Serviceable sequel has its moments...

Rating: 6/10 (25 May 2007)

...but fails to add much of anything substantial to the action/horror genre in which it wallows. This is not entirely a bad thing, but despite the numerous glowing reviews here on the IMDb and elsewhere, "28 Weeks Later" is no "Aliens" or "Terminator 2" in the pantheon of sequels. It's simply an extension of the original's storyline and style with a bigger budget.
Still, there's much to recommend "28 Weeks Later" to the genre aficionado. The acting is top-flight, especially from reliable names like Robert "The Full Monty" Carlyle and Catherine "Braveheart" McCormack (who is rendered looking much worse for the wear than her normal lovely mid-30s), along with strong work from the likes of Jeremy "North Country" Renner, Rose "Troy" Byrne, Idris "The Wire" Elba, and the preternaturally captivating newcomer Imogen "V for Vendetta" Poots. Writer/director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo helms the film with a sure hand, notwithstanding the signature shaky-cam action sequences, although I suspect there were one too many fingers in the scripting pie to deliver a truly outstanding product. Enrique "Down in the Valley" Chediak's cinematography carries on the look and feel of Danny Boyle's original nightmare, mostly thanks to Chris "28 Days Later..." Gill's at times frenetic editing. The production design, art direction, set decoration, costuming and so on and so forth are all excellent, placing us squarely in a ravaged, depopulated Britain amidst a militarized zone of returnees intent on reclaiming their homeland.
The film's weakness is, as mentioned, the script. It suffers from a number of "oh, c'mons" that can't be ignored, some worse than others. How did the abandoned Alice escape the onslaught of Infecteds at the cottage, let alone make it back to London and survive there? Why was security so lax in the Green Zone that Don's swipe card gave him access to his wife? And why oh why wasn't said wife under extremely heavy guard? These problems, and others, took a lot of air out of an otherwise respectable story that contrasts the bonds of family with the inexorable requirements of society. I don't know; perhaps further viewings will give me answers to these questions, allowing me to bump my rating a notch, but meanwhile I can't recommend "28 Weeks Later" to anyone other than fans of the first film. It boasts plenty of jump-scares and gory sequences, most notably a gruesome set piece in which a helicopter is used as a giant weed-whacker, but suspension of disbelief is something the audience has to wrestle with just a bit too much to make "28 Weeks Later" a stand-out experience.