The Horror

I've been going through a little spurt of cinema going and have grave news to report. Spider Man 3 is not worth seeing. I know, I know, you were already aware of this - but I felt the need to confirm it lest you spent some of your hard earned social security benefits on the thing.

It's not that it isn't a well put together, slick, high production value pacy romp with just the right amount of violence to kissing to special effects ratio and a just in the nick of time bitter sweet happy ending... hold on... in fact yes it is that fact - it's that fact precisely that makes it not worth seeing. It's painting by numbers, it has Kirsten Dunst as its vacuous hollow core with little to do but plod through her plot device role. It's *inoffensive*. Shudder.

But whilst Spidey is busy selling burgers the good people at Fast Food Nation are busy trying to put you off your food, for good.

Based on the well respected book of the same name the film lays out a fictionalised greasy trail of corporate corruption and the social misery it creates and feeds upon. Drawing in scenes from the chain of moments that go into creating a burger we see glimpses of the boardroom, the high school, immigrant labour, the middle managers, the consumers and, of course, the teenage burger flippers.

Although we are only "treated" to one final scene of the killing floor there is a murderous undercurrent throughout, despite the fact that the events we see are all perfectly ordinary. I did feel rather unsatisfied by the whole thing. A little too worthy perhaps, a little cliched at times and those issues it dealt with most strongly had been dealt with better elsewhere - corporate corruption (Silver City) and immigrant labour (Bread and Roses) in particular - although the direct action kids were damn hilarious.

It's good this film's been made, and I'd recommend seeing it, you may well feel sated by it in a way that I didn't quite achieve. At the very least you'll go away with the strong feeling that there really is "shit in the meat".

Of course when it comes down to it we are all meat aren't we? At least that's the feeling you get once you've seen '28 weeks later' a feast of cannibalism, rage and horror the like of which we have not seen before that makes '28 days later' look like a walk in the park. Admittedly a zombie infested terror-park, but a walk in the park none-the-less.

I hear that some people don't enjoy films where more than half the cast get disemboweled - if you number yourself among their number then stay well away from the cinema until it's all over, not even to see Magicians lest the audience in the neighbouring auditorium go berserk and burst in, tearing and biting indiscriminately.

The premise, that Cambridge scientists develop a killer "rage" virus that turns our beloved tea drinking nation into a pack of ravenous killers tirelessly hunting down the uninfected (although for some reason not fighting each other, just like in Serenity) where so ever they choose to hide is, of course, the stuff of legends.

Surprisingly, both films deal with the psychological effects of this "what if" scenario and the horrendous moral decisions people have to make with humanity and a real sense of ambiguity. I had my doubts whether this sequel had anything new to add but Robert Carlyle in particular brought an emotional depth and understanding to his role that was truly touching.

Some people are arguing that, like in the first film, the army are simultaneously the protectors of the remaining population and the villains of the piece - but I don't think that's true. Whilst in 28 days the wonderfully disturbed Colonel Ecclescake is a monstrously logical conclusion to the situation in 28 weeks the US army is, if anything, too humane. Sure they end up shooting everyone - but they feel bad about it and their biggest problem is essentially their unwillingness to do the job properly.

The subtext of the film is that in order to save millions you may have to sacrifice hundreds. It's not *nice* to shoot uninfected children but those soldiers who refuse to do their duty are letting down the free world, and responsible for a far greater evil, allowing an unrelenting and ever hungry virus to spread across the globe.

If the rage is a parallel to Al Quaida (and I have no reason to believe that it is) then the film is arguing that we need to be hard headed. Far better we kill one hundred innocent souls than allow the virus to spread, potentially destroying the world. It's a pro-war film if ever there was one - but pulled off in a most interesting, if blood curdling way.

All three films were horrific in their own ways. Whether it was the squelch of a torn off limb, the slit throat of the cow on the killing floor or the bland inequity of the Tobey Maguire homunculus Hollywood is still able to give me the willies - although admittedly not always in the way it intended.