Rage strikes back

Rating: 10/10 (14 May 2007)

OK, so yeah, do you want to talk about a scary-a** fright flick? As an American, I'm beginning to pay more attention to British horror. We've seen it plenty of times within the last seven years. Anything fresh off the boat from our closest European allies, people here eat it up. We saw it with "The Descent" (2005), "Shaun of the Dead" (2004), "28 Days Later..." (2002), and its sequel "28 Weeks Later" (2007).
British director Danny Boyle (of 1996's "Trainspotting") and screenwriter Alex Garland were behind "28 Days Later..." where radical animal-rights activists broke into a laboratory and freed monkeys that were infected with the experimental "rage virus." If you remember from that film, you remember that the rage virus only takes 30 seconds to infect (critic Roger Ebert noted that a virus that only takes seconds to infect will not make an efficient survivor in the long run because the host population will soon be dead - as will too, the virus, at least according to Darwinian evolution) and once infected, the "infected" person becomes a wild, salivating homicidal maniac. The virus completely decimated the British Isles, leaving them to be shut down, quarantined, and we were left to ponder the fates of that film's only survivors.
"28 Weeks Later" only leaves that up to our imaginations...
Anyway, 28 Weeks Later after the initial infection, the initial infected have begun to slowly die of starvation. American NATO forces move in to remove the deceased infected, eliminate any surviving infected, look for human survivors, and begin reconstruction. In the film's opening moments we're introduced to a handful survivors who are eventually wiped out, leaving only one to escape the carnage, Don (Boyle's "Trainspotting" alumni Robert Carlyle).
Don makes it to a military checkpoint, where he is reunited with his two children Andy (Macintosh Muggleton) and Tammy (Imogen Poots) and they attempt to start over along with a thousand others in the "Green Zone" (sound familiar? Plenty of other terms abound, such as "Code Red," "Extreme prejudice," among others), a U.S. military-controlled section of London with scanning cameras and rooftop snipers. Well, as you know, the calm before the storm passes and the rage virus strikes back with a wicked vengeance, and mass chaos begins once again.
I was surprised to find "28 Weeks Later" working from the very first opening scene. The film opens with a bloody bang, with the maddening infected banging down doors, chewing on flesh, and massacring any living thing they come into contact with. "28 Weeks Later" builds on the militaristic paranoia of modern times to present us with a chaotic scenario that is all too familiar. Down comes society in one fell swoop and everything they worked so hard to achieve is gone. Also, purists will note that the infected ARE NOT zombies. The infected are technically still alive and can be killed as such; they're just... infected, clawing, gouging out eyes, and vomiting bloody innards all over the place.
"28 Weeks Later" does something even more incredible. While one can easily find fault with "28 Weeks Later" repeating some of the same plot devices of the first film, it quickly becomes a moot point. In the tradition of some movie sequels, this one surpasses its predecessor in many ways, the least of which is sheer terror and chaos. Make no mistake: this is one intense experience that you're not likely to forget anytime soon. And even as events in "28 Weeks Later" prove, surviving the madness is not a sure thing any more than most of us are promised tomorrow.
There's a fine cast of brave performers here, the best of which is Robert Carlyle, who doesn't run through the motions of the typical action-horror hero. There are also some fine American performers as well (while American talents were a no-show in the first film). There's Doyle (Jeremy Renner), an American sniper who is forced to abandon his post once the s**t hits the fan, his buddy Flynn (Harold Perrineau) who's a helicopter pilot and then there's also Scarlet (Rose Byrne), a military scientist who makes a startling discovery about the rage virus.
The man behind this production is the Spanish director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, who obviously watched the first film carefully and saw all the areas needing improvement. He skillfully crafts his picture so that everything goes downhill (in a good way) from the start. His hand-held camera really gets into the terror and gives it a slight documentary feel, thus putting the audience right in the middle of the action. It also gets up close & personal into the furious, crimson-dyed eyes of the infected from time to time. The special effects Fresnadillo chose to employ here are as gruesome as they could possibly get, with many disturbing images, violence, and gore that are surely miles ahead of "28 Days Later..." There is one moment where fighters fire-bomb a mass section of the Green Zone after the infected have taken over that is particularly affecting. On a lighter note, the best of these special effects sequences has to be when a helicopter goes blades-first into a wall of oncoming infected and... I don't want to spoil the effect.
In summation, "28 Weeks Later" is one horror flick that takes a look at our modern times and ups the fear and paranoia to almost unbearable levels. Anyone who watches the film will surely be startled by the comparisons but as this film's ending also proves, 28 Days Later... you might as well be prepared.
10/10