Idiot Character Syndrome severely dampens an otherwise good horror film

Rating: 4/10 (4 November 2019)

My previous review for 28 Days Later, I gave the film 7/10, commenting that an extremely good first act is damaged by some increasingly wonky scriptwriting as the story goes on.
Unfortunately, 28 Weeks Later takes all the good things from the first film (the atmosphere, the setting, the Rage Virus) but also all the bad things (characters acting stupidly, an incredibly incompetent military, plot contrivances).
And then the movie amplifies both. The result is a visceral and occasionally effective horror film that also suffers from the same severe brain degeneration that the Infected seem to have.
Like it's predecessor, 28 Weeks opens with a *thumping* first act that is really great. We have people in the countryside sheltering themselves from the Infected onslaught, trying to keep a low profile and living a pretty bleak existence with a brave face. I could have watched another 30 minutes of this.
Then the Infected break in and Don (played really effectively by Robert Carlyle, a highlight of the movie) and his wife Alice (Catherine McCormack) are thrown into a chaotic scramble for survival.
The imagery of Don running for his life in broad daylight, terror etched on his face as a swarm of contagious maniacs run after him, all surrounded by rolling green British hills...it's pretty breathtaking. I love this part of the film. It's genuinely disturbing and really unique at the same time.
This actually brings me onto the first thing I find irritating about the film; the "semi-villainous" characterisation of Don.
Don is a likeable family man for the most part and I empathised with him. The weird thing is, after he runs away in the opening, the movie heavily tries to insinuate that he's a dirty coward who was wrong for running away without his wife. I found this really weird.
It's already been established that fighting infected people hand to hand is practically suicidal (one drop of blood in your eye or mouth turns you into one, after all).
Don was completely outnumbered at the house and his wife was trapped in a room past a bunch of Infected, so realistically his only choice was run away or die a pointless agonising death. We even see him bravely fighting off the Infected with a crowbar before he drops it, so it's not like he wasn't trying his best to save everyone in the first place.
Yet the movie tries to sell that he's a selfish coward because he didn't want to get pointlessly mauled to death, which would have resulted in his wife dying afterwards anyway. Bit unfair?
Anyway, the biggest strength of the film from this point on is the "28 Days" formula, while the biggest weakness is the characterisation of the US Military and the bizarre choices the characters make. The sheer silliness of some of the plot contrivances leading to "now there are zombies everywhere, lol" really turned me off the film.
Unlike how the first film unrealistically depicted 90% of the Brit military as deranged psychopaths after a couple of weeks of social collapse, 28 Weeks unrealistically depicts 90% of the US military as completely incompetent cretins.
Some of the things the US army does in this film include:

Locking an extremely dangerous Rage-infected carrier in a completely unguarded room, with keycard access to this room given to some random civilian guy who fixes boilers and stuff.

Insisting on killing this carrier even though she could permanently cure Rage if properly experimented on (though they're so inept they don't even manage to kill the person anyway).

Having a policy whereby if there is an outbreak of Rage again, they will forcibly herd all thousands of civilians into a tiny, cramped basement with many unsecured entrances and extremely poor lighting. Wow.

Having a policy whereby if a Rage outbreak goes full-blown (which it absolutely will due to said stupid basement plan), the soldiers are ordered to shoot absolutely everything, including each other. Even if it's blatantly obvious people aren't infected, or obvious that shooting them will cause the situation to clearly worsen even further.

The military also completely fails to actually contain the area they are re-settling in the first place with proper fencing or anything like that, allowing the virus to get to Europe and possibly the whole world. Again, wow.

Finally, the characters are also subject to this brain-rot. Perhaps the most obvious example is Doyle.
He pointlessly sacrifices himself to some guys with short-range mini flamethrowers while pushing a car. He literally has an assault rifle on his back and knew they were there! Why on Earth did he not simply shoot them before pushing the car?
I'll stop there. I think the point's been made. If you want another helping of the good bits of 28 Days Later, this film can deliver, with a good performance by Carlyle to boot. It's just unfortunate that the film ups the bad stuff from the prequel to 11 as well.