ending improves from 28 Days horrible 2nd half

Rating: 2/10 (9 December 2007)

It kept my interest throughout and that's about it. 28 Days has a much better beginning that sets the scene and engages the viewer to try and figure out what's happening. 28 Weeks makes no connections in the beginning - unknown people in a house hit by the infected so except for the hefty rental price I had to pay I would have stopped watching. I had hoped for at least one, just one, character from the previous movie to bridge a connection but sadly there wasn't even one carry over from the first movie. Usually that is a heads up right there that the movie is going down hill. Some of the other writers have already mentioned the absolute stupidity and offense that the producers make of the viewers intelligence when the actors do such stupid things such as let the kids cross the river to the not completely safe portions of the city. Turn a blind eye! No, the armed guards just don't happen to notice two kids crossing the bridge right behind their backs! And a guard who does finally take notice takes his own sweet time (hours) to track the kids down and descend on them, and of course just in the nick of time after the kids have accomplished their objectives. 28 Days did much better with the 'return to family house' sequence. But to be fair I must slam the first movie for the horrible 2nd half of the movie at the soldiers camp. It was so bad that you'll actually find that the film makers added 3 different endings to the DVD of 28 Days, one of which entirely cut the second half of the movie at the soldiers camp (which is what they should have done). So 28 Weeks sort of makes up for this in having not so disaster an ending. But I did feel quite taken for a ride after watching 28 Weeks that I had just been fed a dose of Hollywood crap, with non stop pointless action gore and violence. So I give 28 Weeks two points. One point for not crashing and burning the 2nd half of the movie like 28 Days did. And one point for making this movie wider in scope with repopulating and crowd control efforts. Both movies really paint a horrible view of the military. This viewpoint in both films is developed very poorly, actually not even developed at all. Some movies that actually have some thoughtfulness and don't insult their viewers usually add some story as to why the military is such a 'bad guy' such as corruption schemes or hidden agendas or in cahoots with the scientists who developed the virus to begin with. All in all a terrible disappointment.