I just saw it. The individual elements didn’t bother me, dicks and babies and whatever. The premise was solid, the island with the tides was cool, the little society was neat and believable, the bone temple and the orange doctor were solid, and the slug zombies were horrifying, thank you.

Danny boyle made three of my favorite films. I don’t even care if everything makes sense. I like weird shit, I just want a good story.

But damn. The sporadic cuts at the beginning were forcing an obvious metaphor, over and over. The pacing was all over the place. The soundtrack was distracting, dilluting the vibe rather than providing a fun contrast. Even with those complaints, the first half was a solid survival horror. The second felt disjointed. And yet, it would still be a 7/10 for me if not for the velvet zombie fighting ninjas at the end.

Jimmy was obviously going to come back, but there could have been more of a lead up to it. Sprinkle a few velvet ninjas in here and there, even just one, so it’s not another tonal change in a film that already gave me narrative whiplash like four times. I get it was setting up for the next in the series, still. I want to enjoy -this- story.

I didn’t really care about Spike, though I understood his motives. His dad lied about their adventure and cheated on his mom, a great way to show his trust was broken and he needed to figure things out for himself. And when he did find out they were wrong, it made sense he’d want to keep exploring on his own. I just didn’t give a shit what happened to him. Not sure why.

I know the baby will come back in the next one, probably. In this one, it was an unsatisfying loose end. 28 Days Later is still one of my favorite films, and I’m going to see the next one despite this movie, and not because of it.

And you know what? 28 Years Later would have been a great mini series. The way it was plotted out felt more episodic than cohesive. I might have liked it better that way.

Still hated the ninjas. I tried to find reasons to like the ninjas, even as a reason to have a weird, fun scene because they can and it’s important to try things in art, but I just can’t.