Has anybody seen the ending?new
God DAMNIT!!! I hate when movies do this crap. It’s like Pixar, how they come out with a movie (Monsters Inc., wait until it’s been out in theaters for a couple weeks, and then releases it with the “bloopers”. Just a frigging media ploy to get people back into theaters to watch it again. I mean, it seems to me that most movies deliberately shoot a lot of extra footage just so they’ll have something to put on the DVD’s extra features.
Still, I really liked the movie and wouldn’t mind seeing it in theaters again anyway, but still…
So, anyone see it (either in theaters or on DVD) and care to give a few spoilers?
bump
Somebody’s gotta spill about the second ending! For the love of god, I’m a college student, I can’t afford to go see it again!
I did a google search and found this discussion, where someone explains what is on the UK DVD. Two different endings, one filmed and one merely a storyboard with commentary. Not a great description, but I believe the filmed ending is the one being shown after the credits.
I’m gonna revive this not-quite-zombie zombie thread, as I just saw the movie Saturday (two days ago). We only stayed for the alternate ending cause the movie nerds behind us mentioned it.
Anyway, here it is:
After the credits, “What if…” appears in the corner of the screen, in the same font etc as before. The film re-starts with the girl driving away from the house after the major gets pulled from the car. Selena and Jim jump into the car and they drive off with Selena screaming to Jim to hold on etc. They cut to the girl and Selena puhing Jim into a hospital and they rush around trying to save his life. You can see a few flashes of scenes from the montage from the “other” ending. They fail to save Jim’s life. Selena slowly walks away, carrying a machine gun. The girl pulls a pistol from Jim’s grip and follows Selena. The final shot is the automatic doors closing on the two as they walk slowly down the hallway. Just a little more depressing, and, perhaps, “realistic”.
I was prepared for a much different movie, just because I didn’t really know what to expect, I suppose. The reviews were all describing the “scariest film ever” and the like. I found it to be tense, and the music was an incredible part of the experience, but it was not the scariesat filem ever, IMO.
I can’t wait to see it again on DVD.
It’s usually not a good idea to nitpick horror movies for logic; I’m just happy if they’re successful at creeping me out.
However – if Britain was quarantined and the rest of the world wasn’t infected, they should have had communication from the outside world. There’d be shortwave radio, and for that matter satellite tv should still work. The rest of the world wouldn’t just stop talking.
Okay - so…I’m not quite sure exactly if I liked the movie or not. And I’m not going to bother with spoiler boxes, since anyone who’s read this far has been spoiled already.
The good: it scared me. Didn’t sleep well at all that night. There were some definite ‘jump’ moments in which my heart skipped a beat or two. I thought the scene with the car alarm was a prime example of that. I liked the general idea of the plot - I’m a sucker for “you’re the only survivor”-esque stories.
The bad: There were too many plot things that just bothered me. THe car scene, for example, startled the hell out of me. But then - why is there one car left in all of London, and why is it sitting locked and alarmed in the middle of an intersection? Where’d all the other cars go?
Along those lines, where are all the bodies? Okay, there was a mass evacuation of London. People would get trombled, beaten, stomped, etc to death. Plus, some people would be killed by those who were infected. What happened to the bodies?
I didn’t quite get the church scene. The priest was infected. Were all the people lying there dead? If so, how on earth did he not smell that number of dead bodies? If they were all dead, was it a mass suicide? Which I thought went against Catholic teachings, and I assumed it was a Catholic church.
Also - I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t bring myself to buy the virus. Blame it on my summer homework for bio II, but viruses don’t work like that. There’s an incubation period in which the virus spreads through your body: it cannot do this in 20 seconds. Maybe it’s genetically engineered or something, but if you get a drop of infected blood in a cut on your ankle, it can’t affect your brain in that little time. That just bothered me throughout the whole movie.
The soldiers - I don’t understand. They couldn’t go for a month without sex? I just didn’t get that whole part, and didn’t like it at all. What was their point in keeping the infected man chained up? Wouldn’t he die of thirst in a few short days? Wouldn’t all of the infected do so as well? They didn’t seem to exhibit much common sense.
Yep. Still mixed feelings. I think it was well-done, but I’m not sure I liked the story at all.
Okay, just saw this film a couple nights ago. To address your points, NinjaChick…
That wasn’t the only car. There were cars piled up in the tunnel, and there were other cars shown strewn about the city. That car in the intersection was probably locked and alarmed because it automatically does that when you leave it. IIRC, it was a Mercedes-Benz, so that kind of feature wouldn’t surprise me.
I would think that the evacuation would be a little more orderly than that. It wouldn’t be all at one time either; it would probably be over the course of a few days. As for the bodies, in the DVD deleted scenes, there is a scene of Jim, Selena, and Mark walking through a subway train, and there are a few bodies on it.
No, not everyone was dead. If you remember, when Jim yells out, a couple of the infected rise from the pile of bodies. As for the mass suicide thing, that I’m not sure of. Maybe in unusual circumstances, exceptions can be made.
You said it yourself – genetically engineered.
No, actually they couldn’t go without it for a month. Besides, they don’t know when the next batch of survivors is going to come along. It could be a year, maybe more.
