28 Weeks Later

28 Days Later was arguably one of the best horror movies of the last decade. The much-anticipated George Romero rotfest “Land of the Dead” didn’t cover nearly as much ground, or hit remotely as hard in the temporal lobe. Hey, don’t get me wrong, Romero & I go way back. But you have to give credit where it’s due, and Danny Boyle’s new approach to the zombie genre is probably what saved it in the cinema world.

The concept was great: Infected people still alive, instead of dead zombies. Fast moving, enraged attacks, and the stop for NOTHING, even if you set them on fire. The story-within-a-story approach, which is always the hallmark of a great flick. You rarely get it these days, and almost never in horror. 28 Days Later made a killing in England, and was a sleeper hit here in the States. I was so anxious to get it on DVD (it was released in Europe a full year before it came here to America) I ordered it from Amazon.uk and ripped it to my computer. On top of seeing it 5 times in the theatres.

It’s THAT good.

*SIGH*

If only they’d listened.

*WARNING! Spoilers ahead!*

28 Weeks Later picks up where “Days” left off, and does an admirable job of keeping pace with the previous movie. The story leaves the starting block much quicker than the previous film, and we get to see some people do things that, if they survive, will never forget. The central character, “Don”, played by the always underrated Robert Carlyle, is holed up in a remote farmhouse with his wife and a couple of other survivors. We understand that this setting is during the original film, and the infected are still running the show, so the survivors are doing their best to just make it to another day. They are keeping it low-key, and quietly eating together when there is a knock on the door. A child is out there, and he tells them the infected are right behind him.

Apparently, much closer than he let on because they explode into the house seconds later. The survivors are caught with their pants down, and run around in hopeless confusion while the infected attack them. Don finds his wife, and as they are about to flee she finds the boy hiding and tries to save him but is then cornered by the Infected herself. We see that one of the infected is between Don & his wife, and she pleads to Don to save them both. However, rather than put himself at risk by intervening, Don shuts the door on her and flees the cottage, but not before looking back and watching Alice scream at him through the window before she is yanked out of sight. Don has no time to consider this, though, as dozens of the infected are chasing him through a field, onto a boat (where he shreds his now-infected friend with the outboard motor) and out in the water. Don manages to escape and we think he is the only survivor.

28 Weeks Later…

Great Britain is reopening, and the refugees from an infected England are now returning from various camps across the world. At first they are only allowing adults to reenter, but Don pulls some strings (apparently he’s something of an electronic genius, and they give him an important job) and his two children are allowed back in as well. They are the only kids in London.

A brief reunion scene, and we get down to the grit: Dad, what happened to mom? There is some sincere pain in Robert Carlyle’s eyes as he tries to relate the worst moment of his life to his children, and in the end he shirks away from telling them the truth, just that “She was taken by the infected, there was nothing I could do”. Which is true, actually, and raises a good question – Go after your wife with a 99% chance of dying as well, or doing what you can to survive?

The refugees are confined to a huge London towerblock building, and the U.S. military is controlling the compound (we assume nothing is left of the British military).

Tammy and Andy (Don’s kids) are soon bored out of their minds, and with a ghost-town London at their disposal, they sneak away to revisit their old house. We get some great scares here, and it only serves to further build the tension at the payoff: Their mother is still alive & hiding out at their old house.

Back at the base, military doctors confirm what looks like an immunity from the rage virus, but is actually an infection without symptoms: She is a carrier of the virus, and has likely passed on the gene to her kids as well. The effect here is cool as hell, we see the eyes trying to fill with blood, but being subdued time and again. She is strapped to a table, but conscious and lucid.

Well, daddy has some explaining to do…I thought you said you saw mom get killed? Don can hardly believe it himself, and sneaks in to check it out. We simultaneously see the general of the compound order his wife’s death, as she is deemed too dangerous to be allowed to live. But Don gets there first, and is so remorseful, he kisses his wife. Who is a carrier of the rage virus. And still strapped to the table.

And now, ironically, Don is infected by the one person he left to die of infection. And she, in turn, is killed by Don.

Don gets free of the room and attacks several soldiers, spreading the infection. From here, the military makes a series of classically bad moves, one right after another, and the domino effect is witnessed in full horror: The General of the compound orders the execution of “Code Red”, a prepared plan to deal with another outbreak, and the refugees are corralled into a giant basement beneath the towerblock and locked in. However, there is an unknown back entrance to the basement.

And infected Don has just found it.

As the virus spreads from the back, the refugees break down the doors and flee into the streets. Rooftop snipers attempt to shoot the Infected without harming any uninfected civilians. However, the situation soon spirals out of control and the Sniper are ordered to kill everyone, period. One sniper, Sergeant Doyle, becomes uncomfortable with these orders when he catches sight of Andy in his scope and abandons his post. He joins a group of survivors including the medic who discovered the Rage virus immunity, along with Tammy and Andy in a barricaded warehouse as the situation worsens, with soldiers among the Infected on the outside.

What follows is a great duck and cover, escape and evade sequence, with the slowly dwindling group of survivors staying just two steps ahead of the infected and one step ahead of the military that is hounding them at every turn. Between snipers, poison gas, flamethrowers, stray bullets, the Infected and a helicopter attack, the three remaining members (Tammy, Andy and the hot female medic) take refuge in Charing Cross station. We get some great squeamish and tense moments when they are stumbling around in the dark over dead corpses, and then the medic is killed by Don, who has been chasing them all this time as well. Don finally corners and attacks his son in what is probably the most shocking scene of the movie. Tammy shoots and kills her father and discovers that, while Andy is now infected, like his mother, he is just a carrier who shows no violent symptoms, the only sign that he is infected is his left blood-shot eye.

The kids are rescued by a helicopter pilot who was a friend of Sergeant Doyle, and we get some great shots of the English countryside in flames, as well as a parting shot of the white cliffs of Dover as the chopper crosses the English Channel into what we suppose is the safety of Western Europe.

In an epilogue captioned "28 Days Later", the helicopter is shown abandoned. The radio can be overheard with a man desperately calling for help in a French accent. The film ends depicting a swarm of infected running across the terrace of the Palais de Chaillot towards the Eiffel Tower, indicating that rather than saving the human race with a possible end to the Rage virus, Andy's immunity allowed him to act as a carrier to bring the virus to Continental Europe, although the POV of the final shots begin with an ascent from an underground train platform, perhaps indicating that Britain's infected may have traversed the Channel Tunnel. But I think a bigger question is will the French Infected now just become complacent, and instead of the Rage virus, it's called "Le Maladie de Mildly Miffed" Perhaps they all stop chasing people at 5:01 PM.

So, here’s how it is: The movie, in my opinion, is great. I have to admit, I’m a little spoiled by the original, and the sequel gets a little Hollywood from time to time. It’s obvious that there was an attempt to add the standard “formula” that so many directors think must be the critical ingredient in movies these days, but 28 Weeks Later stands on its own. The shots were awesome, and the infected have lost none of their terror for me between films. Thank seven Gods the directors were faithful to the original story. This one is worth seeing in theatres, especially for some of the wide shots. If I had to make a comparison, I would say that this one is maybe not quite as good as the original, but we’re talking a matter of a few degrees here, splitting hairs really. Go see 28 Weeks Later.