“Blood makes me nauseous.”

Al’s rating: Brains? Braaaaaaiinnnns?

Al’s review: In any successful film, trust is absolutely essential. The audience needs to trust the director that all plot threads, character development, and really cool explosions will be satisfactorily exploited. The director needs to trust that the audience does not need to be led around by the nose like simpletons in order to give life to his vision.

Sequels have it even tougher. All the same rules apply, but with more fine print: we audiences want our weighty themes, developed characters, and humongous, flaming balls of death exactly the same way you did it last time — only way different — and directors want to expand and evolve their ideas organically without compromising or invalidating everything that made the original exciting and different. See? Complicated.

So when 28 Weeks Later didn’t live up to the bar set by the original, it certainly didn’t come as a shock, but given everything they’re up against, they get plenty of points for trying.

They start out on the right foot. Much of the film’s early half deals with the repopulation effort of Britain, which is an idea I don’t think I’ve ever seen explored. Most zombie movies are pretty heavily transfixed on the idea of inevitable Zombiacolypse, so the concept of ‘what comes next’ doesn’t really fit in. 28 Weeks Later is immediately interesting because they dive headfirst into that idea. We won. Humans: 1 Zombies: 0. Game, set, match: Us. So the prospect of how a society rebounds from this kind of devastation is an intriguing one.

We are also treated to characters that hold a lot of potential. Don (Robert Carlyle) is a survivor of the original outbreak, but haunted by what he had to do to get there. Since the original wave of Infected died out, he has become a big fish in the reconstruction effort. Tammy and Andy (Imogen Poots and Mackintosh Muggleton) are his children, and currently the youngest kids in England. They had been vacationing in Spain during the original film and are only now getting to come back to the home they left. Along with a few of the American military personnel who lead the UN forces in the sweep and clear operation, there’s a wide range of personalities that provide a lot of interesting viewpoints on what’s happened so far and what’s coming next.

Of course, given all the yelling and screaming and gnashing of teeth we saw in the trailer, it’s a foregone conclusion that things aren’t going to pan out so well for our little Roanoke colony. Tammy and Andy decide almost immediately to go exploring, as precocious horror movie children are wont to do, and sneak their way past the entire military blockade into the unchecked areas of London where their former home still stands.

One thing leads to another and before you know it, our intrepid heroes, plus a few more disposable cast members, are on the run from both the fresh wave of the Infected and the government. Why the government? I don’t really know. As best I can figure, they’ve apparently decided the that best way to contain the situation is to kill every living thing in sight, including people performing tasks that the Infected couldn’t possibly manage, like driving cars, taking evasive action in the face of gunfire, and screaming “Please, Dear God, don’t shoot me!” Hooray for the government.

Now, before I go any further: I’m venturing into spoiler territory in a moment, so please be warned. I mean, it’s a zombie movie, so there’s not a ton of plot to ruin, but if you’re really sensitive to this stuff, you may just want to stop reading at the end of this paragraph and take away my summary that 28 Weeks Later is a good but ultimately flawed effort that’s probably worth a rental or a $5 matinee if you’re a fan of the first movie. So yeah, stop reading… now.
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Are they gone? Good. I didn’t like them. anyway.

Now, my issues with 28 Weeks Later mostly stem from a violation of the rules. A few very simple ground rules were set down in the original as to what the Infected were and were not, and what they were capable of and what was beyond them. So, as soon as one of our zombified cast members started to recognize the other characters and treated them differently then any other prey, my heart sunk. When they began to actively stalk them throughout the city while evading military extermination, you could actually hear that all-important mesh of audience/director trust snap in half like a rubber band stretched too far–although that could have been the kids sitting behind us in the theater who actually were snapping rubber bands during the entire movie. Punks.