Wouldn’t it have just been easier to spell “HI”?
Anyhow, I was totally psyched up to see this movie a few nights ago. Three of us saw it. We all thought it was a pretty terrible movie…and we’re not snobby about films…it just wasn’t particularly scary or suspenseful or even original. The plot was wafer thin, full of holes, and not particularly compelling. I mean, the premise established in the first fifteen minutes of the movie is pretty damn cool. It’s just that I feel a much much better storyline could be written around it.
Does one have to be a fan of the whole zombie genre of films, because I really cannot understand the appeal of this movie.
According to the commentary track by Danny Boyle and Alex Garland, the production didn’t have enough money to hire the number of extras required to litter the streets with bodies, and because the film was shooting in a highly congested part of London where traffic could only be stopped for very brief periods, there was no way for them to have the time to do setups with bodies anyway. Boyle said that he tried to indicate the devastation symbolically, as in the row of telephone receivers left off their hooks in the hospital.
Also bear in mind that the infection didn’t strike everyone simultaneously, so that the last Infected we see dying of thirst at the end had only caught the bug recently. In any event, repeat to yourself it’s just a show, you really should relax for Mystery Sci. . er. . 28 Days Later.
IMO, the movie was brilliant.
Maybe you do have to be a fan of the zombie genre to enjoy this movie, because I’m a huge fan and I didn’t find the plot wafer thin or full of holes, and I found it rather suspensful and creepy at many points.
The church scene, for example. When he finds the pile of dead bodies, cries out “Hello” and you see that first head jerk around and look at him. The expression on the zombies face, with it’s mouth opened at such an awkward angle and eyes so bugged and hungry, that was pretty freaky. (as an aside, I don’t believe there was a mass suicide in the church. I’m under the impression that many people opted to go to the church to look for guidance and solace, much like the people in The Shining and War of the Worlds. They were thinking the end of the world was coming, went to the best place they could think of to spend in such a time, and some infected got in and tore them apart, much like at the airport. That’s the way I saw it, anyway).
The basic premise was great, and I thought they handled it the best way they could. I mean, what else would you expect/want to happen with the basic premise of a single man waking from a coma into such a world? Where would you have taken the story, pulykamell? Sure, the movie was more or less another retelling of I Am Legend (or The Omega Man if you will), but it was still really good.
And I really had no problem with the last twenty minutes or so, which seems to be where most people have their problems. Not to be too stereotypical, but say they ended up in a frat house, the men would be just as hard up for women as these guys were. Some men are just that way, and in a world where these could very well be the only women you’re bound to see for a very long time, if not EVER, you need to hurry up and make your claim, do you not? My only beef was the one guy huddled in the courner who was out of ammo. How’d the hell that happen?
As for why they kept the zombie chained up, the head soldier explained that it was to learn more about the zombies. More specifically, see how long it took them to die of starvation (or thirst, whichever came first). Apparently, it took a month. With this knowledge, it would give him a bit of a better understanding of when it could be safe for his troops to start wandering out of their little fort and start scavaging and looking for whatever else might be out there without too much fear of the infected populace being so large. If they know they’ll die out in a month without food, then give it two months, and you should be pretty set. The little bit of the two infected dying on the street near the end was a little shot to help drive that home.
Overall, I loved the movie and thought it was the best zombie movie to come out since Dawn of the Dead. It looked good, had some great cinematic moments, and was just a good survival story. I don’t know what else anyone could have wanted from it, because it gave me everything I was looking for.
eh, different strokes for different folks, I guess.
OK, so I finally got a chance to see the movie on DVD last night (just in time for Halloween). Just a few random thoughts…
First off, I thought the movie was extremely well done. The script was intelligently written, the dialogue was believable, the acting was top-notch, and the cinematography was very effective. I definitely liked the film.
Having said that, though, I just didn’t find it to be scary. I don’t know if I’ve become too jaded, or what, but I found myself appreciating the movie more as a straight drama than as a horror movie. I would definitely recommend the film, but not necessarily as a “Halloween” flick.
The one major problem I had with the movie was the ending(s). The ending as shown in the theaters was just way too upbeat and out of left field, whereas the “alternate” ending was just too damn depressing (albeit more realistic). A better “upbeat” ending, in my opinion, would have been:
Instead of having Jim miraculously survive the gunshot to his gut, simply remove the part where he gets shot in the first place (e.g., the Major simply misses or else hits him in the arm or something). Having Jim survive the gut shot was too unbelievable (gee, let’s drive down the road a bit and find a convenient hospital where we can use our vast medical knowledge to save Jim’s life without blood transfusions, someone to sew up the wound, etc.), but having him die was too depressing. If you want Jim to survive, just don’t let him get shot in the first place.
Barry
I liked for the most part, but I agree about the last third being the weakest. I also have to make a point of not looking at the movie too closely or the plot holes become more obvious. Like others said: no checking shortwave radio, satellite TV, or the internet while power lasted to see what was really happening outside the UK.
While the point about the army officer keeping Mailer (the zombie soldier) chained up to learn more about the infected (whatever his true reason - research, safety, cruelty, etc.) was interesting, it also fell into the cliche of movies (not just horror movies) that of course the zombie would get loose and be used against the soldiers.