I can't be scared because I can't get past how preposterous it was.

Rating: 2/10 (17 May 2007)

I really enjoyed the first film. The characters were real, they made understandable decisions in stressful situations. It was a fresh take on a very cliché genera; zombie films.
The second film, unfortunately, has none of that. Unrealistic characters making the same irrational, unintelligent choices that people in terrible slasher films make. Maybe taken on its own it would not have been that bad, but it has a much stronger film to live up to so it amplifies all of the weaknesses.
I am sorry if I am giving some things away so stop reading now if you have not seen the film and want to "try" and be surprised. I say try because there was nothing, absolutely nothing, unpredictable about this film.
The thing I found most absurd was that after only four months of failing to find an infected person, they already want to try to repopulate the island. Preposterous!!!! The greatest plague in the history of world and they are going back all cavalier? No. It would take years, maybe even decades before any re-population attempt would be made, and even then it would be a military only operation composed of troops and scientists. There would have to be global wide panels of experts and diplomats involved as the entire world would stand to be infected if something went wrong. Anthrax can live in moist soil for years so why not the rage virus? Maybe if the title was 28 months later, or more realistic, 28 years later.
And then again, who would want to come back? There would have to be fantastic incentives to get people to move back. Such as no taxes for life, free property, hereditary titles, etc. But the filmmakers make no effort to explain why the people who moved back were motivated to do so.
Then there is Robert Carlisle's character who is ultimately the person responsible for the re-emergence of the virus. He accomplished this because he has a magnetic pass key that gives him unfettered access to the entire complex, even top secret areas. He walks into a quarantine room of an individual, who turns out to be his wife, that is a carrier of the rage virus but is asymptomatic. He supposedly is some sort of civilian contractor or maintenance worker in the facility, but that wouldn't give him unrestricted access, he isn't even military. Come on!!! Then when the virus finally breaks back out (Too far into the movie to allow for much action in a 90 minute flick) the emergency protocols are so amateurish to be laughable. It is obvious right away that they have never given any or the re-patriots emergency drills because as they are being shuffled into quarantine chambers, they are all confused as to what is happening. You have to go through emergency drills your first day on a cruise ship and they are telling us that after repopulating Brittan after the most deadly plague of mankind, they are not even going to do some drills???? So when this inevitably fails (the zombies break into the quarantine zones, of course) in the ensuing panic, the soldiers cannot tell who is infected and who isn't. After not too much time, the general gives the order to shoot everyone just to be sure. Again, I was sitting in my seat fuming, all they would have had to broadcast on the PA was "Put up your right hand if you are not infected." Presumably zombies don't follow directions. But no, the soldiers start shooting everyone. I wonder if a Nuremburg defense would work in this instance? And of all the other soldiers shooting civilians, only one has moral qualms. Pathetic.
From here, the movie devolves into the typical horror film. The surviving characters of the initial carnage band together and are slowly picked off by circumstance and the results of terrible decision making (Should I go into the Tube where it is dark and has no lights, or should I stay above ground where I can see where I am going?) Oh, and while in the tube, they navigate with a lone night vision scope on an assault rifle that the character doesn't point at the way ahead, but instead at the surviving characters heads, did she forget that the scope is attached to a gun? Who points a gun at peoples heads they are not intending to shoot. BTW this is the same character who earlier in the film corrected the word usage of a person and then made the same mistake herself. (What kind of writer didn't pick that up???) Oh, and Robert Carlisle just happens to appear in nearly every scene even though he is only supposed to be a zombie. It got really irritating to keep seeing him pop up all the time. Was someone directing his location????? Again, no explanation of why this particular zombie was so adept at finding the few survivors.