Could have been good but ruined by some poor choices

Rating: 3/10 (15 December 2007)

A great premise and setup are ruined by some very poor choices. The makers of this movie hate the audience and their own characters. Nothing that made 28 Days Later a really good movie is in this movie.
Let's start with plot. None of the "this could happen" realism from the first movie is here. I can forgive a few plot conveniences but they just started to stack up. I'm going to list them here so SPOILER WARNING:

Mom is immune to Rage virus.

Dad is lone survivor.

Dad (UK civilian) gets job where his security badge gets him past the highest US military security points.

There are zero guards between the entrance and the quarantine area.

Not to be outdone, his two kids can sneak past military check points.

One of those kids can also escape all zombies, snipers and find his sister, all in a few minutes.

Dad becomes the super zombie who can take out squads of trained soldiers (trained to kill zombies, BTW) and who can evade all mass extermination attempts.

Super zombie Dad can also find his kids, not once, but twice.

Even though zombie blood if contagious, no one ever bothers to wash, or even wipe it off.

On the other hand, no one ever gets infected this way either.

After 28 days, 28 months, and another 28 days no one bothered to close the Chunnel?

Anyway, with the plot ruined, the next to go was the acting. It's a mixed bag here. Some was good but some was *really* bad. The screaming zombies acted better than some of the regulars when they were screaming.
That bring me to the deaths. You never expect many, if any, of the main characters to survive in a zombie/horror movie. You also expect those deaths to be somewhat spectacular. However, the cruel and callous manner in which some people died crossed many lines for me. If the rest of the movie were any good then perhaps these deaths would have worked. However, I don't think these deaths were given any more thought than "how can we f*ck with people the most?" The "night scope" death was also poorly directed. It's bad enough to kill off a likable character, but to do it poorly? You fail.
That brings us to the gore. If you want gore then you're in luck. This is probably the best part of the movie, but that's not saying much. Some of it is over the top, and some of it even funny (in a black humor way), but some of it was just cheap. The quick editing and fast panning shots seemed to be hiding flaws rather than being a creative choice.
Finally, the "ending." Once again, if the film makers had shown any sort of deep understanding of the movie then I might overlook this lack of a real ending. As it stands I can only assume that the writers just got tired and said "let's end it here." There was no message or anything deep unless you consider futility to be deep. The ending was just a cheesy, seen-it-before cliché.
To conclude: skip it. 3/10