28 Weeks Later (2007)

Decent zombie flick, but too many plot holes

28 Days Later was a surprise hit, so you knew there would be a sequel. This is a decent zombie flick -- except these zombies are wicked fast runners! -- but there were just too many plot holes.

[Note: Some spoilers follow.] I never figured out why the people infected with the rage virus never attack each other rather than concentrating exclusively on the uninfected. Given they are so whacked out as to not be able to even feed themselves -- we are told that everyone infected the first time around is dead of starvation -- how are they able to resist going after each other? Another point: Would the authorities really be intent on repopulating London so soon after the infection? If they were, shouldn't they have done a better job of guarding the ways into and out of the "green zone"? Why have armed guards posted every two feet inside the quarantined area and then have few guards at the entrances? The two kids have no trouble sneaking out, so you would expect the infected would have had little trouble breaking in. And given how important the infected -- but asymptomatic -- mother is, why wouldn't she be guarded more closely? The father is able to visit her without much trouble. They have all these guards everywhere and then when they have an infected person on their hands, they don't bother to guard her closely? A few implausible things are bound to occur in any sci-fi movie, but when the writers get this sloppy it seriously detracts from enjoying the film. October 1, 2008

Just plain awful

I'm an old hand at horror movies. I've watched them for a long time, and seen lots of them. I like intelligent horror, not the "let's spend the whole budget on tubs of blood and guts from a slaughter house" horror.

I loved the original 28 Days Later. I loved all the possible endings they had shot for 28 Days later (well, the story board idea sucked). It made me think, and even made me rethink my view or irradiated fruits :D

28 Weeks Later sucked. No thought was involved I the movie at all. Just sit back and watch people scream and run for the red colored corn syrup. Ants must have thanked their ant god for all the food the props department provided them. The trees of the world must have breathed a sigh of relief that almost none of them were cut down to be script paper.

The story is inconsistent. In the first movie we're told that animals DO get the Rage infection (hence the animal to human transfer). In 28 Weeks Later, they say animals CAN'T get the infection. Two children are flown from the safety of Spain to the quarantined London. What part of QUARENTINE is not understood? What father would have his children flown into that special hell? Sure, the mother has an immunity to the infection - how does that explain her not being a meal for all those infected people in the house?

Largely this feels like a bunch of people sat around and said "Hey, we could do a shoot in this location, what sort of zombie attack would look cool there?. There seems to have been no thought put into telling a coherent story in between the attacks.

This sequel was so bad I'll avoid anything more from this soon-to-be trilogy. If I could have the memory of 28 Weeks Later wiped from my mind, I would. September 30, 2008

Modestly successful sequel

In a genre where sequels fare poorly, this exceeded expectation. The movie starts 28 weeks after England was ravaged by the virus in 28 days later. The US army has taken control of the country, the zombies have died out, and folks are slowly repopulating. The writers put a stronger family element than most zombie flicks. Of course things don't go well, and there's a lot of sprinting away from the bad guys. The movie's pace is very quick and it's over before you know it.

The downside are plot holes bigger than you could imagine. There's a lot more of "What are they thinking?" than usual - despite the genre. That said, I'll see 28 Months Later if they come out with it. September 16, 2008

Better Than The Origional

"28 Weeks Later" is one of those rare sequels that is better than the first movie, 28 Days Later (Widescreen Edition). This time there is less of an attempt to make a "deep" movie and switched to a standard formula of suspense and action (oh, and gore too). Other reviews have covered the plot lines, so I will not rehash them here. The film has a strong story line, good acting, good suspense, and great special effects.

Recommended for fans of the genre. August 24, 2008

decent, if unspectacular, zombie film

"28 Weeks Later" picks up where "28 Days Later" left off. The virus that's been turning ordinary human beings into flesh-eating zombies has apparently run its course, the infected humans have all died of starvation, and Britain is slowly being repopulated with many of the citizens who fled the scene at the start of the epidemic. One of those returnees is Don (played by Robert Carlyle), who is suffering from survivor's guilt after leaving his wife in a moment of panic to be devoured by the creatures. Or was she? Suffice it to say, it's hard to keep a good virus down and soon London is in the grip of a major new outbreak of the illness. Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner, Imogen Poots and MacKintosh Muggleton (what a great name!) play various characters who spend the bulk of the movie running for their lives from the menace.

Zombie pictures have become such a staple of the horror movie genre that it is hard for anyone to do anything particularly novel or original with them anymore. Zombie bites human, human turns into zombie, new zombie bites another human, and on it goes ad infinitum. That scenario may have been fresh and exciting when George Romero first introduced it to the world in "Night of the Living Dead" back in 1968, but it has been diluted through repetition and overuse ever since (partly by Romero himself with his endless, ever diminishing variations on the theme). The one innovation the original "28 Days Later" came up with was to speed up the zombies' movements so that they were no longer the lumbering creatures that anyone's 85-year-old granny could easily outrun.

"28 Weeks Later" has some genuinely suspenseful moments and a nice post-apocalyptic feel in its early stretches, but, like its predecessor, it tends to devolve into a tedious shooting-gallery sideshow the longer it goes on. Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's hurdy-gurdy filmmaking style, which is intended to replicate the chaos and pandemonium of the situation, often leads more to confusion than to clarification for the audience. Still, the movie contains a few cool plot twists and raises some thorny ethical issues, such as whether or not innocent people are to be sacrificed if that means ensuring the safety of the population as a whole. And there is certainly more than enough bloodshed and general mayhem to keep the zombiephiles among us rooted to our seats. Even the undead can have fun with that.
August 9, 2008

More reviews at Amazon.com ...