Now this is the way to do a sequel.

Rating: 8/10 (14 May 2007)

28 Weeks Later reviewed by Samuel Osborn
Now this is the way to do a sequel. 28 Weeks Later draws a terrific blueprint for future horror sequels to follow. As usual, it wasn't possible to bring on board the original director (Danny Boyle of Trainspotters fame) and the original writer (Alex Garland) to work on the sequel to 28 Days Later. Instead, the two worked as producers and found an apt replacement: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo. Not many saw Fresnadillo's startling feature debut, Intacto, but those who did remember it well. Intacto was compelling, dark, and precisely intelligent. The same adjectives can quite fittingly be glued upon Fresnadillo's second feature film, 28 Weeks Later.
The sequel fortunately doesn't require audiences to have seen the original. Days have turned to weeks and the story of Cillian Murphy's survival in posthumous England is finished; not continued maybe because of reasons similar to the non-return of Mr. Boyle and Mr. Garland. Anyway, 28 Weeks Later brings us up to speed with a concise recap of England's resuscitation by United States and NATO forces. The infected (i.e. Zombies) have been cleared of the island and citizens are slowly being allowed entry into what is called District 1. The United States Army inhabits this region, beginning what is a modest allegory running parallel to the present war in Iraq. The first children allowed into District 1 are Tammy and Andy (Imogen Poots and Mackintosh Muggleton), rejoining their father after separation due to the infection. Their father, Don (Robert Carlyle), we learn through the grisly opening sequence, is a selfish twerp who abandoned his wife for the sake of his singular survival. But as a peculiarity in his wife's genetic ordering renders her semi-immune to the zombies' virus, the importance of his children's safety becomes a priority to the United States Army. Without giving too much away, this peculiarity sets off a reaction that brings the virus into District 1's core, causing another gory eruption of glorious, limb-tearing zombie violence.
The plot, like in any horror sequel, requires the help of a league of peripheral characters to shore up the holes and contrivances it leaves leaking. Along with the children, there are the parents, the scientists, the Army commanders and the snipers for the screenplay to shadow as the infection pierces the confines of District 1. Luckily, Fresnadillo and his writers shrug off most of the symptoms of sequelitis, leaving only a couple glaring plot conveniences that are cause for unintentional laughter. (Explaining these plot hiccups would spoil some hearty surprises). For the most part they manage to find cleverly plausible situations for all these characters to inhabit, each setting off a reaction for the other to deal with, making for a high velocity of smart storytelling.
As in the original, the scares come as frequently as the action, with both Mr. Boyle and Mr. Fresnadillo allowing the suspense to open the throttle onto full-fledged chases and action spectacles. There's no reliance on cats jumping out of dark closets and no reliance on nauseating, bucket-filling gore. His scares are clever and always compelling. The camera is continuously hand-held, finding the candid beauty in all the Zombie-fleeing and sometimes also finding honest emotion in the characters' stories.
About the same time I screened 28 Weeks Later I was close to finishing Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer-winning novel The Road. The book is another riff on post apocalyptic survival, a theme apparently at the forefront of pop culture's psyche. McCarthy rendered his characters subject to their environment, characters without control over their destiny, no plot convenience to allow them redemption. The novel is devastating and soulful, exciting and terrifying. 28 Weeks Later relies on convenience no more so than any other Zombie picture, but the convenience is still contrivance. The film kneels at the feet of spectacle; required to find shortcuts to flare reactions and achieve emotional benchmarks. It is more important that we don't see two zombies killed by the same means; creative extermination is more important than any character evolution.
But the comparison is maybe unfair. What is at stake artistically isn't much to 28 Weeks Later. The bottom line is still a zombie and his appetite. Except, both works employ similar devices to conjure realism: Fresnadillo's hand-held camera is the same as McCarthy's non-usage of punctuation. They're clever immersion tricks. Each auteur wants us to believe wholly in their world, zombie or not. 28 Weeks Later is near to such success as The Road, though hampered by its purpose as spectacle. The spectacle, after all is told, is still spectacular, however undeserving it may be.
Samuel Osborn