SPOILERS WITHIN!
If you were a fan of Danny Boyle's 2002 infection thriller 28 Days Later, let me start with the good. The sequel, 28 Weeks Later, opens with one of the best horror sequences of the last few years. In fact, the opening is so good, so chilling and well-paced, that it will allow some critics and fans to give the entire film a pass right from the start, arguing that the opening frights are so potent that they alone almost make the film worth the price of admission. These first few minutes also happen to be the high point of the film, which is unfortunate because it leaves 28 Weeks Later with nowhere to go but down. And, despite some technical prowess and an interesting ensemble, 28 Weeks Later eventually hits the ground like a "Rage Virus" victim getting a drop of infected blood in his eye - quickly, loudly, and without a thought in the world.
As 28 Weeks Later begins, we watch as a pair of survivors of the Rage plague that swept England in 28 Days Later are trying to endure something as mundane as a simple dinner. While Alice (Catherine McCormack) and Don (Robert Carlyle) prepare their meal, realizing that they're running out of supplies, we're introduced to a group of refugees who have barricaded themselves away from the world in an old country cottage. Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo takes his time in these scenes, nicely setting up the sadness, isolation, and fear of the "uninfected", which will soon be shattered by a child knocking on their front door. He's seeking refuge from the gang of blood-thirsty crazies (don't call them zombies) that have been chasing him - a feral pack that includes his parents - and he's unwittingly led the monsters right to the refugees' doorstep. Before you know it, the house is being torn apart, literally, while crazies run rampant, vomiting blood, eating survivors, and screaming their infected heads off. Don and Alice run upstairs and get separated. Alice is trapped in the house, and Don, in a moment of terror, doesn't turn back to help. He just keeps running.
After those tense early pre-credit moments, 28 Weeks Later settles into its primary setting, a post-Rage London, weeks after every final infected human has been located. The metropolis is full of dead bodies, but the virus has been contained by the American military. This allows the English to start moving back into London, including Alice and Don's two children, who had been sent to a refugee camp for their own safety. After being reunited with their father, the kids slip through the barely-there barriers separating London's safe zones from more dangerous regions to venture back to their family home, with hopes of retrieving one last picture of their mother, who Don tells them has died. Well, Dad may not be completely right on that one, and the kids' incursion into the infected zone does not go unnoticed. Of course, soon after, all hell breaks loose, and the rest of 28 Weeks Later is a guessing game about the order in which the main characters will die and how. Will the crazies get 'em? Or will the snipers sent in by NATO to keep control simply wipe everyone out, including the uninfected? Can the reemergence of the virus really be kept within the London city limits?
Perhaps the most crucial question is "Will you be able to hear your date when the movie is over?", because 28 Weeks Later may be the loudest movie ever made. After the brilliant choreography of its opening moments, the rest of 28 Weeks Later tries in vain to be as loud and violent as any of the infected crazies. Every time the raging Londoners encounter their future victims in 28 Weeks Later, the soundtrack gets kicked up to eleven, not just with loud music and screaming, but with ear-shattering sounds like scraping metal, feedback, and anything else Fresnadillo's sound team could find to startle you into submission. But louder doesn't always mean scarier, and the problematic sound design would be a lot more effective (and less annoying) if you actually could tell what was going on. Every time the crazies attack, the entire creative team behind 28 Weeks Later simply turns up the volume and plays catch with their handheld cameras as plumes of blood spurt across London. There might be a much better unrated version of 28 Weeks Later eventually released on DVD because the theatrical one often feels like footage you should be seeing is missing (perhaps due to MPAA censorship). Except for that opening scene and a fantastic helicopter sequence later on, it's almost impossible to tell what's happening half the time in 28 Weeks Later. As a horror director, Fresnadillo makes the fatal mistake of believing that chaos equals fear, and while he may have been trying to purposely disorient his audience, in reality, all he really does is frustrate.
On a more positive note, Fresnadillo did assemble a nice ensemble of some really talented actors, including the great Robert Carlyle (Trainspotting), Idris Elba (The Wire), Harold Perrineau (Lost), and the super-hot Rose Byrne (The Dead Girl). However, while the adults all deliver strong performances, the film puts a lot of weight on the shoulders of the two child leads (Imogen Poots and Mackintosh Muggleton). And while neither young actor is particularly bad, they're not nearly as easy to root for as 28 Days' Cillian Murphy or Naomie Harris. These problems, all the problems, with 28 Weeks Later are particularly tragic because - unlike, say The Hills Have Eyes 2 or Dead Silence - this film actually has a lot going for it under the surface and, with a bit of reworking, it could have been truly something. (As I mentioned earlier, hopefully, the final product can be improved with a DVD director's cut.) Fresnadillo has a unique, visceral sense of action and horror that truly could have worked with a little more fine-tuning in the editing room and a lot more sense that the audience should know what the hell is going on for more than, say, 28 seconds.
Directing: C
Writing: C
Performances: C
Visual Appeal: C
Overall: C
