Tense, explosive sequel more "Aliens" than "Excorsist 2"

Rating: 8/10 (25 August 2007)

"28 Weeks Later" A film review by Brian Murphy With a prime-time budget, a new director, and sans original star Cillian Murphy, "28 Weeks Later," the sequel to the indie smash "28 Days Later," seeks to one-up its predecessor. Shockingly, it succeeds.
"Weeks" director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo maintains the look of the original's British, neo-zombie film "Days" and director Danny Boyle's style through stark, washed out cinematography, and hyper-realist, docudrama visuals created by the use of jittery, hand-held cameras.
The sequel also benefits from a more involving story, an intelligent critique of the military (primarily the U.S. military), a seemingly endless horde of zombie extras and more money to spend on CGI effects and explosions.
Not much time elapses before the film launches its first, frightening, hyper attack. After a recent outbreak of a "rage virus" in London and its surrounding areas, carriers, who are eager to beat and bite common citizens, are infecting the inhabitants at an exponential rate.
Barricading themselves in a country house, a small group of survivors, including a married couple played by Catherine McCormack and Robert Carlyle (who starred in Danny Boyle's "Trainspotting"). After initially defending his wife from a gang of invading zombies, Don (Carlyle) leaves her for dead, escaping by a boat as she stares out a window in disbelief as he runs away. How's that for a complicated protagonist? Fast-forward roughly 28 weeks later to a U.S.-led, U.N.-coordinated reconstruction of London, after the contained zombies have starved to death. Within the protected "green zone"(sound familiar?), snipers peep into local high rises, scientists probe returning citizens, and Don's children, Tammy (penetrating-eyed Imogen Poots) and Andy (the "Harry Potter" sounding Mackintosh Muggleton) come home to their father and a strange new militaristic world.
Danny Boyle had creatively, tightly shot a city seemingly devoid of life, but Mr. Fresnadillo takes it a step further, by having either shut down several blocks of London at a time, or by having employed the mass use of CGI. Either way, his endless high-angle long shots of downtown London depict mass areas bereft of life. The experience then, of these returning citizens, is like the discovery of a new world.
Don's lies to his children concerning the "death" of their mother are soon rebuked after his children escape the green zone to return to their house to gather their belongings. The military captures them, along with their still living but infected mother. Her body's rejection of the virus garners the attention of compassionate military doctor, Scarlet (Rose Byrne of "The Dead Girl"), who makes every effort to protect the mother and her children.
When an anguished Don sneaks in to apologize to his wife, things, as they tend to do in horror films, go very, very wrong.
In this film, chaos and terror go hand in hand, and both are effectively generated in an instant. The deterioration of the military complex takes mere minutes of screen time. The outbreak abruptly erupts, and the soldiers turn from protectors to murderers in the blink of a an eye.
The guitar-heavy, electro-tinged score effectively frays our nerves to further heighten the tension of an inherently tense movie.
Poots and Muggleton are fine young actors who convincingly portray a brother and sister looking to protect one another from the ensuing chaos. The script allows ample time for the two to form a palpable, on-screen bond while the pair dodges both zombies and military personnel.
Disregard the dodgy ending, it was clearly created solely to set up a sequel, and you've got yourself a taut, well-acted and well thought out horror film, comparable to Romero's "Land of the Dead."