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USA: Christopher Nolan, 2000

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USA/Germany: Alex Proyas, 2004

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USA/UK/Germany/South Africa: Neil Marshall, 2008

Unfortunately, after a promising start, this film proceeds to completely ransack any sense of self-dignity. It's essentially a string of pastiches of different genres, and as a result has no credibility or identity of its own, jumping from futuristic sci-fi to post-apocalyptic urban warfare to Lord of the Rings-esque medieval romp to Gladiator-inspired arena games to Mad Max-style car chase, all leading up to a confrontation between our heroine and the impossibly throaty-voiced David O'Hara wearing an outfit that left me fighting the urge to start singing "We are the Men in Black..."

I suppose it held my attention throughout, so at least I wasn't bored, but I couldn't take any of it seriously, and the impression I'm left with is that someone handed Neil Marshall a cheque for a rather large sum of money and told him to do whatever he wanted. Which is sort of admirable, I suppose, and I do to some extent admire his "fuck it" mentality, throwing in whatever he felt like. Ultimately, though, I couldn't take it remotely seriously and was left with the impression that I was watching a movie written by a teenage boy with no concept of how to maintain a consistent tone or even string together a semi-coherent plot. By far the best thing about it was Rhona Mitra, who manages to retain a level of credibility even when everything around her is going to pot. Overall, though, Marshall really dropped the ball with this one, and is making the masterful The Descent look more and more like a fluke by the minute.

It also doesn't help that, a few days earlier, I'd watched another "post-apocalyptic" Britain film, the infinitely superior 28 Weeks Later.

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USA: David Fincher, 2002

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USA: Christopher Nolan, 2008

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USA: Mark Waters, 2004

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USA/Germany/Japan/UK/Netherlands: Jan de Bont, 2003

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USA: Robert Schwentke, 2005

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UK/Spain: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, 2007

Tonight, I finally got round to watching 28 Weeks Later on Blu-ray after much procrastination, and I'm glad I didn't just leave it to gather dust on the shelf. This is a much better film than its predecessor, 28 Days Later, which I always found rather overrated, mainly due to its cheap consumer grade video camerawork and clumsy "who are the real monsters?" themes. The sequel has these themes too, and it also has a lot of choppy hand-held camerawork, but it does both of them considerably better than its predecessor, and the fact that it's shot on film means that it no longer feels like amateur hour.

It's interesting that the director, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, is Spanish, given that one of his compatriots, Alfonso Cuarón, created a similarly effective portrayal of a post-apocalyptic Britain in the excellent Children of Men. Unlike Cuarón's film, however, 28 Weeks Later is unabashedly a horror film - grim, violent and pacey. I'm actually extremely impressed by the plotting, in that it was one of those films where I could never precict what was going to happen next, and it threw me in a loop on several occasions when it came to who died and who survived.

Robert Carlyle may get top billing, but to be honest his screen time is somewhat limited. The film truly belongs to his character's two children, played by Imogen Poots and Mackintosh Muggleton, both of whom are revelations, never once giving off the impression that they are actually "acting". Catherine McCormack also shines in a brief role.

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USA: Milos Forman, 1975

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