My other gripe is the injection of my least favorite, oft-used, credibility-straining filmic trope: the Special Child. Maybe I’ve just read too much Stephen King, but I’ve grown to absolutely hate this silly little cliché of the single boy or girl around whom the entire world revolves. In 28 Weeks Later, not only are our protagonists Andy and Tammy the youngest people in the country, they’re also the first to sneak away from the camp under nose of the entire military. They find the lone remaining survivor in England in their own house. Their mother just happens to be the carrier of the mutated virus. Their dad becomes responsible for unleashing the Rage infection on the population all over again. Andy and Tammy are now also potentially the *only* people on the world with the correct genes to develop with a cure for the virus. Oh, and they just happen to fall in with exactly the right people who can recognize their importance, explain what’s going on, teach everyone how they can survive the ensuing chaos, and figure out what’s the best way to escape. Scream “Conservation of Characters” all your want, that’s absurd, sloppy, and disappointing as hell.

28 Weeks Later is a sequel to what can be politely described as a modest hit that’s missing it’s original star, director, and writer. Given that enormous handicap, it deserves a lot of credit for accomplishing as much as it does. The whole post-war reconstruction bit was pretty fascinating, the idea behind the reintroduction of the virus was intelligent (even if the execution was faulty), and many of the action scenes remain tense and interesting, without xeroxing the last movie. I just feel like the script could have used another draft before putting it up on screen.

All that interesting character potential I mentioned levels off pretty quickly once the pace picks up, and a lot of the irrational coincidences that drove me to frustration seem like they could have been patched with just a few tweaks here and there. Seeing something that offers so much come up so short is heart-breaking. I mean, all I’m asking for is weighty themes; developed characters; and humongous, flaming balls of death exactly the same way you did it last time only way different. C’mon Hollywood! How hard is that?

Justin’s rating: Why is England suddenly the Ground Zero for every recent post-apocalyptic movie?

Justin’s review: For a sequel, 28 Weeks Later does something refreshingly original. In the genre of copycat zombie retreads, I can’t recall another movie that posits an undead (or in this case, “infected”, but what are we kidding ourselves) outbreak that causes armaggedon, then humanity somehow pulls back from the brink of total collapse to win the day — only to have to face the same threat, all over again.

It’s a bit like your annual family reunion, where you escape with only two eyelashes and a wisp of your sanity intact, but you know that sooner or later, you’ll have to dive back into that buffet line once more.

So now it’s 28 weeks after the zombie infection and eradication (the infected apparently starved to death, even though they go around biting everything under the sun), and the world thinks it’s a ducky idea to repopulate this ghostland instead of throwing up their hands and using England for an atomic bomb testing range. Returning citizens find a military presence everywhere, their freedom of travel is restricted to a couple square blocks, and a pall of death hangs in the air. On the upside, the rat population’s exploded due to feasting on all the corpses, so it ain’t all bad.

That is, until two kids join the returning refugees, and botch things up well and good. They find their mother in the ruins, who’s survived even though she’s carrying the virus. Before you can say “Brainsssss!”, the rage virus explodes through the city and all of the colonial marines in the world can’t hold back the tide. From then on it’s just an extended chase scene coupled with elimination movie tactics, the end, roll credits, can I have the rest of your popcorn.

I’m not a particular fan of the 28 movies’ zombies. Sure, call them “infected” or whatever you want, but they’re zombies, and pretty dull for that. Apparently getting infected turns anyone into a track star, because all these zombies like to do is sprint wildly around. If the rage virus is supposed to unleash a person’s pure hostility and anger, wouldn’t some of the zombies just hunker down and listen to Linkin Park and write depressing poetry? Running and biting isn’t the only way to exorcise aggression, you know.

As Al said, there are a number of pretty glaring continuity and logic errors, but if you get past them — Mutant Reviewers suggests a fifth of Jim Bean — then it’s not a half-bad effort. A creative scene with a helicopter and another showcasing the firebombing of London are worth the price of admission alone. Just remember: kids doomed this planet to a zombie takeover, so return the favor and combat this menace wherever it rears its prepubescent head.