"28 Days Later" Movie Review

With a new director guiding the violent action, the sequel to 28 Days Later depicts a desperate attempt to fight a devastating 'rage virus.'

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In the manner of most successful horror sequels, 28 Weeks Later cranks up the intensity of violence, bloodshed and tension to create a worthy successor to the film that was a surprise indie hit in 2002.

The original movie, 28 Days Later, rewrote the premise of a zombie apocalypse by grafting familiar pieces of Resident Evil and Dawn of the Dead into a new vision of the future in which a virus infecting the island of Great Britain sends infected carriers into a cannibalistic, hyper-active rage that decimates the population.

28 Weeks Later begins during the latter stages of the original devastation as survivors are barricaded in isolated locations with dwindling supplies of food. In one such enclave, a married couple finds solace in the knowledge that their two children have survived the horrific plague through the good fortune of having been sent to Spain on vacation prior to the epidemic.

The unexpected ways in which the virus touches these parents and children become the flash points of renewed hope and sudden horror in a series of indelible scenes that are startling in their bleak realism.

28 Weeks is just as grim and nihilistic in its depiction of a threatened society as was 28 Days, with the added intensity of modern warfare unleashed against the affected cities and the targets within. But like the original, the most shocking moments come in the most intimate confrontations between the infected and their victims, as in one graphic killing that recalls the death of Eldon Tyrell in Blade Runner.

The direction by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo is highly effective throughout most of the film, though at times his frenetic capturing of chaotic violence causes vital moments to be missed or made abiguous. The screenplay to which Fresnadillo contributed is terse and unrelenting, though its best moments come during the first and second acts before winding down through some of the film's more dubious scenes and ending with an abrupt epilogue.

If a trilogy-completing 28 Months Later is a forgone conclusion, one can only hope there's enough new blood and fresh ideas left to match the success of this apocalyptic thriller.

28 Days Later (2007)

Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
Screenplay by Rowan Joffe and Juan Carlos Fresnadillo

Stars:
Catherine McCormack ... Alice
Robert Carlyle .................. Don
Imogen Poots .................. Tammy
Mackintosh Muggleton .... Andy
Rose Byrne ....................... Scarlet
Jeremy Renner ................ Doyle
Harold Perrineau ............. Flynn

Rated R for strong violence and gore, language and some sexuality/nudity.