A review I did for the site Horror Fans Asylum Reviews.
Welcome all, to another weekly film review written from my cold
dwellings in the Asylum! My name is Michael and I can also be found at
my Left Field Films blog and at my Facebook page.
Last week I talked about “28 Days Later”, which was a more than
competent take on the outbreak/zombie genre. Now it’s the turn of the
sequel, “28 Weeks Later”, to get my unwanted attention.
“28 Weeks Later” (2007) was directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo and shows the aftermath of the viral outbreak from the original.
The film begins rather well. Don (Robert Carlyle) and Alice
(Catherine McCormack) are laying low with a few other survivors in a
countryside cottage in the hope that the outbreak will pass them by.
Everything seems to be working fine until a child survivor outside the
cottage starts banging on the door, screaming for help. Unsure of what
to do, they finally let the boy in. Unsurprisingly, the outside of the
cottage becomes surrounded by the infected and they quickly manage to
overrun the house. While Don and Alice try to escape, one of the
infected manages to separate them and leaves Don with a choice….. try
and save his wife and risk being infected in the process or just escape
and leave his wife as bait. Astonishingly he does the latter and leaves
his wife to the wolves, whilst he escapes the cottage and gets away on a
motorboat!
Fast forward 28 weeks later, and London has become a militarised
zone. Most of the infected have died of starvation, and the US military
has managed to make a small part of the city into a “safe zone”, where
they are in the early stages of repopulation and are bringing back
refugees to live.
Don’s two children Tammy (Imogen Poots), and her younger brother Andy
(Mackintosh Muggleton), have been brought back to London and reunite
with their dad. It seems that Don is now the “caretaker” of the facility
(which seems to give him access to even high security rooms.
Confusing.)
Doyle (Jeremy Renner) is one of the army personnel who keeps watch on
the rooftops with his sniper rifle. He see’s Tammy and Andy through his
scope, escaping from the safe zone and heading into the main city. They
have came up with the fantastic idea of going back to their old house
for some insane reason.
While at the house, they find their mother (gasp) who is infected,
but is able to just barely keep her rage at bay. She is taken to a
maximum security medical wing where they conduct a few tests and find
that she has a rare genetic trait (she also has different coloured
pupils, a trait she shares with her son Andy) that helps her withstand
the virus. The army doctor Scarlet (Rose Byrne), thinks the cure to the
virus is in the mother and her son’s blood.
Before she has time to take action though, Don has gotten wind that
his wife is still alive and decides to go see her. She is obviously
still pissed at his betrayal at the beginning of the film, so she bites
him. He becomes infected with rage and kills her then goes on to quickly
spread the infection throughout the complex.
The virus is so out of control the military decide to kill all the
civilians to avoid another outbreak. Scarlet knows Andy is the key to
stopping everything but no one seems to listen to her, apart from the
sniper Doyle, who decides to protect Andy and Scarlet until he can get
them safely evacuated out of Britain and to a proper medical site. It
won’t prove an easy task as they have both the infected and the military
on their backs!
I really enjoyed the original film “28 Days Later”, but I’m not too
sure about this film. It has two great actors in it. Robert Carlyle (who
was great at the beginning of the film but then ends up being wasted),
and Jeremy Renner (who was pretty much unknown then but has went on to
become a big star).
The beginning of the film is fantastic and really has the same
feeling as the original. It’s quite a brief opening, but you do get the
feeling that these survivors have bonded and you quickly like them. The
rest of the film is typical over the top crap. Switch your brain off and
eat popcorn kind of nonsense, which is a shame because it had the
potential to be really good.
The first film was great because it was taken to a very human level.
The outbreak became more of a background story and it became a tale
about a group of survivors with more to worry about than just the
infected. “28 Weeks Later” is more like some Yank in a fancy office
saying “Forget all that relationship and story crap! People just want to
see zombies and blood!”.
And that is pretty much what you get, a lot of different situations
in which zombies get killed in more imaginative ways. In another kind of
film, well OK fair enough. But as a sequel to “28 Days Later”, a more
serious and thought provoking film, it’s just lunacy. I think the makers
of this film should be sent to the Asylum!
Also the film feels like it was made for a sequel. Money was
obviously on everyone’s mind while making this film. They knew they
would make a lot of money off the back of the original and they were
hoping to make another film after this one! Thankfully that hasn’t
happened yet.
I give this 2 needles out of 5! (The extra needle is for the opening of the film)
Thanks everyone for reading, please feel free to leave a comment
below either good or bad, it’s nice to get some feedback so I can
improve the reviews! I hope to see you next week if the Head Doctor
let’s me out of solitary confinement long enough!
Also Happy Halloween everyone! :)
Michael.
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