The Infected Strike Back

Rating: 9/10 (12 May 2007)

"28 Weeks Later" is gory, wicked and fun, that rare and impressive sequel that can stand alongside the film that inspired it.
In 2003's vicious and frighteningly real "28 Days Later," a horrifying strain of athletic, bloodthirsty, virus-fueled zombies overran Great Britain, and "Weeks" is a vision of civilization trying to get a handle on that terrifying nightmare and rebuild in its wake.
The creators of the first film, director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland, serve as producers here, putting their gory baby in the hands of Spanish writer-director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo ("Intacto"), and it turns out to be a trust well warranted.
For starters, Fresnadillo and his co-writers know that we still vividly recall the horrors of "Days," so they begin in mid-plague, as it were, with a ragtag group waiting out the invasion in a rural cottage. Among them are Don (Robert Carlyle) and Alice (Catherine McCormack), a couple whose children are on a school trip to Spain and thus safe from the virus. Alas, Mom and Dad are not. After a stunning assault on their hiding place, Don escapes alone.
Presently we learn what has happened in the wake of the awful outbreak: the quarantining of Great Britain; the death of the infected from starvation; the introduction of NATO troops to secure London for repopulation. Don's children (Imogen Poots and Mackintosh Muggleton -- I swear those are their names) are among the returnees, and, determined to reclaim a remembrance of their mother, they sneak out of the secure area to their old house for mementos. What they find is much worse, and before the chief science officer (Rose Byrne) can get a handle on the situation, the infection has blossomed again and the military does what militaries are meant to do.
Just as "Days" contained echoes of 9/11, so does "Weeks" allude freely to the Iraq war: the use of tools of warfare against an invisible force that turns civilians into enemies; a "green zone," surrounded by snipers, within which a new country is being planned; the decision to destroy a place in order to save it.
But that's subtext. On the surface is a thrilling and chilling and sometimes grisly zombie movie that occasionally loses its way in genre conventions but generally keeps you locked into a heightened tension. I give the slight edge to the first movie because I prefer Boyle's craft to Fresnadillo's, but the action is more intense here, and I greeted the thought of a third film -- virtually assured in the closing shots -- with a little yip of "Yes!" Likely you will, too.