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2 Review »

1. 

   27 Weeks Later by Ghostcut Pictures

   review by boon23

   Soon after the release I could not resist watching this fanedit, because a) I have created 27 Days Later b) I love the series c) I am Horror and especially Zombie movie fan (even though this series is not about zombies, but infected people).

   As for all my reviews: this is just my personal opinion of this fanedit. I cannot tell anybody else, if he or she will experience it in the same way or the opposite. So my review is not objective and does not reflect the opinion of fanedit.org.

   !!!!This review contains heavy spoilers!!!

   The edit:
   This fanedit reduces the mediocre sequel to 28 Days Later by 20 minutes, which means, almost 1/4 of the original movie is gone. This is for sure a sign of heavy editing and a lot of footage not being shown. What is reduced most of all are the scenes with Don, with the people arriving in London to repopulate it and with the soldiers. Certainly it is a very good idea to remove scenes with Don, since he was the weakest point of the movie. The arrival of the new inhabitants is also quite a good idea, because their scenes were long and dragging. Cutting the soldiers is a different story, because I think, they truly added to the atmosphere of the movie: the feeling of being watched, secured, spied by snipers. It also adds to the feeling that the infected are still close and a possible danger.

   scene by scene review (not every scene is mentioned):
   The fanedit starts just like the original movie does and it is good that way, because the beginning, the claustrophobic atmosphere, totally rocks, especially when the infected enter and all people can do is run for their lives.
   - From there we make a huge jump to Don talking to his already returned kids. This works well.
   - The plot continues to the kids finding their mother, which is brought to a security quarantine room. Again, this is very well cut.
   - Now it gets confusing for me, because Don, who seems like a normal survivor enters a lot of rooms using a security keycard and I could not help but wonder, why he should have one of these, as it is not shown.
   - Meanwhile the army decides to get rid of the wife, as she is a carrier of the virus. It adds to the security flaw, why Don could visit her at all. She bites him in his tongue or infects him with her saliva (this is not explained) and all hell breaks lose. I would loved to see this further edited.
   - Now when (infected) Don kills his wife, he acts too conscious and also has a flashback. His squeezing of her eyes is very unlikely for an infected and I would have loved to see this removed. The consciousness of Don is a problem in a later scene as well. What makes it a problem to me, is that I don’t believe it, according to the predecessor, where none of the infected ever acted consciously.
   - Code Red begins and chaos rules. There are not many changes (besides the removal of Don), which I spotted in this section, it works very well. The removal of Don from a lot of these scenes is VERY good. As soon as he becomes infected he is no longer important. Just another infected. The original movie made the huge mistake to change that.
   - The kids, along with Alice, Doyle and a stranger run for their lives until the gas attack. I am not sure there were any changes, but if there were: Good editing.
   - Alice and the kids walk through the subway and we lose Alice. Ghostcut took this chance to get really experimental by letting the entire scene play in complete blackness, which lasts 3 minutes. I was not too happy with this decision as I found it confusing and even went back to the forum to check, if this is really fanedited. It is. It would have worked better, if the transition used was not a fade but an upward move to black. This way it would have looked like them going down the stairway and entering the darkness. And of course I would have preferred outlines to complete blackness. I think the original subway scene works better, especially because of the loss of Alice, which should have been shown as she was an important part. Of course there is the Don problem, which had to be solved.
   - Don bites Andy. Well, this is the next scene in which Don clearly acts half-consciously. And it’s not good. It’s better than in the original, but still it’s rather confusing.
   - the kids reach the chopper, fly to Paris. All well done, I really prefer the new music, although it is too loud compared to the overall volume of the movie. I am not sure, why I did not find the finale shocking, but it is probably caused by knowing the original.
   - end credits. Another font than Times New Roman or whatever serif font it was, would have been nice. With 7:30 min the credits are way to long for a fanedit IMO.

   This fanedit is an improvement over the original, still it is not as good as I hoped for. Several bugging issues remained (Don) and some things were deleted, which I would have liked to stay (soldiers). Still this is flawless entertaining with only the keycard plothole, which is minor.
   The editing job was done well. There are no rough cuts to the audio or the video, the plot works. I was most of the time well entertained, sometimes thrilled and sometimes not happy with the editing (keycard and underground).
   editing: 3 of 5,
   entertainment: 3 of 5

   Image quality:
   I only watched the mp4 version (as it was the only version available at that time) and the image sometimes looked a bit washed out. But it’s still good.
   video quality: 4 of 5

   Audio quality:
   The audio comes in 48000Hz 128 kb/s tot , stereo (2/0), which is good for this format. There was a tiny volume issue in the end, when the score seemed to loud, besides that it was well done
   audio: 4 of 5

   resulting in a 3 of 5 overall rating from me.
   This is an improvement to the original movie. I enjoyed watching it and don’t consider it a waste of time, so it gets my recommendation to be watched. However, I can imagine this improved some more.

   Review by boon23 — April 28, 2008 @ 10:30 pm

2. 

   while i completely respect boon’s opinion and rating, i will politely disagree.

   i don’t miss what is removed and think the story is improved because of it. also, the blacked out underground scene was great! a great creative decision that i think is well executed. overall i enjoyed this edit. thank you.

   i will, however, agree with boon’s remark about the end credits. originally, i just stopped watching the movie at the credits so i had to go back and check. this isn’t all that important, but then again – creatively this isn’t interesting or positive to the end result.

   technical quality 4/5
   creativity 4/5
   entertainment 4/5

   4/5

   Review by joebshmoe — February 13, 2009 @ 8:37 pm

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