28 Weeks Later (2007)

Continuing zombie times with the follow-up to 28 Days Later. I hope to squeeze Zombie in there some time, too. 28 Weeks Later is made by completely different people, so it has a different feel from the first film, with less focus on characters and more on scare tactics. England has been declared free of all infected persons (most of them starved to death), and with the aid of the US military, is being re-populated sector by sector. After abandoning his wife to zombie attack months earlier, Don (Robert Carlyle) has moved back to London and is reunited with his children Tammy (Imogen Poots) and Andy (Mackintosh Muggleton), who had been in Spain during the outbreak. At 12, Andy is the youngest person in the country. The siblings sneak out of their residential area despite its heavy surveillance and venture into the sectors awaiting reconstruction and still showing all the signs of violence and abandonment.

They make it to their old house and inexplicably find their mother, Alice (Catherine McCormack), who has been in contact with the Infected but somehow has a genetic immunity to the disease. Scarlet, an American soldier and physician, wants to study her so a cure can be developed. Her superiors, seeing her as one of the Infected even though the symptoms lay dormant, just want to kill her. Neither wins the argument, since when Don visits Alice to apologize for leaving her, he is totally infected and all hell breaks loose. The whole place is under lockdown, soldiers are killing everyone in the chaos, and Scarlet devotes herself to saving Tammy and Andy, whom she believes may carry the same immunity as their mother. Now they're running away from both soldiers seeking to eliminate any possible trace of the virus, as well as the newly multiplied Infected themselves.

Hmm. 28 Weeks Later is definitely scary, in a more overt and consistent way than its predecessor. I'll admit to keeping the light on longer than usual before going to bed. The effects are done well and believably, with the red eyes and jagged shooting style maintained from the first film. There is also some great use of darkness, specifically during a Cloverfield-like scene in which Scarlet, Tammy, and Andy are walking in complete darkness through piles of corpses in the subway, but it is shown from Scarlet's point of view as she looks through the nightvision thingie in her gun (does that have a name?). It is very, very tense.

Unfortunately the pacing is completely off. It took a while to get going, but I was ok with that because I was interested in the re-population idea. Then once it did get into the zombie-apocalypse-part-II part of the story, everything moved extremely quickly with characters dying left and right, and no real goal or narrative except "run faster!". Then suddenly it was over. I did not at all expect it to end at the point that it did, so I was left feeling unsatisfied. It seemed to be building to something that never happened. However, I also went into this expecting something akin to the first film, which had less running from zombies and more of an overarching story and characters we can actually get to know. My expectations definitely affected my overall feelings about the movie.

28 Weeks Later has a great premise with a less-than-stellar execution. It is a bit more generic than the first one, but stands on its own as an interesting and scary zombie thriller. It seems a possibility Boyle might return as writer/director for 28 Months Later, which could be cool.

3.5/5