Raging good fun

Rating: 7/10 (25 May 2007)

No one does post-apocalyptic films like Britain, and 28 Weeks Later is no exception. The film begins with a group of refugees hidden away in a shack somewhere in the English countryside. The plague outbreak is still running rampant, so they take every precaution possible. Among those shacked up are Robert Carlyle and his wife. Unfortunately, the rage-infected killers find their way to the shack and begin proceeding to bang their way in. Rather than staying to fight, Carlyle leaves his wife and companions and runs away. 28 weeks later, London is declared a "safe zone" by a NATO-lead American force, who are now occupying the city. The area of the Isle of Dogs is now a large refuge camp, with heavy military occupation. The outer limits of London are still not "safe", although Britain itself has been declared under a system of "containment". You don't have to be a genius to work out the parallels between the film and the US-lead occupation of Iraq. The US army have set up a reconstruction policy of "containment" where a set of land is considered a "safe zone" when it clearly isn't. When all hell breaks lose, it is not just the hoards of rage-infected beasts that are terrorising the refugees.
28 Weeks Later is splattertastic stuff. The action is frenetic, the gore is unrelenting and the horror is full on. The real treat of all this is seeing it take place in around the east London docklands. Watching hundreds of bloodthirsty killers raging through canary wharf, the millennium dome and the grain and dirt of those factory-outlet areas, we are treated to a vision of London that is all to often glossed over. It has meat, both subtextually and masochistically. It even has a cameo by the docklands light railway. For some gorrific entertainment, you can't go wrong with 28 Weeks Later.