There is no escape.......

Rating: 9/10 (12 May 2007)

The terror of the Rage Virus, an experiment that went wrong and destroyed most of Britain during 28 Days Later, has returned to a country devastated and a US led NATO effort to rebuild. However, as can happen, what was once thought gone has returned with even deadly consequences.
Don (Robert Carlye) is one of a few survivors who has managed to remain safe and hidden from the population of the Rage infested. Along with his wife and several other survivors, their existence is kept secret and safe until they are discovered and quickly overcome during one of the most intense horror scenes in recent movie history. Don is able to escape but only after leaving behind his wife Alice (Catherine McCormack) in order to save his own life. Later, this theme becomes important and the irony of it being that this relationship has much to blame for the second outbreak.
28 Weeks after the first outbreak, a US led NATO force has occupied much of London. The population of Rage infected has died off due to starvation weeks earlier and now a clean up operation is established in order to bring back expatriates. Among the arrivals is Tammy (Imogen Poots) and her younger brother Andy (Mackintosh Muggelton) who happen to be the children of Don and Alice. Sent away from England before the outbreak, Tammy and Alice return to a country that is empty and abandoned as well as their father who has found employment with the occupation forces. It is their first day with him that he "explains" what happens to their mother and why it is she is no longer with them. As children often do, they accept what they are told and grieve for their loss.
However their father's lie becomes obvious when, during an attempt to return to their old home outside the safe zone where US forces have locked down the refugees, Andy discovers their mother hidden away in their home. It is then that she is discovered by the US Army which quickly wants to know if she is infected and how she could have lived so long on her own. Alice herself seems almost fine if not in a state of shock.
Alice is discovered to have a rare gene that allows her to be immune from the effect of the Rage Virus even if she remains a carrier herself. It is through Don, who is stunned as his children to discover that she is alive, that the outbreak returns just as quickly. Within a single day the entire safe zone the US military has established is overrun forcing General Stone (Idris Elba) to declare a Code Red: an order to kill everyone moving whether someone is infected or not.
Tammy and Andy find themselves protected by a Major with the US Army named Scarlet (Rose Byrne) and Sergeant Doyle (Jeremy Renner). While much of the action moves too quickly to establish much depth for the characters or even plot, the military response to the outbreak is shown as quick and merciless. Non-infected humans are shot down quickly without a second thought before air strikes and chemical weapons are used. Scarlet, who believes that both Tammy and Andy hold the same gene of their mother, wants them protected at all cost. In this her wish is granted even if it means her own death and Doyle's but the two are taken off the island..... Even if Andy himself was infected by his own father.
The question of Andy become more important when clips of Paris, along with calls for help over a French radio, show the signs of an outbreak on Continental Europe.... 28 days later.
28 Weeks Later lacked the amount of depth that 28 Days Later was able to create. Besides Don, Tammy, and Andy, every other character has little growth or even to say beyond the stereotypical roles we see in movies like this. The violence is there but often the camera shots are so quick and rapid that it's hard to take in everything that is happening. The idea that the US and Europe would allow so many to return without much more protection or even a real reason besides being British is rather far fetched and I wondered how the rest of the world would have seen such a failure. It would seem as if the very attempt to create a new England only destroyed what little remained of the old one.
However, 28 Weeks Later is a good movie if one can ignore some of the weaker aspects of the plot. The question of what happened after 28 Days Later is answered and now what remains to be answered is the consequence for the rest of the world.
9/10