fallen down a flight of stairs in the dark. Wouldn't his sister have fallen on top of him?

That bothered the hell out of me!

--Wait, they encounter dad AGAIN!? Where in the hell does he keep coming from!?

The conveeeeeenience of the events in the horror genre.

--You're not taking the rifle?

Yeah, dumb. But who knows why she didn't keep it. Speculate away.

--So she never mentions that her brother was bitten, why? The kid never mentions it? The helicoptor pilot never asks if they're hurt?

Bothered me, but not so much.

--Where are they heading?

Across the English Channel, note the white cliffs of Dover, to the European mainland.[/QUOTE]

--Okay, the coptor is clearly down. So either...
1: They managed to get withing a very short distance of touchdown (presumably on the continent) and the kids turns and bites the pilot, leading to a short crash. Things quickly get out of hand. We have to assume that the pilot never contacts anyone of his situation or if he does, that no one takes any precautions for when they land.

2: They land safely on the continent, the kids and the pilot are scrubbed down but for some random reason are not kept contained. All hell breaks loose again. The heli is shown as is "just cuz." Consumption of croissants takes a nose dive.

A fill in the blank yourself moment, not hard to do really. Obviously things were left unexplained, I mean we get a "28 days later" flash on the screen.

--Great, so presumably the entire planet is screwed. Thank you for killing not only everyone on earth but by extension, also the survivors of the last film. Jerks.

Only Europe/Africa/Asia.

 

[Merkuri]

Why? They were fleeing for their lives, priorities like racing from human-eating mobs place hygene at a lower priority.

I just kept staring at the blood all over the kid's face and thinking, "that there is the Rage virus just waiting to infect somebody." All he needs to do is eat something with his hands, get a little of that blood in his mouth, and he's gone. Think of it this way... imagine somebody you knew had AIDS bled profusely all over you. Even if you were running for your life, wouldn't you want to get that blood off of you the moment you had a little peace?