So I watched this movie tonight, having never seen it before. Yes, I know it’s old news, but while the reaction is still fresh in my head, I decided to vent it here, on the internet.

If it helps, I really liked 28 Days Later. I thought it was pretty scary while being somewhat believable (once you get over the whole “the monkeys are infected with RAGE” bit at the beginning).

This movie started off great; a little human drama, some tough moral choices, people turning on each other to survive - all the things that make zombie movies (for the duration of this “review”, I’ll be referring to the runny bitey scary people as zombies) interesting.

About 1/3 of the way in the movie starts on a downhill run that continues on a race to the absolute least plausible ending possible. Let’s detail the comedy/tragedy, shall we?

Oh yeah, spoiler alert. If you haven’t seen this movie and care about it… for… some… reason… well, stop reading.

• They put the rage virus carrier in a room that Joe Irish can access with his keycard. Joe Irish is the carrier’s husband. Joe Irish is a civilian without a gun and full of angsty “oh God I killed my wife” squishy emotions. Bad idea (although I did like him gouging his wife’s eyes out with his thumbs, nice touch).
• After the virus escapes, they shove all the tasty, panicked, non-weapon-carrying civilians into a tightly packed room - let’s call it “human buffet room”. Now, you’d think that as part of the military’s crack last-ditch virus containment plan, they have a room that couldn’t be broken into. By one zombie. Who hits the door… well, I guess it was sort of hard. He is full of rage, after all. Maybe it gave him the power to smack the door with the strength of 10 bad Irish actors.
• Okay, now the virus is loose and streams of blood-vomit are arcing everywhere. By the way, blood vomit? Awesome. So anyway, everyone’s fucked. The military’s plan? Kill everything! Okay, I guess that makes sense somehow. How are we going to kill everything?

  With fucking snipers. With bullets. One at a time.

  This is the U.S. military, right? I mean, these guys should be aching to nuke London. Seriously, we’ve been dreaming about it ever since that tea thing. But no, sniper rifles. Then, firebombing. And then, nerve gas.

• Speaking of which? The movie makes really clear early on that the time from infection to snacking on faces is about 20 to 30 seconds. And yet soldiers are willing to kill our protagonists, who are driving a car. In a field of nerve gas, after surviving a wave of zombie attacks. Whatever - this is actually one of the least stupid plot points of the latter half of the movie, so I’ll give it a pass.
• Finally, there’s super Zombie. Super Zombie is the Dad - Joe Irish - from the beginning of the movie; the one who had the all-access pass that let him get infected by his wife and set off the whole chain of blood vomit (<3 blood vomit). Super Zombie is like the main character of the film. He gets infected, breaks open the door into the human snack room, escapes the fire bombing and the nerve gas, and then at the end happens to wander into the subway where his children just happened to flee, finally chowing down on his son, only to get capped by his daughter, weilding a sniper rifle from the earlier part of the movie (at close range).

  Can Zombies have hubris? If this movie is anything to go by, the answer is a resounding yes. Joe Irish Zombie was fucking arrogant, and he got his zombie just desserts. Blood was involved.

So, yeah. Unfortunately, I failed to be scared, excited, or really, emotionally moved at all by this movie.

The blood fountains were pretty entertaining though. And, the teaser at the end indicates that France got infected, so, there’s always that.