"28 Days Later."

I watched about half of the movie "28 Days Later," partly just to check out how my new widescreen HDTV looked with HDHBO. I thought the film had a great chimpanzee-filled beginning, which was followed by the title, cleverly setting up the next scene, the mystery of a naked man waking up in a hospital bed. The man yanks out various medical tubes, puts on some clothes, and begins to try to figure out what has happened to him. The hospital and the city around it (London) are deserted. This part, which I quite enjoyed, was very much like a "Twilight Zone" episode (especially the first episode, "Where is Everybody?"). After a while, the man finds some people and figures out some of what has happened and the movie becomes more of a survivalist/road trip story. It was getting late, so I turned it off. But I checked out the DVD on Amazon just now, and saw that the extra features include:

Alternative theatrical ending with optional commentary

Alternative ending with optional commentary

Radical alternative ending with optional commentary

Of course, I didn't see the original ending, so that's four endings left for me to see. And one ending is radical.



Hmmmm .... so you didn't care enough to keep watching to see one ending, and now you're thinking of spending $25 to see four endings. What's the logic in that?



It makes a lot of sense! If there is one ending, then you watch thinking the ending better be worth slogging through all the padding in the middle. But if there are four possible endings, the investment of watching the middle section pays off fourfold, and at least one ending is likely to satisfy. Plus, there's the fun of deciding which ending you prefer, arguing with others about which ending is best, and checking out the "optional commentary" to see what the director and the writer thought were the comparative pros and cons of the four endings. Ending x 8. For people who really like to experience endings. But maybe I'm only into beginnings ... as evidenced by my loss of interest when the middle section got under way.



UPDATE: Thanks to About Last Night for linking to this post. ALN liked "28 Days Later" and calls it a "flesh-eating-zombie flick." Were those zombies? As noted, I didn't stick around for the ending, but I thought they were pre-dead "infecteds." They did have the way of the zombie about them though--except that they could move quite fast.