Irritating waste of time

Rating: 1/10 (25 November 2007)

Where do I start. It fails as a horror film, as a drama, and as a sequel. This sequel basically took the first movie, 28 Days Later, and stripped it free of anything positive. Then they added some military firepower. That's it in a nutshell. The first movie had a bad script, but good cinematography, excellent music, likable characters, fun direction, and at least a coherent premise and story. This one has a worse script, headache-inducing cinematography, bad music, main characters you wouldn't give a damn about, boring direction, and no semblance of a story--they actually detract from an important premise from the first movie.
As a horror film, there is absolutely no tension. This just inundates the audience with a bunch of shaky shot amongst the running infected, and shots of the US army gassing and firebombing everyone in London. It doesn't even attempt to draw fear, nor any anticipation--it just lays out some blood (not even a lot), some far away shots of the dead, and some shots of skeletons. "Here, be scared. It's not scary? Too bad."
It fails as a drama because of a bad story and terrible characters. It manages some jumbled story about a family that not only makes no sense, it draws no empathy nor any sympathy. The main characters, the kids, are the most irritating couple of kids I've ever seen.
It fails as a sequel because of the liberties they took with the original premise. My biggest gripe is that they just completely abandoned the premise that the infected will not be active during daytime, probably for the sake of making it easier and cheaper to shoot. Great way to alienate fans of the first film.
Although the comparison is somewhat asymmetrical, I think this movie's more of a war/survival film than anything else. Any real threat of death does not come from the infected; it comes from several different military attack strategies. I don't think that's what the producers were shooting for, but that's what they ended up with. On a side note, the film makers obviously had nothing positive to say about the competence and morality of the US army. I welcome political discussions in films, but these guys are waaaayyy in over their heads
I truly wanted to just stop watching in the middle. It's boring and painfully long. I cared for none of the characters, wanted them to just die off as soon as possible.
Terrible.