RECENT WATCHES: 28 Weeks Later (2007)

“28 Days Later” was made for a meager budget of eight million dollars. At the international box office, it grossed over 82 million dollars. That's how horror movies are supposed to work, from a business perspective. Low investment, high return. Moreover, not capitalizing on the burst of interest in zombie media created by the first film would be a mistake, right? And how was anyone able to resist calling it “28 Weeks Later,” building on the easy naming structure present in the original? To put it simply, a sequel was inevitable. Danny Boyle and Alex Garland had already moved onto their next project though, committed to a sci-fi epic that would make it hard to work on a grimy zombie sequel. The search was on for a new creative team. Eventually, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo of Spanish language thriller “Intacto” would be chosen. A substantially bigger budget of 15 million dollars was provided to turn one gritty horror flick that had taken the world by storm into an on-going franchise.

196 days after the Rage Virus first breached containment in Great Britain, the situation seems to be under control. All of the infected have starved to death. NATO has taken control over the island, establishing a safe zone on the Isle of Dogs in an attempt to begin rebuilding. Among the survivors is Don, who feels immense guilt over leaving his wife, Alice, to die during the initial outbreak. In the safe zone, he is reunited with his children, Tommy and Andy. They have questions about their mother but he assures them she's gone. The two eventually sneak out of the containment area and discover this is a lie: Alice has survived due to a mysterious genetic immunity to the Rage Virus. She is still an asymptomatic carrier though, meaning she's quickly captured by the military. A medical officer named Scarlet believes a vaccine can be made from Alice's blood. However, Don sneaks into the lab and kisses his wife. The Rage Virus spreads to him and, very quickly, a full blown outbreak has consumed the safe zone. Under the care of a sympathetic sniper named Doyle, Scarlet and the two kids attempt to make it out of the quickly escalating chaos alive.

If no other theme emerged out of the later follow-ups to “Night of the Living Dead,” it's that authority will always use a crisis as an opportunity to seize more control. Unlike the unhinged soldiers and evil billionaires of Romero's later “Day” and “Land,” the military occupation in “28 Weeks Later” is well intended. They want to help people, rebuild a country torn apart by crisis and prevent any further outbreaks. However, being granted a level of leadership, even if it's with the best of intentions, still results in you peering down on everyone else from a dehumanizing angle. A largely pre-fame Idris Elba plays the U.S. general overlooking the operation on the Isle of Dogs. Once the virus starts to break out again, he doesn't take long at all to initiate a clean-sweep protocol. Soldiers are ordered to kill everything that moves, infected and not. The city is purged with a fire bombing. Before the end, the NATO forces are actively killing the people they have sworn to protect. If “28 Days Later” was an unintentional but utterly fitting reaction to the immediate chaos of a post-9/11 world, the sequel looks back on the reaction with a more skeptical eye. It sees military institutions trying to messily work out solutions with no eye towards the human lives caught in the middle. This is a clear criticism of the cluster-fuck response the U.S. government made in the wake of the attacks. I don't think the antagonistic soldiers here being American was any mistake. That makes “28 Weeks Later” the first War on Terror zombie movie, a critique of a system that is more concerned with restoring "order" than protecting people.

What made “28 Days Later” a little more special, beyond its novel approach to the zombie premise, was how it centered on some very human characters. The sequel sees no cast returning but does pull off a similar idea. Donald loved his wife and they cherished their kids together. In a world gone completely fucking nuts though, does the need to survive overcome questions of love? It did for Don and that guilt haunts him. The sequel makes a surprise turn midway through, when what had previously been the protagonist is turned into a Rage zombie. It's almost as if Don is being consumed by his own shame over abandoning his wife. Through the mayhem that follows, Tammy clings to Andy. She wants to protect her brother. Scarlet and Doyle emerge as older sibling figures of a sort too, looking out for the youngsters. All along, Don lurks in the background, almost as if he seeks to reunite his family even in his Rage-driven state. Like the military, he's an authority figure eager to restore control, in this case of the standard family unit of a father and his children. Meanwhile, the kids find a new family of sorts, based on empathy and compassion. I think the father's hang-ups and fears – excellently portrayed by Danny Boyle regular Robert Carlyle, who is also a fine rage zombie – could have been foreground a bit more. It's still an interesting theme to cook into your horror sequel.

Danny Boyle made a very deliberate stylistic choice using grainy, shaky digital video in “28 Days Later.” A lot of lesser filmmakers thought this meant jerking the camera around and making sure everything looked like shit was a cheat code to creating a tense, scary movie. Sometimes, cinematographer Enrique Chediak – previously of “The Faculty” – seems to be slipping into that meaningless chaos. A couple of moment in the sequel are a little too jittery to follow. However, the film mostly does a good job of building upon the technique used in “Days.” In fact, the opening sequence, where the infected horde infiltrates and destroys the safety of Don's first shelter, keeps up-ing the intensity until a properly shaking climax. John Murphy's already iconic theme music from the first film is reprised here to great effect. The sequel attempts to replicate that thrilling sense of dread throughout. When Don becomes infected himself, it strikes that right balance of panic and emotion. A moment when shooting breaks out in the city or a hero sacrifices himself amid a poison gas attack does as well. However, shooting an extended sequence in the back-half largely through the night vision scope of a rifle was maybe not such a good idea.

The script essentially means “28 Weeks Later” is splitting its screen time between multiple story threads. Don, his kids, and the military personnel that become their guardians are all doing their own things throughout the first half. Somehow, this is successfully built upon and creates a nicely tense second part. The time is taken to humanize our heroes before truly throwing them into the shit. Mackintosh Muggleton and Imogen Poots, as Andy and Tammy, both manage to be rare examples of carefully acted child performers in a horror movie. Their sibling bond is especially warmly depicted. The viewer wants to protect these kids. That same instinct aligns us with Rose Byrne as Scarlet, who immediately develops a motherly side towards the youngster. Jeremy Renner is also well utilized as Doyle. I like how the sequel treats the soldiers as average guys simply doing a job, devoid of any misplaced rah-rah jingoism before going for a darker portrayal of those willing to follow any order. 

In general, "28 Weeks Later" has a sturdier structure and pacing than the original. It lacks some of the freshness and eeriness of Boyle's film, as sequels inevitably tend to. The bigger budget does allow for a far wider scope, with more elaborate action sequences involving the fire-bombing of the Isle of Dogs or a pretty cool stunt in which a horde of Rage zombies meet some helicopter blades. Juan Carlos Fresnadillo put together a worthy sequel, maintaining the visual connection to the original and expanding upon its ideas while standing alone as a solid horror flick in its own right. Those that claim “28 Weeks Later” is scarier than the film it sequelizes aren't entirely wrong though. The sequel does its damnedest to be a more tense and thrilling experience. I'd rank the two films as about equal, extremely well executed variation on a familiar post-apocalyptic situation. [7/10]