Andy! Andy! Andy! .... or listen to Idris

Rating: 6/10 (3 September 2013)

I was pleasantly surprised by 28 Days Later and was looking forward to the second movie 28 weeks later. I felt it isn't as good a the first one although it clearly had a much larger budget.
The good. It has a great cast and the first ten minutes which set up the rest of the movie are great. Idris Elba is excellent and it seems is now the voice of common sense in everything he appears in. The Americans are well cast and well written and acted as decent but disinterested observers. Jeremy Renner was understated and excellent.
The bad The key problem I have with this movie is some general plot weakness, the reliance on the standard horror "do scary things in dark rooms with flickering lights" and annoying kids.
The survivors should have been the tiny minority who through a combination of strength,bravery, cowardice, luckiness, sneakiness and meanness made it when everyone else didn't. This was pretty well represented by the core survivors in the first movie 28 Days later and by Robert Carlyle's behavior in this movie. The behavior of the rest of survivors in this movie made it seem like they all should be been wiped out in day 1 of the first one.
The whole code red thing seemed silly. We have two options , wait 50 days again and everyone bad dies or put everyone in the same room turn all the lights off and blow everything up.
The kids actually had the survivor spirit even though they weren't survivors however I wanted them shot early in the movie. Imogen Poots seems to be a decent actor but her only role here seemed to be scream "Andy Andy Andy" in a grating and unpleasant way as often as possible. They offered no empathy or apology for their role in what occurs. Offing or at least slapping one or both of them early on in the movie would have had the triple benefit of cheering me up, adding to the grittiness of the plot and perhaps made 28 months later a possibility.
Worth watching but if they do make a third movie get Danny Boyle back to direct or Alex Garland to write.