Brutal, exhausting, brilliant and powerful

Rating: 9/10 (1 June 2007)

Few movies can approach the level of brutality, suspense, horror or intensity of "28 Weeks Later". A follow-up to the brilliant, eerie, low budget "28 Days Later", the sequel takes us to dark places only hinted at in the first film. I must warn you this film is unsparingly violent and mercilessly horrific, with scenes of family members killing each other.
The film contains a scene that is truly heart-rending as a man's cowardice overpowers his love for his wife as we (and she) watch in disgust as he decides to bail out in the face of an insurmountable challenge. Later, this same man comes face to face with the wife he abandoned, now a carrier of the disease, not truly "infected". She transfers the virus to him in a kiss and she helplessly watches as rage consumes him and turns him into an infected. Strapped to a table, she is subjected to his fatal attack as he kills her for the second time.
Like I said, brutal, repulsive and extremely dark stuff.
Innocent people are senselessly slaughtered by the infected in a scene that almost re-creates the story told by the character "Mark" from the first film. In that film, he describes being in a mob as the rage virus spreads and panic is transformed into bloody mayhem.
Innocent people are also slaughtered as a military force comes to terms with the concept of collateral damage. To keep the virus from spreading they target those who have not yet been infected. The abhorrent idea becomes more of a pragmatic survival strategy rather than an difficult ethical question as the disease spreads.
The only criticism I have (and what keeps me from rating the film higher)is that too many coincidences happen throughout the film which bring cast members together and into "yet another" dangerous frightening circumstance. It makes for a scary and jolting film certainly but it stretches the audience capacity for suspending their disbelief. After all, you can scarcely believe people would continue to go into dark underground confined areas knowing that survival was unlikely.
The solution to this horrible infection is clearly smaller controllable populations that can be isolated. Imagine multiple, secure self-contained areas of one hundred people or less. If any sign of infection happens it's far easier to simply segregate a small section of the population and let the disease flare up and burn itself out in 28 days. Also, to easily identify infected from non-infected in a crowd situation a simple announcement over a P.A. with instruction would be required. Tell all non-infected to run with their hands over their heads (or some similar instruction that infected would not understand) and it would be relatively simple to pick off the infected while avoiding innocent casualties.