Roller-coaster ride, that follows a fantastic opening scene.

Rating: 7/10 (11 May 2007)

I was incredibly skeptical before seeing 28 weeks later, the main reason being that a new, relatively unknown director was taking over Danny Boyle's spot. However literally in the first ten minuets I knew that I was in for a roller-coaster ride.
28 weeks later is set several months after the original outbreak of the Rage Virus in London. The Americans have stepped in, and the reconstruction of the once flourishing city is already underway. The citizens now live in designated areas, and are forbidden to cross the river over into more, less protected parts of the city. However when a teenage girl and her younger brother Tammy(Poots)and Andy(Muggleton) return to the city to live with their dad (Robert Carlyle), they decide to break the rules and venture out of bounds in order to find their house.
The children not only find their house but also their mother who was assumed dead in the brilliant scene at the beginning of the film. So after this occurrence the mother is found actually to be infected with the virus, and so within the space of an hour another army of rage infected citizens are rampaging throughout the city.
For me, the greatest scene in this whole movie was at the beginning. This shown shows a group of men and women who have been in hiding since the previous outbreak. Things are going well for them, they have food, company and all the time in the world. However when they suddenly get ambushed by the infected the scene turns to chaos so quickly its incredible. Suddenly they are all trying to fight for survival, nearly all of them run, except for Don ( Carlyle) who attempts to fight. What made this scene so fantastic was the heart wrenching choices each character is forced to make while in the face of imminent death. Juan Carlos Fresnadillo did a brilliant job of making these decisions seem so real, and so difficult to make because of the sheere severity of the situation. Afterwards when Carlyle gets on a boat and flees, you hold so much sympathy for the poor guy that you just wish the movie would end there, just so he doesn't have to go through anything more.
After this scene, and the action has begun once again their is very little room for character development, however all the performances in 28 weeks later ( especially Carlye) are very good.
The reason behind the not so great mark I gave for this movie was solely because of the predictability of the main storyline, and also because of some major plot holes connecting with the American forces in London. However in the end, 28 weeks later is an ambitous attempt at a sequel, with a very powerful opening scene.